Qiyang LIU, Peking University, China
Zhengying LIU, Peking University, China
A series of containment policies were implemented to control the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic at the national, provincial, municipal, and community levels. Strict restrictions were imposed on any activities that were deemed unnecessary by the grassroots governments in the early phase of the pandemic. Despite the lauded containment effects of such restrictions, inadequate attention has been paid to the social justice implications of policies that minimised human mobility, especially inter-community mobility. Therefore, this study adopted a qualitative approach to explore how senior citizens, as one of the most vulnerable populations both in terms of coronavirus susceptibility and the mental health consequences of Covid-19 containment interventions, resisted these mobility restrictions because of extreme mobility injustice they brought about.
The results show that although some senior citizens’ mobility was derived from the demand for acquiring daily necessities, their resistance to travel restrictions was usually justified by the essentiality of being mobile and the injustice of mobility restriction policies. Most of the interviewees believed that their younger counterparts could live a satisfactory life with the help of the internet whilst they themselves had been the outcasts in society. Hence, senior citizens have been using mobility to avoid further social exclusion.
Mots clés : Senior citizens|mobility justice|Covid-19|containment policies
A102736QL