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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has also led to many conspiracy theories. While the origin of the pandemic in China led some, including former US president Donald Trump, to dub the pathogen “Chinese virus” and to support anti-Chinese conspiracy narratives, it caused Chinese state officials to openly support anti-US conspiracy theories about the “true” origin of the virus. In this article, we study whether nationalism, or more precisely uncritical patriotism, is related to belief in conspiracy theories among normal people. We hypothesize based on group identity theory and motivated reasoning that for the particular case of conspiracy theories related to the origin of COVID-19, such a relation should be stronger for Chinese than for Germans. To test this hypothesis, we use survey data from Germany and China, including data from the Chinese community in Germany. We also look at relations to other factors, in particular media consumption and xenophobia.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the related border restrictions have had numerous social, economic and political consequences for border regions. The temporary border closures impacted not only the lives of borderlanders whose everyday practices are embedded in cross-border spaces, but also the func-tioning of institutional actors involved in cross-border activities. The aim here is to investigate the communication surrounding the pandemic and the reactions and (new) strategies of cross-border insti-tutional actors in the context of (re)bordering. Applying the concept of resilience, this paper explores coping mechanisms and modes of adaptation as well as strategies developed to adjust to new circum-stances. Against this backdrop, factors that enhanced or hindered the adaptation process were identi-fied. The German-Polish borderland serves here as a case study, although it will be situated within a wider European context.
The global spread of the coronavirus pandemic has particularly dramatic consequences for the lives of migrants and refugees living in already marginalised and restricted conditions, whose ongoing crisis is at risk of being overlooked. But refugees are not only extremely vulnerable and at risk of infection, as several reports show, quickly develop their own protection measures like the production of hygienic products, the publication of their situation and calls for action and help. Therefore, this paper aims to research the effects of the coronavirus crisis on refugees in camp settings with a special ethnographic focus on how refugees actively deal with this crisis and if they, through already developed resilience, are capable of adapting to the restrictions as well as inventing strategies to cope with the difficult situation. To account for the variety of refugee camps as well as the different living conditions due to their locality, history and national asylum politics, we will look at three different locations, namely refugee asylum homes in Germany, hotspots on the Greek islands as well as one refugee camp in Kenya. The main questions will be how, under structurally and institutionally framed conditions of power and victimisation in refugee camps, forms of agency are established, made possible or limited. The goal is to show which strategies refugees apply to cope with the enhanced restrictions and exclusion, how they act to protect themselves and others from the virus and how they present and reflect their situation during the coronavirus pandemic. Finally, this discussion offers a new perspective to consider refugees not only as vulnerable victims, but also as actively engaged individuals.
We study planned changes in protective routines after the COVID-19 pandemic: in a survey in Germany among >650 respondents, we find that the majority plans to use face masks in certain situations even after the end of the pandemic. We observe that this willingness is strongly related to the perception that there is something to be learned from East Asians’ handling of pandemics, even when controlling for perceived protection by wearing masks. Given strong empirical evidence that face masks help prevent the spread of respiratory diseases and given the considerable estimated health and economic costs of such diseases even pre-Corona, this would be a very positive side effect of the current crisis.
The paper aims to recognize the changes in the barriers to cross-border educational projects, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research focused on the European borderlands, where the level of maturity of cross-border cooperation is diverse (the Franco-German and Polish-Czech bor-derlands). The author utilised qualitative research methods (desk research, in-depth interview, case study). An exploratory study covered the barriers existing before the pandemic that stayed stable or have changed during the pandemic, and the new types of barriers that have appeared then. Within both borderlands, the identified barriers were similar in general; however, their intensity was varied. The key difference was the approach to these barriers within each borderland. On the Franco-German border, cross-border cooperation is more complex and deeper, and on the Polish-Czech border, it is more su-perficial and focused on specific issues only. These differences reveal the solutions that should be im-plemented to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on those projects within each borderland.