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Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion()
In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in Canada, public health and medical authorities quickly identified emergency shelters and people experiencing homelessness as particularly at risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 (Knight et al., 2021). Drawing on interviews with 28 service provi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10127664/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37128273 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100276 |
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author | Chapados, Sydney Roebuck, Benjamin S. Macdonald, Sue-Ann Dej, Erin Hust, Carmen McGlinchey, Diana |
author_facet | Chapados, Sydney Roebuck, Benjamin S. Macdonald, Sue-Ann Dej, Erin Hust, Carmen McGlinchey, Diana |
author_sort | Chapados, Sydney |
collection | PubMed |
description | In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in Canada, public health and medical authorities quickly identified emergency shelters and people experiencing homelessness as particularly at risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 (Knight et al., 2021). Drawing on interviews with 28 service providers in organizations that primarily serve people experiencing homelessness in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and a media scan, we explored how people who worked in and accessed these organizations negotiated discourses of contagion and infection throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is informed by Goffman's (1963) theory of stigma, complemented by Crawford's (1994) idea of the Self and unhealthy Other. We argue that people experiencing homelessness, the spaces that they occupy, and the people they engage with, have been discursively marked as dangerous vectors of infection who present a risk to the health of the whole population, rather than as vulnerable to the health consequences and social disruption of COVID-19. Consequently, people experiencing homelessness have experienced further stigmatization throughout the pandemic as they have been separated from their communities, friends, and families, left without support or shelter, internalized blame for the spread of COVID-19, and faced dehumanization, grief, and trauma resulting from uneven COVID-19 interventions. We highlight these findings to support the application of trauma- and violence-informed care in service settings to prevent the further traumatization of people experiencing homelessness in services intended to support them. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10127664 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101276642023-04-26 Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() Chapados, Sydney Roebuck, Benjamin S. Macdonald, Sue-Ann Dej, Erin Hust, Carmen McGlinchey, Diana SSM Qual Res Health Article In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in Canada, public health and medical authorities quickly identified emergency shelters and people experiencing homelessness as particularly at risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 (Knight et al., 2021). Drawing on interviews with 28 service providers in organizations that primarily serve people experiencing homelessness in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and a media scan, we explored how people who worked in and accessed these organizations negotiated discourses of contagion and infection throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is informed by Goffman's (1963) theory of stigma, complemented by Crawford's (1994) idea of the Self and unhealthy Other. We argue that people experiencing homelessness, the spaces that they occupy, and the people they engage with, have been discursively marked as dangerous vectors of infection who present a risk to the health of the whole population, rather than as vulnerable to the health consequences and social disruption of COVID-19. Consequently, people experiencing homelessness have experienced further stigmatization throughout the pandemic as they have been separated from their communities, friends, and families, left without support or shelter, internalized blame for the spread of COVID-19, and faced dehumanization, grief, and trauma resulting from uneven COVID-19 interventions. We highlight these findings to support the application of trauma- and violence-informed care in service settings to prevent the further traumatization of people experiencing homelessness in services intended to support them. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2023-06 2023-04-25 /pmc/articles/PMC10127664/ /pubmed/37128273 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100276 Text en © 2023 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Chapados, Sydney Roebuck, Benjamin S. Macdonald, Sue-Ann Dej, Erin Hust, Carmen McGlinchey, Diana Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() |
title | Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() |
title_full | Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() |
title_fullStr | Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() |
title_full_unstemmed | Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() |
title_short | Homelessness, COVID-19, and discourses of contagion() |
title_sort | homelessness, covid-19, and discourses of contagion() |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10127664/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37128273 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100276 |
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