What does the Global Coronavirus Pandemic mean for Ethnic and Racial Minorities?

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Background

As the story of the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, global data are revealing a clear over-representation of particular racial/ethnic minority groups both in rates of infection, prognosis, and mortality from COVID-19 and the importance of structural factors and age as an explanation for this. These findings are not surprising for sociologists and social epidemiologists, who have long analysed the relationship between health and the complexity of the intersections between racism, exclusion, ethnicity, minoritisation, socio-economic background and other dimensions of inequality and marginalisation.

This Research Topic offers a valuable opportunity to consider how these insights can inform our understanding of the current global pandemic. It focuses on the lessons to be learnt from existing and new research into the particular ways in which Covid-19 and its associated policy responses affect people from different racial/ethnic groups and cultures across the globe. It will bring together empirical research and think-pieces, adopting a broad focus which will incorporate the range of sociological contributions to this issue.

These might include:
- describing the sociological lessons from emerging data on rates of Covid-19 infections and mortality and associations with these,
- exploring insights into Covid-19 offered by existing research of ethnic inequalities in health including the nature of and responses to other, recent epidemics,
- considering examples of state responses to the pandemic – such as (in the UK) social distancing, furlough and lockdown - to better understand their impact and how this might vary by ethnicity, while reflecting on whether there are alternative models of policy intervention which might be more effective, in both responding to the pandemic and mitigating any uneven ethnic effect,
- understanding how social distancing may disproportionally affect some ethnic minority groups’ wellbeing and health due to decreased social and leisure opportunities e.g. limited access to green spaces, and digital literacy and/or online access, and
- investigating the impact of the pandemic on forms of locally, nationally and globally realised social cohesion and collaboration, including forms of racist violence.


***Due to the exceptional nature of the COVID-19 situation, Frontiers is waiving all article publishing charges for accepted articles in this Research Topic if submitted before the 31st of December 2020.***

We will prioritise papers (co)authored by less senior colleagues, those with fewer than ten publications and those disadvantaged by traditional publication/citation approaches, including ethnicity/race, gender, class, or other categorical attributes. Please provide details of this status on submission. Authors are asked to limit self-citations to four single or co-authored pieces, in all but exceptional circumstances. We strongly recommend that authors check their references to ensure inclusion of authors from disadvantaged groups. Authors can assess the gender composition of their cited authors, for example, using the Gender Balance Assessment Tool developed by Jane Sumner (University of Minnesota) which is freely available at https://jlsumner.shinyapps.io/syllabustool/. Authors can submit an abstract in advance of their manuscript should they choose, though this is not compulsory.

Keywords: coronavirus, covid-19, ethnic minorities, racial minorities, marginalisation, minoritisation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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