Hope and everyday crisis: Young adult experiences in COVID‐free Tasmania

Abstract

after first online publication: the preceding sentence has been revised. The original sentence read: We develop on these aims by reference to certain theme COVID-19 as a syndemic, the temporal narrative of a boombust cycle, and COVID-19 as a crisis in everyday life.]

Uneven geographies of COVID‐19: Reviewing geographical research agendas and concepts from a syndemics perspective

“…In the case of University students in the province of Tyrol, Austria, research found that, much in contrast to public discourse, particularly in the early phases of the global health emergency, this group paid meticulous attention to practices of contact and hygiene, mostly in fear of endangering loved ones and risk groups (Kaufmann et al, 2020). Several authors emphasized that young people faced other challenges apart from infection and illness, such as complex social, psychological and economic costs of the pandemic measures (Burton & Harwood, 2023;Kulcar et al, 2021Kulcar et al, , 2022 .…”

“…These bordering practices showed highly ambivalent impacts, as they – if at all temporarily – shielded populations from infection, but not from either the socio‐psychological or economic impacts of the health emergency. Based on a study of the lived experiences of border policies to protect “Covid‐free Tasmania”, Burton and Harwood (2023, p. 81) showed, “how separation does not equate with a lack of sociomaterial and emotional impact from the pandemic”. Also related to bordering practices, a somewhat militaristic rhetoric emerged stating that humanity was “at war” with the virus – and indeed in many countries the military became involved in the emergency response (Opillard et al., 2020; Pfrimer & Barbosa, 2020) and in enforcing bordering practices.…”

“…For instance, geographers pointed out the intersectional and multiscalar inequalities that were co‐produced and scaled up by the convergence of COVID‐19 with multifarious health and other crises (Hadjimichalis, 2021; McCann et al., 2021; Sultana, 2021) – such as the climate crisis, environmental degradation, political conflicts and war, socio‐economic disparities and poverty, social divisions, racism, hatred and violence, mental health and stress. The dynamics of the spread of COVID‐19 have been addressed as catalysis, continuation and intersections of the medical epidemic with these parallel epidemics (Burton & Harwood, 2023). Sultana (2021) states that “the COVID‐19 pandemic only created more layers of burdens and additional individual and systemic vulnerabilities, thereby compounding sufferings spatially, temporally, and intergenerationally, foregrounding how marginalized groups are rendered more vulnerable, treated differently, and why a critical social justice lens is important” (Sultana, 2021, p. 454).…”

“…Especially the focus on scale and nested scales enhances the understanding of structural unevenness; between different individual living standards and life expectancies, within regions, cities and neighborhoods, within countries and between the Global North and the Global South. As human geographers had predicted, these socio‐spatial and scalar inequalities came into sharp relief during the COVID‐19 pandemic, exacerbating existing unevenness as well as creating new injustices (e.g., Burton & Harwood, 2023; Hadjimichalis, 2021; McCann et al., 2021; Sultana, 2021).…”

Radical rest and recreation and their spatial permutations

“…Continuing our Covid commentaries, we have two additional papers by An et al (2023) and by Burton and Harwood (2023). And I am pleased to note that, in coming weeks, we will be launching a virtual issue of those commentaries published between 2020 and 2022 and have already received several new submissions for the second round of papers on a post-Covid world and hope that many of those will be available in coming months.…”