Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Australian state governments adopted strict border restrictions. In rural border communities, difficulties associated with government interventions were routinely conceptualized by rural peoples as a continuation of a theme of disenfranchisement derived from a rural−urban schism. This qualitative study, comprising semi-structured interviews (N = 35) with participants from the town of Goondiwindi, Queensland (Australia), contributes to the literature on urban−rural divides. The findings demonstrate not only the continuation of a theme of rural dissatisfaction with city-based government, but an emergent “othering” of city-based compatriots resultant of experiences with state border restrictions. These findings have political implications and broader consequence for social cohesion between predominantly urban citizenry and the rural minority.
Introduction
The interplay between Australia's rural and urban characteristics is complex. What is “rural” connotes more than what is “non-metropolitan,” and includes the distinctive characteristics of rural living, which are contested and enmesh both idealized notions of bush purity, and realities of isolation and disadvantage (Cameron-Jackson, 1995). The myths of an Edenic “new” land at the times of European colonization, spurned by “bush” poets who in fact predominantly resided in Australia's burgeoning cities, imported idealized visions of rural life into the nation's cultural identity (Davison, 1978; Semmler, 1981). Tourism campaigns depicted the Australian experience as one lived on large country-homesteads and remote white-sand beaches, peopled with predominantly white citizens (Allmark, 2022). Yet despite the exploitation of Australia's rural landscapes, modern Australia is highly and increasingly urbanized, multicultural, and cosmopolitan (Levin et al., 2022). A friction therefore exists between the myths of the rural “idyll” and the reality, which includes isolation, generally less access to healthcare and education, and lower socioeconomic status (Freeman et al., 2016; Roberts & Guenther, 2021). Ultimately, contestations about what constitutes “true” ruralism and “the bush” “…is a constitutive thread running through Australian settler colonial identity and a cornerstone of national electoral politics” (Hinkson, 2022, p. 50).
The economic and political consequences of rural−urban variance have been of recent interest to social researchers (Lichter & Ziliak, 2017). Politically, Western democracies have seen urban−rural political divides increase since the early 2000s (Huijsmans & Rodden, 2025). In Australia, the federal distribution of power is influenced by the emergence of “urban primacy” in capital cities, which has caused “weak sub-state government,” leaving regions “…reliant upon top-down initiatives for which there is competition, often rendering support short-term or sporadic” (Wilkinson et al., 2022, p. 440). Australia's federalism has thus been criticized for deviating from the principle of subsidiarity, disenfranchizing rural Australians who are geographically removed from city-centers (Gray & Brown, 2007). During the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to existing tensions between rural residents and urban governments were exacerbated by distance and isolation, leading to resistance to government policies (McDonell et al., 2024). This creates a risk of “place resentment,” which is an emotive perception that one's community is ignored by policymakers, and mischaracterized by people from other places (Huijsmans, 2023). Such resentments threaten the political stability of governments and create a greater propensity for extremism (Khalil & Roose, 2023).
Existing literature has engaged with the social consequences of COVID-19 (e.g., Sharples et al., 2025) and examined the experiences of rural Australian's with COVID-19 restrictions from health perspectives (e.g., McDonell et al., 2024) but not considered “othering” along rural−urban continuums. This research addresses this gap by examining othering and the urban−rural schism in Australia, using COVID-19 border restrictions as a inciting event. Using semi-structured interviews with residents of Goondiwindi, a rural town of 6000 people disproportionately impacted by border restrictions due to its situatedness on the Queensland (QLD)−New South Wales (NSW) border, we find various narratives of rural dissatisfaction and resentment towards an “other” constructed along urban−rural continuums. Within this broader finding of rural resentment emerged discrete themes: frustration at urban governments’ handling of border restrictions; feelings that urban compatriots were ignorant or uncaring of difficulties faced by border residents; and a homogenization of an “urban attitude” towards the rural way of life. Consistent with emergent findings about distrust in governments post-COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Sharples et al., 2025), this study finds that rural people were dissatisfied with policies, such as border restrictions, enacted by urban governments during COVID-19. This dissatisfaction reinforced feelings of otherization and resentment that portends “geographies of discontent,” whereby rural identity is positioned as increasingly oppositional to urban centers, fueling distrust and alienation (Kenny & Luca, 2021). If the polarization observed in this study continues to intensify, it portends increasingly disordered political outcomes that are determined not only by geographic sorting (i.e., whether someone is “urban” or “rural”) but also patterns of voting less determined by social and economic interests, and more so psychological and emotive factors (De Ruyter et al., 2021). In such an environment, general satisfaction with democratic process can be expected to decline, leading to dispersed distrust, forms of “protest voting,” and the erosion of perceived legitimacy in institutions (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018).
