Hate Crime during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of an Ethnically Diverse University Student Population

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a rise in reports of hate crime against East and Southeast Asian minorities. Political rhetoric blaming China for causing the pandemic was tantamount to a ‘permission to hate’, making COVID-19 a catalyst of hate crime against Chinese people which also fuelled overt prejudice against other ethnic minorities. Researching experiences of hate offences in an ethnically diverse university student population in the United Kingdom during COVID-19, this qualitative study found that actual reported cases potentially underestimate the problem of hate crime. Analysing data from semi-structured interviews, we argue that a focus on reported cases alone risks obscuring the full extent of pandemic-related harassment and the insidious nature of hate crimes more generally. Minority ethnic interview participants lived with varying degrees of fear of victimisation, even if they were not personally subjected to any actual incidents during the pandemic. Accounts of pre-pandemic experiences, along with vicarious experiences involving victims with similar characteristics as interview participants, confirm the status of hate crime as a ‘message crime’. Third-party bystander accounts involving the victimisation of others whose identity research participants did not share afford additional insights into the nature and extent of pandemic-related hate.

To deny or dismantle? Responding to victims of targeted hostility in higher education

“…However, there are wider factors that can contribute to an increase in actual and recorded levels of hate. Recent years have borne witness to increasingly divisive politics, economies, and rhetoric, which have, in turn, enabled hostility to flourish during trigger events such as the Brexit referendum and the associated mainstreaming of inflammatory language (Virdee and McGeever, 2017), the rise of populist movements with ‘anti-woke’ agendas (Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood, 2017) and the Covid-19 pandemic (Gies et al, 2023; Tessler et al, 2020). Events such as these have generated significant spikes in levels of hate crime borne from the increased targeting of minoritised groups (Chakraborti and Clarke, 2022).…”