Pandemic Im/Mobility as Opportunity: Middle-Class Asian Migrant Women in Australia

Abstract

Studies on the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minorities are often centred around racism and socio-economic inequality. Accordingly, people with Asian heritage are frequently portrayed as victims, rather than as people with agency. Drawing from interviews with middle-class Asian migrant women, we examine the various im/mobilities Asian migrant women experienced during the pandemic: in the public/private sphere, from urban to regional cities, in intimacies and as international students. Our research demonstrated how Asian female migrants empowered themselves during the pandemic by becoming mobile in multiple ways. Certainly, the study's participants did encounter immobility. However, their circumstances benefitted significantly from their middle-class status, relatively young age and independent visa status. The study's attention to participants' lives before and during the pandemic also enabled insight into the relationality of im/mobility: how even as the pandemic immobilised many people, it could mobilise middle-class Asian migrant women to reconfigure the pandemic as opportunity.