Background
Rural Sociology and the Rural−Urban Divide
For much of the twentieth century, rural sociology was posited to have “…ceased to have much relevance for the explanation of social processes and relationships in Australia,” being no longer “sufficient to explain or even classify” the complexity of social processes in Australian society (Wild, 1974, p. 176). Recently, however, the relevance of urban−rural continuums has been perspicacious in the divergent social and political values in Western democracies along such spectrums (Luca et al., 2023). Cramer (2016) contends that in the American context, “place-based resentments,”’ emanating from rural voters towards urban “political elites” cogently explains increasingly counter-intuitive voting patterns. Australia was perhaps a preeminent example of rural resentment, as “…in the Australian context rural people have a long history of feeling frustrated with a lack of political and policy attention from decision-makers based in capital cities” (Reid et al., 2024, p. 257). Moreso than other comparable nations, Australia has had political organizations explicitly founded around shared rurality. For instance, the Australian National Party, evolved from the Country Party, emerged in the 1980s and promoted itself as the party for rural and regional Australians, and has since successfully formed multiple coalition governments with the Liberal party (Woodward, 2006). Therefore, while more dramatically emergent in other Western democracies, rural political discontent has permeated the Australian political climate for some decades. Thus, despite taxonomic difficulties surrounding the precise definitions of what constitutes the “urban” or “rural” citizen, contemporary political trends that engage rural resentments underscore that urban−rural division is a salient sociological lens through which to interpret social and political movements (Cramer, 2016).
Othering and the Rural−Urban Divide
Beyond a hardening of political preference, the underlying divisions along urban−rural continuums suggests a more fundamental “othering.” Othering connotes the “…simultaneous construction of the self or in-group and the other or out-group in mutual and unequal opposition through identification of some desirable characteristic that the self/in-group has and the other/out-group lacks,” tacitly positioning the self/in-group as superior (Brons, 2015, p. 70). The consequences of othering are broad: it creates a hardening of the boundaries of the in-group; reinforces (and compounds) inequalities; isolates individuals between and within groups; limits dialogue between social groups; and predicates violence (Thomas-Olalde & Velho, 2011). Thus, understanding and addressing these dynamics is essential for fostering social cohesion and inclusive democratic governance.
The increasing primacy of Australia's urban centers, and the diminishing economic reliance on agriculture, widened ideological distinctions between urban and rural Australians in the late twentieth century (Wilkinson et al., 2022). This created a tension in the face of increasing cosmopolitanism in rural Australian communities, whereby globalization and its homogenizing effects are positioned as threatening the “authenticity” of rural life (Krivokapic-Skoko et al., 2018). Additionally, layered identities within what constitutes Australian “ruralness” are complex in ways that a binary “rural−urban” taxonomy does not capture or illuminate. Pini et al. (2022, p. 253–256), for example, argue that Australian rural sociology has “failed to address racial inequality and class difference,” perpetuating a “white farming imaginary” in existing scholarship that reinforces “moral and ontological claims of white belonging.” Indigenous scholars have demonstrated that rural sociology has disregarded native land appropriation by settlers: a position that is relevant in the Australian settler-colonial context, where the foundational violence of dispossession continues to shape contemporary rural−urban dynamics and spatial inequalities (Moreton-Robinson, 2015).
The marginalization of Indigenous and non-white narratives in determining the normative construction of “ruralness” means that these traditional constructions can obscure the colonial “structures of power and racism which underpin post-colonial multicultures” (Butler & Ben, 2021, p. 2180). This does not abrogate social analysis along rural−urban spectrums, but it does require a cognizance of the general biases underpinning rural pedagogies, so as to properly appreciate the complex and “rapidly transforming rural social worlds” extant in Australia (Butler & Ben, 2021, p. 2180). This study therefore demonstrates how understanding COVID-19's social impacts requires careful attention to these deeply embedded urban−rural divisions, while remaining cognizant of the colonial structures and power relations that continue to shape Australia's rural and urban worlds.
