Unsettled Belongings: Chinese Immigrants’ Mental Health Vulnerability as a Symptom of International Politics in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unique mental health challenges for Chinese immigrants due to their cultural, social, and political ties with China, which responded to COVID-19 with controversial measures amid tensions with the Western world. These challenges manifest in three conditions at a time of crisis: racism that associates overseas Chinese with the coronavirus, Chinese immigrants’ “double unbelonging” with regard to both host societies and China, and social disapproval of political criticism among overseas Chinese. This article examines these three conditions by drawing on ethnography conducted in Canada as well as international online media. It uses theories in humanistic psychology, existential psychology, and hermeneutics to explain how, for Chinese immigrants, international political tensions are implicated in a range of mental health–related phenomena including identity, belonging, self-consciousness, shame, depression, and agency. Meanwhile, it offers theoretical discussions of how to make humanistic psychology more capable of addressing social and political issues.

Keywords

belonging Chinese immigrants COVID-19 identity mental health politics racism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Althusser

(1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation). In Lenin and philosophy and other essays (pp. 127-186). Monthly Review Press.

Antonsich

(2010). Searching for belonging—An analytical framework. Geography Compass, 4(6), 644-659. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00317.x

Bandura

(2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00011.x

Baumeister

R. F.

Tice

D. M.

(1990). Point-counterpoints: Anxiety and social exclusion. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9(2), 165-195. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1990.9.2.165

Bischoping

Gazso

(2016). Analyzing talk in the social sciences: Narrative, conversation and discourse strategies. Sage.

Chin

(2020, May 15). China’s coronavirus response faces new critics: Chinese stuck abroad. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-coronavirus-response-faces-new-critics-chinese-stuck-abroad-11589540402

Cleaver

(2007). Understanding agency in collective action. Journal of Human Development, 8(2), 223-244. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649880701371067

Crozier

R. W.

(1998). Self-consciousness in shame: The role of the “other.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 28(3), 273-286. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5914.00075

Cvetkovich

(2012). Depression: A public feeling. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822391852

10.

DeWall

C. N.

Deckman

Pond

R. S.

Jr. Bonser

(2011). Belongingness as a core personality trait: How social exclusion influences social functioning and personality expression. Journal of Personality, 79(6), 1281-1314. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00695.x

11.

Dore

McDermott

R. P.

(1982). Linguistic indeterminacy and social context in utterance interpretation. Language, 58(2), 374-398. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1982.0004

12.

Dunn

J. L.

Powell-Williams

(2007). “Everybody makes choices”: Victim advocates and the social construction of battered women’s victimization and agency. Violence Against Women, 13(10), 977-1001. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801207305932

13.

Fan

(2020, March 17). Went to take out trash [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/JiayangFan/status/1240111033550766080

14.

Fan

Garrison

Tan

Pathtak

(2020). I become a person of suspicion. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/podcasts/the-daily/racism-chinese-coronavirus-asian-americans.html

15.

Fromm

(1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.

16.

Gadamer

H.-G.

(2004). Truth and method ( Weinsheimer

Marshall

, Trans.). Continuum International.

17.

Gao

(in press). Unsettled belongings in deglobalization: Chinese immigrants’ struggle for political identity by using transnational media in the COVID-19 pandemic. In Pollock

J. C.

Vakoch

(Eds.), COVID-19 in International Communication: Responses to the Pandemic in Global Perspective. Routledge.

18.

Gergen

K. J.

(1999). Agency: Social construction and relational action. Theory & Psychology, 9(1), 113-115. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354399091007

19.

Greenberg

Pyszczynski

Solomon

(1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In Baumeister

R. F.

(Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189-212). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10

20.

Gulbrandsen

Clayman

M. L.

Beach

M. C.

Han

P. K.

Boss

E. F.

Ofstad

E. H.

Elwyn

(2016). Shared decision-making as an existential journey: Aiming for restored autonomous capacity. Patient Education and Counseling, 99(9), 1505-1510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2016.07.014

21.

Hanley

S. J.

Abell

S. C.

(2002). Maslow and relatedness: Creating an interpersonal model of self-actualization. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 42(4), 37-57. https://doi.org/10.1177/002216702237123

22.

Harrison

(2008). Corporeal remains: Vulnerability, proximity, and living on after the end of the world. Environment and Planning A, 40(2), 423-445. https://doi.org/10.1068/a391

23.

Heidegger

(1962). Being and time ( Macquarrie

Robinson

, Trans.). Blackwell.

24.

Jonas

Fritsche

(2013). Destined to die but not to wage war: How existential threat can contribute to escalation or de-escalation of violent intergroup conflict. The American Psychologist, 68(7), 543-558. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033052

25.

Kwok

(2012). Shame and the embodiment of boundaries. Oceania, 82(1), 28-44. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.2012.tb00117.x

26.

Lai

C.-H.

(2003). Re-writing the subject: The thrownness of being in the multicultural condition. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 30(3-4), 495-503.

27.

Lambley

(1973). Psychology and socio-political reality: Apartheid psychology and its links with trends in humanistic psychology and behavior theory. International Journal of Psychology, 8(1), 73-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207597308247064

28.

Landau

M. J.

Kosloff

Schmeichel

B. J.

(2011). Imbuing everyday actions with meaning in response to existential threat. Self and Identity, 10(1), 64-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860903557243

29.

