Identities Journal Blog
  • Home
  • About
    • About Identities
    • Identities Collection
    • Latest Articles
    • Special Issues
    • Open Access Articles
    • Most Read Articles
    • Most Cited Articles
  • Identities Blog
    • Blog Collection
    • About Our Blog
    • Blog Categories >
      • Anti-racism
      • Culture
      • Decoloniality
      • Ethnicity
      • Migration
      • Race
      • Commentaries
      • COVID-19 Blog Series
      • COVID-19 Symposium
      • More Blogs
    • Blog Series >
      • COVID-19 Blog Collection
      • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events >
      • Fireside Chat with Prof Nicola Rollock
    • Past Events >
      • Race and Class
      • W. E. B. Du Bois and his Strange Synthesis of Spirituality and Sociology
      • Decolonizing Politics Symposium
      • The Subject of Decolonization: Literary Critical Insights
  • Contact
    • Subscribe for Updates
  • Home
  • About
    • About Identities
    • Identities Collection
    • Latest Articles
    • Special Issues
    • Open Access Articles
    • Most Read Articles
    • Most Cited Articles
  • Identities Blog
    • Blog Collection
    • About Our Blog
    • Blog Categories >
      • Anti-racism
      • Culture
      • Decoloniality
      • Ethnicity
      • Migration
      • Race
      • Commentaries
      • COVID-19 Blog Series
      • COVID-19 Symposium
      • More Blogs
    • Blog Series >
      • COVID-19 Blog Collection
      • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events >
      • Fireside Chat with Prof Nicola Rollock
    • Past Events >
      • Race and Class
      • W. E. B. Du Bois and his Strange Synthesis of Spirituality and Sociology
      • Decolonizing Politics Symposium
      • The Subject of Decolonization: Literary Critical Insights
  • Contact
    • Subscribe for Updates

On racism, inequalities and the emergence of vaccine apartheid: notes of a vaccine trial volunteer

7/5/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
At the time of writing this piece, I was confronted with two strikingly different scenarios. One, involved friends in the UK posting images of their vaccine cards on social media (and I am proud of them for taking the first step in making themselves and the world a safer place). The other, involved friends and relatives in India calling out for emergency oxygen cylinders and empty ones, telling stories of lifesaving medication sold on the underground market at 200% markup and lengthy queues outside the hospitals. Some friends in India have also been paying respects to and memorialising people they know who have died. Social media feeds are filled with pictures of bodies lying in queue to be cremated, and makeshift funeral pyres built in parks and parking lots as city crematoriums have run out of space. The official statistics, which are already scary, understate the rise in cases and deaths, and these images often show the true scale of suffering.

​In addition to the two different pandemic related scenarios mentioned at the beginning, I also live in two different realities and have two very different experiences simultaneously. I am from India. I live in the UK and have citizenship of the country. I am an academic who works on racism and migration. Last year, I was a vaccine trial volunteer and have now been vaccinated, while my mother and brother live in the outskirts of Mumbai and both contracted COVID-19 in early April. They are recovering, but both continue to cough and feel weak. Their oxygen levels are in the healthy mid-upper 90% range, so neither need oxygen or hospitalisation. Both need a lung CT scan, but they are avoiding hospital visits as it is overflowing with patients who need urgent intervention, and they also fear getting re-infected. A few other relatives are hospitalised or using oxygen at home. As you can imagine, the past few weeks have been filled with worry, dread and sadness. Living 4500 miles away and not able to physically be there and help also continues to cause me a great deal of frustration and guilt. I am facing another layer of diaspora blues, from Ijeoma’s book of poetries. 

Read More
0 Comments

    Identities COVID-19 Blog Series

    Explore expert commentaries curated by ​Identities surrounding COVID-19 and displaced migration, nationhood and citizenship, and more. 


    Blog Categories

    All
    African Migrants
    Asylum Seekers
    Cities
    Coronavirus
    COVID 19
    COVID-19
    Domestic Workers
    Employment
    Gender
    Health Care
    India
    Inequalities
    Istanbul
    Jordan
    Labour
    Marginalisation
    Migrant
    Migrants
    Migrant Workers
    Migration
    Othering
    Pandemic
    Public Health
    Quarantine
    Racism
    Refugees
    Refugee Women
    Reverse Migration
    Singapore
    Turkey
    Undocumented Workers
    Urban
    Vaccine
    Virus
    Walking


    Blog Series Home


    Submit to Blog Series

Explore Identities at tandfonline.com/GIDE