Torn between Two Worlds: Unsettled Sense of Place and Belongingness between Old and New Homelands during a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted migrants physically, emotionally, economically and socially in both the global North and South. Emerging scholarship argues that to understand the dis-equalising impacts of COVID-19 on migrants it is necessary to consider their specific social situations across di...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Suborna Camellia, Kazi Nazrul Fattah
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: UTS ePRESS 2021-01-01
Series:PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/7418
Description
Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted migrants physically, emotionally, economically and socially in both the global North and South. Emerging scholarship argues that to understand the dis-equalising impacts of COVID-19 on migrants it is necessary to consider their specific social situations across diverse contexts. In this essay we reflect critically on our experiences as first-generation aspirational immigrants in Australia and explore how the pandemic has unsettled our senses of place and belongingness in both our old and new homelands (Bangladesh and Australia). The closing of borders during the COVID-19 pandemic has underlined that immigrants experience unique vulnerabilities as they struggle with the burden of belonging in two different worlds.
ISSN:1449-2490