Borders and the Principle of Subsidiarity
Borders inherently assist in othering by providing exclusive and inclusive geographic zones and corresponding identities (Howitt, 2001). Australia's inter-territorial borders, violently imposed on Indigenous peoples at the time of colonization, did not conform to Indigenous knowledge or contiguity of country, but rather the political and economic motivations of colonizers (Weber et al., 2023). Migration patterns and Australian federalism centralized state authority in city governments, creating life-quality disparities both between and within the states (Weber, 2019). This has created friction between levels of government concerning the “principle of subsidiarity,” “…often defined in Australia as a requirement that government functions are performed as close to the people as possible” (Deem, 2021, p. 614). Australia's current system of federalism has been criticized for producing “serious geographical and political inequalities” between its major metropolitan centers and “particularly weak local spatial inequalities and the effectiveness of policies to reduce them in Australia's centralised federalist system of government” (Razin & Drew, 2025, p. 6).
Border communities, regardless of rural−urban constitution, have similarities—border citizens across intra and international contexts conduct “borderwork” to socially construct, move, erase, and contest the meaning of the “border” (Rumford, 2012). Likewise, a homogenous trend of urban−rural division has been observed across international contexts, suggesting similarities between rural communities across contexts (Luca et al., 2023). As such, concerns about the principle of subsidiarity and the vertical imbalances in Australia's federalism are not unique to rural or border communities. Dissatisfaction about the distribution of power in society has emanated from urban contexts that are most likely to benefit from centralized governance (Deem, 2021). Similarly, although the experience of border living is best elucidated through people who reside in border communities, those experiences are sociologically relevant beyond border contexts (O’Keefe et al., 2025). It is somewhat difficult, therefore, when examining rural border communities, to delineate between chagrin emanating towards urban centers on the basis of rurality or issues associated with border, particularly as both may dually be viewed as issues pertaining to the principle of subsidiarity. What is important to note is that rural border communities in the Australian context have idiosyncratic cultural contexts, that nevertheless provide fertile data for analysis of both rural and border communities generally (Spennemann, 2021).
Methodology
Using the rural town of Goondiwindi as a case study, this research explores how rural communities navigated and made sense of COVID-19 border restrictions, exploring how their experiences intersected with pre-existing rural−urban divisions, while simultaneously creating new forms of spatial and social differentiation. Goondiwindi is an appropriate site for this project due to its location on the state border between QLD and NSW on the banks of the McIntyre River—its central business district resides only a couple hundred meters within QLD’s jurisdiction. It can be considered a typical case in terms of the general demographics of rural Australian towns (including a higher-than-average Indigenous population), further motivating its selection as an appropriate research site (Piccarreta & Struffolino, 2024). Goondiwindi is part of the federal electorate of Maranoa, which the Australian Electoral Commission describes as “rural” as there are no “major provincial cities” within its bounds (Australian Electoral Commission, 2025). The town's amenities and roughly 6000 residents predominantly reside on the QLD side of the border; however, a significant population of far-northern NSW residents rely on Goondiwindi as a service center. These include Boggabilla, North Star, Yetman, Boomi, Croppa Creek and Toomelah, an Indigenous Australian community of approximately 200 people 25kms from Goondiwindi. As such, Goondiwindi and the community that relies on its amenities, was particularly impacted by COVID-19 state border restrictions, especially those who resided slightly over the border in NSW: between 2020 and 2022, there were 471 days with some level of restriction of movement across the border (Kitchener, 2024). These restrictions ranged from total prohibitions on cross-border movement, to exceptions only for certain “essential workers,” to “border bubbles” for specific NSW residents (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2024). A total of 61 separate border directions were issued by the QLD government, with many of these occurring in rapid succession, contributing to uncertainty (Kitchener, 2024; Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2024).
