Torn between two worlds: Unsettled sense of place and belongingness between old and new homelands during a global pandemic

Abstract

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.