Liu

L. S.

(2014). A search for a place to call home: Negotiation of home, identity and senses of belonging among new migrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to New Zealand. Emotion, Space and Society, 10, 18-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2013.01.002

30.

Martens

Goldenberg

J. L.

Greenberg

(2005). A terror management perspective on ageism. Journal of Social Issues, 61(2), 223-239. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00403.x

31.

Maslow

A. H.

(1970). Motivation and personality ( Frager

Fadiman

, Eds.; 2nd ed.). Harper & Row.

32.

Mirowsky

Ross

C. E.

(2003). Social causes of psychological distress. Transaction.

33.

Mitchell

(2020). Sartre and Fanon: The phenomenological problem of shame and the experience of race. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 51(4), 352-365. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2020.1732577

34.

North

C. S.

Pfefferbaum

(2013). Mental health response to community disasters: A systematic review. JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association, 310(5), 507-518. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.107799

35.

Oaten

Stevenson

R. J.

Case

T. I.

(2011). Disease avoidance as a functional basis for stigmatization. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1583), 3433-3452. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0095

36.

Pearson

E. M.

Podeschi

R. L.

(1999). Humanism and individualism: Maslow and his critics. Adult Education Quarterly, 50(1), 41-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/07417139922086902

37.

Pedone

(2011). “As a rice plant in a wheat field”: Identity negotiation among children of Chinese immigrants. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 16(4), 492-503. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2011.593759

38.

Perrin

P. B.

(2013). Humanistic psychology’s social justice philosophy: Systemically treating the psychosocial and health effects of racism. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 53(1), 52-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167812447133

39.

Polyzoi

(1985). Reflective phenomenology: An alternative approach to the study of the immigrant experience. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 16(2), 47-72. https://doi.org/10.1163/156916285X00089

40.

Rennie

D. L.

(2007). Methodical hermeneutics and humanistic Psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 35(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/08873260709336693

41.

Rochat

(2015). Self-conscious roots of human normativity. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 14(4), 741-753. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-015-9427-x

42.

Rushdie

(2013). Joseph Anton: A memoir. Vintage.

43.

Saleem

Morrill

Karter

J. M.

(2019). Introduction to the special issue on radical humanism, critical consciousness, and social change. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167819878912

44.

Speight

S. L.

(2007). Internalized racism: One more piece of the puzzle. The Counseling Psychologist, 35(1), 126-134. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000006295119

45.

Statman

(2000). Humiliation, dignity and self-respect. Philosophical Psychology, 13(4), 523-540. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515080020007643

46.

Stillman

T. F.

Baumeister

R. F.

Lambert

N. M.

Crescioni

A. W.

DeWall

C. N.

Fincham

F. D.

(2009). Alone and without purpose: Life loses meaning following social exclusion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 686-694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.007

47.

Teo

(2018). Homo neoliberalus: From personality to forms of subjectivity. Theory & Psychology, 28(5), 581-599. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354318794899

48.

Teo

(2020). Subhumanism: The re-emergence of an affective-symbolic ontology in the migration debate and beyond. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 50(2), 132-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12237

49.

Thoits

P. A.

(1983). Multiple identities and psychological well-being: A reformulation and test of the social isolation hypothesis. American Sociological Review, 174-187. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095103

50.

Todres

Galvin

(2010). “Dwelling-mobility”: An existential theory of well-being. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 5(3), Article 5444. https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v5i3.5444

51.

Tsang

A. K. T.

Irving

Alaggia

Chau

S. B.

Benjamin

(2003). Negotiating ethnic identity in Canada: The case of the “satellite children.” Youth & Society, 34(3), 359-384. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X02250124

52.

Vandemark

L. M.

(2007). Promoting the sense of self, place, and belonging in displaced persons: The example of homelessness. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 21(5), 241-248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2007.06.003

53.

Vermes

(2017). The individualism impasse in counselling psychology. Counselling Psychology Review, 32(1), 44-53.

54.

Vivero

V. N.

Jenkins

S. R.

(1999). Existential hazards of the multicultural individual: Defining and understanding “cultural homelessness.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 5(1), 6-26. https://doi.org/10.1037/1099-9809.5.1.6

55.

Wagner

R. V.

(1985). Psychology and the threat of nuclear war. American Psychologist, 40(5), 531-535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.40.5.531

56.

Wilcox

(2011). Movement in spaces of liminality: Chinese dance and immigrant identities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(2), 314-332. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2010.528439

57.

Williams

K. D.

(2012). Ostracism: The impact of being rendered meaningless. In Shaver

P. R.

Mikulincer

(Eds.), Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns (pp. 309-323). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13748-017

58.

Yang

(2020, April 1). Andrew Yang: We Asian Americans are not the virus, but we can be part of the cure. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/01/andrew-yang-coronavirus-discrimination/

59.

Yang

(2013). “Fake happiness”: Counseling, potentiality, and psycho-politics in China. Ethos, 41(3), 292-312. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12023

60.

Yang

(2020). Resilience and meaning-making amid the COVID-19 epidemic in China. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60(5), 662-671. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167820929215

61.

Zhang

(2017). Conflict and negotiation: Transnational ties and competing identities of Chinese immigrants in Kamloops, British Columbia. In Bonifacio

G. T.

Drolet

J. L.

(Eds.), Canadian perspectives on immigration in small cities (pp. 99-118). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40424-0_6