In line with the study's interpretive methodology, which recognizes social reality as being constructed through individuals’ subjective experiences and meanings, the first author undertook a series of semi-structured interviews (N = 35) with Goondiwindi residents (i.e., “Goondiwindians”), which elicited their lived experiences of the COVID-19 border restrictions and the meaning they attached to these experiences (Schwandt, 1994). Sampling methods used to procure participants were largely purposive, with some use of snowballing to improve participant numbers (Palinkas et al., 2015). Sampling eligibility criteria were intentionally kept broad—including any adult (18 + years) who resided in the “Goondiwindi Region” at the time of interview, and during COVID-19 border restrictions—to enable recruitment of a diverse group of respondents. This included residents who resided in NSW but identified as being predominantly associated with the town of Goondiwindi. All interviews were conducted in-person in Goondiwindi between April and June 2024. Ultimately, the 35 “Goondiwindians” who participated in the study represented diverse genders, ages, and occupations (see Table 1). Ethics approval was sought and obtained before research began through the University of Queensland's Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences research ethics committee (ethics approval 2023/HE001882). In line with our ethical clearance, pseudonyms are used throughout this paper to protect participants’ anonymity.
Study Sample (N = 35).
With participants’ consent, interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Inductive thematic analysis of the data was undertaken and was reflexive in nature: there was searching for “themes” in the data, while being cognizant that “there are different conceptualizations of a theme − domain summaries versus patterns of shared meaning, underpinned by a central meaning-based concept” (Braun & Clarke, 2019, p. 593). The research was concerned with engaging with the data deeply through repeated reviews and contemplation (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Data were initially manually coded within NVivo software, and trends were identified following deep engagement with the data. Recursively, themes were reviewed and re-analyzed until data could be confidently categorized on the basis that saturation had been achieved in respect of recurrent themes (Neuendorf, 2018).
Findings and Discussion
The pre-Existing Rural−Urban Divide
When asked about how they conceived of their community, nearly all participants articulated Goondiwindi in terms of its rurality, contrasting it against city life, often in terms of privation. When describing her upbringing in Goondiwindi, Olive lamented that one of the difficulties was the distance to travel for medical appointments and other services in larger cities centers, but that issues like that were “not seen by the government.” Noting that rural residents “keep battling on” despite these difficulties, she added “…you can’t bury your head in the sand and think there's no societal [difference] between cities and rural communities. There just is—there's a massive divide.” Yves considered privation as one of the defining characteristics of living in Goondiwindi, and saw it as creating a character of stoicism within its residents: “…people who live in regional or rural towns, there's lots of stuff…you learn to do without.” Yves’ comments accord with literatures that demonstrate rural Australians as more traditionally “stoic,” less likely, for example, to seek mental health treatment than their urban counterparts (Komiti et al., 2006). Yet despite the difficulties it presents, participants did not regularly conceive of rural life as negative. David, after noting his close affinity and sense of belonging in the Goondiwindi community, offered that one of the largest threats to the community was it adopting a “big city mentality” that would fracture the bonds of community. These comments and others illustrated a consistent theme of “country mindedness” among participants: the distinguishing of rural communities in a preferential way, underpinned by a sense of defending rurality against urban forces that seek to undermine it (Bell, 2005).
When considering the role of governments in rural civic life, responses of some participants exposed how border restrictions reinforced pre-existing conceptions of urban-centered governments as either ignorant or callous to the rural reality. Hannah, who along with her young family was made briefly homeless by border restrictions, stated “all [the QLD government] care about is Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast… they probably just don’t care about Goondiwindi.” When asked if they felt that there were things that government might do better during a future pandemic, Gordon distilled a common theme of cynicism towards city-based governments: Problem is you got people a long way from here making rules that affect people who live here. People who've never been here, people who don't understand it. But that's not just… COVID, that's everything. The people who make the rules. They don't live here. They don't, you know, they're not involved. And I dare say they don't care.
Aspects of participants’ discontent that focused on the role of the state government in the response to COVID-19, reiterated the frustration at the governments’ misunderstanding of border life. This aspect of rural frustration preceded border restrictions and was often explicitly framed in terms of the principle of subsidiarity. Angus, for example, described Australia's state-system as “crazy,” noting “I’ve always hated this cross-border rubbish…it's just a river.” This comment accords with frustrations expressed in other rural border communities in Australia during COVID-19 (see Spennemann, 2021). Other participants noted that lack of proximity (i.e., derivation from the principle of subsidiarity) of Goondiwindi to urban governments contributed to disenfranchisement. Warwick said, “…living under the Queensland government [there's] just a neglect, government neglect…it's too easy for governments to sweep [Goondiwindi's] problems…under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist,” noting that other rural centers geographically remote from state capitals (such as Moree in NSW) faced similar problems. These comments support established critiques of Australia's “top-down,” metropolitan focused federalist system, where regional “…‘communities of interest’ are not sufficiently recognised in the current arrangements for state-level politics and administration” (Head, 2007, p. 159).
