The Racialized Geographies of Pandemic Vulnerabilities

Keywords: Covid-19, race and space, race, racialized geographies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 5

Abstract

Racialized inequalities are produced and naturalized through spatial practices, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made these relationships even more important to understand. Drawing on examples from the arenas of public health and labor, which have been central to the unfolding of the pandemic, we argue in this paper that many of the deep racial disparities that have emerged can be better understood through a geographic lens. More generally, we argue that public health and labor are core arenas through which to understand how racialized inequality is naturalized, particularly through spatial processes. We conclude by looking at moves toward justice in health policy, and at the potential for labor transformations, exemplified by the politics of refusal emergent in strikes and shifting employment patterns. Drawing on media reports, discourse analysis, and an aggregation of public health and labor data, we make a conceptual contribution to the literature on race and space that exposes spatial dynamics of inequality while pointing towards meaningful policy change.