Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Coping with Coping: International migrants’ experiences of the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK

Yen, D.; Cappellini, B.; Yang, H.; Gupta, S.

Coping with Coping: International migrants’ experiences of the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK Thumbnail


Authors

D. Yen

H. Yang

S. Gupta



Abstract

Globally, policy makers have overlooked the challenges faced by international migrants in host countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The policies and support systems designed by host governments highlight the lack of social justice and raise concerns for scholarly attention. Considering the experiences of international migrants living in the UK during the Covid-19 lockdown from the theoretical perspective of coping, this interpretivist study investigates international migrants’ coping strategies adopted during the first UK national lockdown. Data collected from sixty Chinese, Italian and Iranian migrants using semi-structured interviews during the lockdown period were analysed thematically using Nvivo. The findings show that migrants adopted multi-layered and multi-phased coping strategies. To cope with the anxiety and uncertainties caused by the pandemic, they initiated new practices informed by both home and host institution logics. Nevertheless, the hostile context’s responses provoked unexpected new worries and triggered the adoption of additional and compromising practices. The paper illustrates how coping became paradoxical because migrants had to cope with the hostile reactions that their initial coping strategies provoked in the host environment. By introducing the new concept of coping with coping, this paper extends previous theoretical debate and leads to several managerial implications for governments and policy makers.

Citation

Yen, D., Cappellini, B., Yang, H., & Gupta, S. (2021). Coping with Coping: International migrants’ experiences of the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. British Journal of Management, 32(4), 1219-1241. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12512

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 8, 2021
Online Publication Date May 25, 2021
Publication Date Oct 6, 2021
Deposit Date Apr 8, 2021
Publicly Available Date Oct 6, 2021
Journal British Journal of Management
Print ISSN 1045-3172
Electronic ISSN 1467-8551
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 32
Issue 4
Pages 1219-1241
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12512
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1244585

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (2.7 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2021 The Authors. British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.






You might also like



Downloadable Citations