Beyond governments, a minority of participants expressed pre-existing hostility towards urban compatriots. Belinda lamented that urban Australians were insular, not wanting to “broaden their horizons” by visiting rural centers and “seeing where their bread's buttered.” She contrasted the difficulties associated with rural living (e.g., isolation, distance from services, environmental issues) with urban peoples who she termed “spoiled children” who “don’t want to leave their barista” and “whinge and say they can’t buy a house, [yet] they want to buy [in the city] where they can’t afford a house.” Queenie distinguished her feelings of closeness in the community of Goondiwindi from what she saw as a culture of urban solitude in Brisbane, where “…you can live beside someone for 15 years and not have a clue who they are.” These comments show a willingness to homogenize the experiences of urban Australians, which assists in the process of otherizing them from fundamentally different rural Australians (Madar, 2023). This reinforces recent studies, such as Reid et al. (2024), which indicated that even Ministers of Parliament from rural electorates express resentment towards urban populations, despite the implicit remit of their occupation being advocation for issues emanating from rural centers.
Effect of Border Restrictions
Most participants saw the COVID-19 border restrictions as a disruptive and negative force within Goondiwindi. Pragmatic consequences of the border—such as navigating border permits, militarization of the border itself, and more—were often cited as being deeply upsetting. Dually, social difficulties, including the exclusion of community members from the township on the basis of ZIP Code, were commonly promoted as stemming directly from border restrictions. However, border restrictions were rarely interpreted as generative of rural−urban schisms. Instead, they were interpreted as emblematic of the general ignorance of city governments to the rural way of life (Reid et al., 2024). Olive surmised that “…people in government, in offices, in Brisbane, [have] absolutely zero idea of how our community functions out here.” One way this ignorance was identified was the inflexibility of governments during the COVID-19 panemic to recognize the contiguity of the Goondiwindi community beyond the NSW−QLD state boundary. Belinda saw border restrictions as “arbitrary…because state borders are nothing but a line on a map.” Yves bemoaned NSW residents from being excluded from the town's amenities “…because they live over the river, they’re in ‘another state’…it was ridiculous.”
There was a consistent chagrin at the perceived lack of tailoring of the border restrictions, borne of the governments’ ignorance of differences between the rural and urban way of life. Harry was relatively forgiving in his assessment of how the QLD state government dealt with border restrictions, but nevertheless saw them as ill-fit for purpose: “… it's always very Brisbane-centric… I’ve known a few politicians, and they were- it's not that they’re wrong meaning, so to speak…normally it's well intended, but it's misguided.” Pip noted: I think the Queensland Government was trying to keep us safe, but it didn’t…it really impacted us…people in the cities not quite as much, but people in the country when you can’t go anywhere and being a border town - it was, yeah, ridiculous.
Angus, however, was less forgiving: The attitude that you can impose your thoughts and the way that you do something in say an urban centre compared to what we do in a rural centre, it just doesn’t stack up for me and that's what we had. We had, this is good for Brisbane and the Gold Coast and wherever else up and down the coast, therefore it's good for you. It wasn't good for us.
A common sentiment was that, although the government response in Goondiwindi was lacking, the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic left little chance for success. As Louise noted, “… [the government] were damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. It was an impossible task…I didn’t envy them one bit.” A small minority of participants also expressed support for border restrictions. Marge, noting an initial military presence in Goondiwindi due to federal government lockdowns, fondly recalled them having “…games of footy with kids. So, I guess they were trying to say, ‘we’re here, we’re doing our job’ but we are investing in this community as well.” This sentiment illustrates that within the community, a plurality existed, moderating an assessment of rural experience as homogenous (Krivokapic-Skoko et al., 2018). Recent literature in the Australian context further supports that, while there are clear geographic (i.e., rural vs. urban) trends in policy attitudes, within those communities there remains a multitude of perspectives; that is, rural communities are not monolithic in belief (Ashton et al., 2025).
Conversely, other participants viewed Goondiwindi's struggles as part of a broader narrative that explicitly disenfranchized rural citizens for political gain. Warwick, who articulated difficult personal circumstances associated with border restrictions (for example, the inability to attend his mother's funeral), interpreted border restrictions as the state government “…[using] this distant town and [giving] it a belting around the ears as much as they wanted to, in order to convince the city people that they were actually doing something constructive.” Warwick's comments are consistent with a hegemonic understanding of rural peoples as “hard done by,” their self-reliance and autonomy consistently impeded by callous, and even opportunistic city governments (Berry et al., 2016). Isaac interpreted the difficulties Goondiwindi faced along a left−right political dichotomy. Noting that it was the QLD government who were largely responsible for the border restrictions, he opined that the government “…were being unnecessarily brutal to our community in terms of the lack of flexibility because…largely the community out here would have been one that would not have supported that government.” The theme of dislocation from the center of political zeitgeist among rural voters has been a consistent trend in Australian political discourse since at least the early 2000s (Curtin, 2004). Yet Isaac and other participants implied more cynical, nefarious motives of the state government that moved beyond a mere ignorance of rural living, illustrating themes of a “politics of resentment:” feelings of anger directed towards the distant city government who fundamentally misunderstand rural realities, and exploit them for political gain (Cramer, 2016).
For participants who were already willing to otherize compatriots along the urban−rural spectrum pre-COVID-19 pandemic, experiences with border restrictions reinforced these sentiments. When describing the Goondiwindi community, Belinda had sought to undermine the credibility of certain townsfolks’ claims to belonging due to apparent urban connections: for example, “I know he goes to things, but he's a Brisbane-based person…,” “He's not lived out here properly…,” “You can track [him] back to Brisbane.” Border restrictions operated not only to reinforce the “massive divide” between urban and rural but were perceived as consequential of the general apathy and ignorance of the city-majority, who had no “hands-on, real-life experience.” Belinda's comments underscore the persistence of a traditional country mindedness that sees country living as analogous to common sense, purity, and diligence, while city life is positioned as inherently parasitic and corrupt (Cockfield & Courtenay Botterill, 2012). Queenie, while noting that restrictions emanated from urban governments, directed hercriticism towards the local “powers that be,” who “could have said no.” She compared her experiences of border restrictions with “Germany, about 1937,” and extant feelings of bitterness, fear, and misanthropy: “…if I could afford it, I’d buy something the hell away from everyone….[the border] still makes me nervous. They could chuck the border [restrictions on] tomorrow and we’re right back where we fricking started from.” Queenie's recognition of the emergence of her misanthropy demonstrates the existence of preconditions within communities such as Goondiwindi for the foment of general mistrust, not only towards controlling authorities (i.e., governments), but also a constructed other (Melgar et al., 2013).
For some participants, the experience of border restrictions created new divisions along urban−rural dichotomies. Robyn was prevented from attending her business for much of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to her residing approximately 10 km over the NSW−QLD border near the town of Boggabilla. She expressed animosity towards city-based administrators who were responsible for managing border permits, which routinely changed and have later been acknowledged as confusing (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2024). Robyn recounted a terse phone conversation with one administrator who, after she demanded he attempt to complete a border permit over-the-phone alongside her, conceded that the permit forms were unfit for her situation, leading her to conclude “…[they] genuinely had no concept of Boggabilla as a border town.” When asked how governments should respond to further crises, Robyn stated the action should be determined by “the people on the ground living it,” but was pessimistic about the likelihood of this occurring owing to a deepened cynicism towards city people: “…they’re just so oblivious to what happens here…yet they still want food on their table and clothes on their back. So oblivious, you know, they just have no idea.” Harry's responses demonstrated a willingness to attribute the negative consequences of border restrictions to city bureaucrats’ ignorance of rural living, rather than outright maliciousness. Nevertheless, he inferred a complicity of the broader predominantly urban population with the deleterious nature of border restrictions, and made a heavy historical comparison to illustrate these sentiments: …I always wondered how something like Nazi Germany could have happened, you know, like how does a country ever get [there]. To me, the border restrictions were a very quick glimpse of how quickly society can change, you know, where they brought in those restrictions and all of a sudden it became… gospels, for want a better word, and [then there's] people dobbing on people, and it was like, well, I can actually see how governments can get complete control.
By virtue of its position on the border, Goondiwindi additionally contended with misunderstandings about the realities of life on the border. These misapprehensions anecdotally occurred even by those also living regionally. Olive, for example, expressed an ongoing animosity towards urban people that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic through dialogues she had with her sister, who was living in the regional city of Mackay in Central QLD: I have a sister who lives up in Mackay. And I remember talking to her at the time when it was happening and saying how badly it was affecting our community. And she interestingly said at the time that everyone up in Mackay was really grateful for the government and the decisions they made because they had the outlook that, “oh, our government's protecting us” because they're, you know, they're 1200 Ks (sic) from the border. They're actually not living it. They’ve got no idea.
Conclusion
The findings illustrate that there was a pre-existing divide between what Goondiwindians conceived as their rural community and an urban, bureaucratic or governmental, “other.” The COVID-19 border restrictions generally maintained and/or hardened feelings of division or disconnection along rural−urban lines and, in some cases, border restrictions generated otherization from Goondiwindians towards their urban compatriots. Ultimately, negative experiences with border restrictions, when conceptualized as consequential of a broad “urban-ness,” caused dissatisfaction with controlling governments centered in urban centers, and occasionally diffused into a broader dissatisfaction with urban peoples in general.
These findings have relevance not only within the Australian context of this study, but the broader international literatures on urban−rural polarization. They support the contentions of recent comparable international studies (such as Hegewald & Schraff, 2025, p.28) that surmise urban−rural divisions have recently “woken up” in response to increasing “place-based grievances…and resentments.” The critical contribution of this research is it demonstrates how government policies during COVID-19 (i.e., border restrictions) contributed to this trend of urban−rural division by reinvigorating long-standing rural resentments, while specifically catalyzing newer feelings of otherization. This has clear relevance to international governments and policymakers, who like the Australian government, have the power to implement policies that differentially impact citizens along urban−rural continuums.
The Australian government's geographic restrictions in response to COVID-19 have been criticized, as “…bordering and other practices of restricted human mobility have exacerbated existing socio-spatial inequalities and in some cases created new ones” (Iveson & Sisson, 2023, p. 10). This can be evinced through narratives of a “rural revival,” owing to out-migration from cities post-COVID-19 pandemic, which in fact has furthered socioeconomic inequalities in rural communities through increases in house prices and strains on resources (McManus, 2022). Despite these new migration trends, in-group/out-group dynamics persist and may in fact contribute to increasing inequality between urban and rural areas. For example, a current shortage of rural doctors in Australia has been attributed by some to an emergent “urban narcissism” (Chan, 2024). The narratives of deracination that pervaded responses of rural participants in this study underscore the urgency of ameliorating feelings of disconnection and otherness in such communities. Studies in other jurisdictions, such as Europe, indicate that even if material conditions between urban and rural populations are similar, rural resentment can persist (Hyland et al., 2024). In the American context, recent studies have indicated that civic education interventions do little to assuage these resentments (Jansa & Ringsmuth, 2025). This makes addressing rural resentment a particularly difficult policy problem, particularly because, as Borwein & Lucas (2023, p. 18) postulate, “place resentment is more distinctly political for rural resenters (sic), and thus more explicitly connected to the perceived quality of political institutions and representatives.” Therefore, one potential tact borne out of the findings of this study is that policy interventions should seek to address rural perception of the urban other, rather than the material conditions differentiating rural and urban citizens. What is unquestioned, however, is that it remains critical that rural resentments and burgeoning otherization in Goondiwindi, and similar communities, is expediently addressed to prevent the erosion of both political trust, and social cohesion.
Footnotes
Ethics Approval and Informed Consent
Ethics approval was sought and obtained through the University of Queensland's Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences research ethics committee (ethics approval 2023/HE001882). All study participants provided informed written consent prior to study enrolment.
Funding
This work was supported by research funds from the University of Queensland's School of Social Sciences.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declare that they have no established conflicting financial or personal relationships that may have influenced the research presented in this paper.
Data Availability
The data that support this research are housed in the University of Queensland's Research Data Manager (ID: JK2023TLP-A11603) and are available upon request to the corresponding author, Joe Kneipp. Due to privacy considerations, the data are not publicly available.