https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2022.01.003

Social support for international students who faced emotional challenges midst Wuhan's 76-day lockdown during early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

This study presents a digital ethnography of expats’ survival amid the Shanghai lockdown during the Omicron variant outbreak. This study drew insights from studies on resilience and secondary coping within the context of global migration to comprehend the diverse emotional challenges faced by expats in a series of lockdowns and persistent nucleic acid amplification tests. Thus, this study asks what the major emotional challenges expats faced and what sources of social support they could draw from citizens in their host country during the Shanghai lockdown. Accordingly, this study collected WeChat group conversations to draw empirical findings, promoted scholarly conversations about fundamental survival necessity, and traced the process for establishing intercultural collective resilience with citizens from their host country. Overall, this study emphasized the significance of host country members who can promote certain coping mechanisms for their visitors in the specific regional and geographical context of China.

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The ‘Myth of Zero-COVID’ Nation: A Digital Ethnography of Expats’ Survival Amid Shanghai Lockdown during the Omicron Variant Outbreak

Western societies are crossed by a plurality of critical phenomena. The perception is that of being grappled with an uncontrollable anthropological drift, which make us powerless, leading towards a point of no return. A constitutive character of such a drift is the enslaving of the public spheres to the affects (i.e. affectivization). Any public affair and discussion is less and less addressed in terms of functional criteria (i.e. in terms of optimization of utility in reason of objective data) and more and more as the trigger as well as the target of affective acting-out.  Such a dynamics challenges all individuals and institutions that think that civilization and progress are a matter of the human efforts to enslave the affective exercise of the present moment to the capacity of the reason to draw futurables. Education – and higher education within it – is at the front line of this challenge, because it is up to it the effort of promoting the symbolic resources that enables people to succeed in the twofold task of valorizing subjectivity and enslaving its affective substance to aims of social and civic progress. The present paper intends to contribute to address such a challenge. To this end, it proposes an interpretation of the affectivization spreading the contemporary social landscape, based on current debate in cognitive sciences. On this grounds, the general idea that such a phenomenon is something different from and more than a mere epidemy of irrationality - as it is more or less implicitly treated by observers and analysts-  is deepened. Following that, strategic and methodological implications for higher education are discussed. It is called for an extension of the function of higher education, in the direction of  taking charge of the demand of symbolic resources required to address the uncertainty generated by the contemporary socio-institutional turmoil.

Trasformazioni sociali, affettivizzazione della sfera pubblica e ricerca di senso Social transformations, affectivization of the public sphere and search for meaning

This transcendental phenomenological study explored psychologically traumatic incidents and risk factors among international faculty members (IFMs) who experienced long-term lockdowns during the Delta and Omicron outbreak periods in East China. Based on empirical voices from 18 IFMs in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanjing, this study used trauma-informed care as its primary theoretical lens to examine potential traumatic incidents and risk factors. Findings showed that participants had neuroses about the omen of lockdowns and felt exhausted and frustrated about persistent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. They also experienced or witnessed burnout and dropout due to leisure constraints. Most notably, participants had concerns about families and friends during the series of lockdowns, entailing extreme stress due to separation, illness, loss, and grief. Overall, this study provides practical implications for counseling practices about social and cultural considerations and systemic barriers that impact clients’ well-being.

/pdf/trauma-informed-care-a-transcendental-phenomenology-of-the-3iat862u.pdf

Trauma-Informed Care: A Transcendental Phenomenology of the Experiences of International Faculty during the Delta and Omicron Variant Outbreaks in East China

La personalità e i suoi disturbi. Valutazione clinica e diagnosi al servizio del trattamento

The global emergency caused by the spread of virus known as “Covid-19” caught many people by surprise, revealing the precariousness not only of health, but also of many other areas of our life, such as relationships, the economy, politics or the environment. The purpose of this article is to explore broadly how quarantine and the perception of the virus influenced, in an interconnected way, the emotions and behaviors of individuals, society and the human species. From a symbolic and psychodynamic point of view, the COVID-19 can be considered as an unknown, unpredictable and invisible enemy. Due to its indefinite nature, individuals and societies have put in place special defense mechanisms to defend themselves from an intolerable state of uncertainty and anguish. From a broader point of view, the arrival of Covid-19 consists in a breach in the human illusion of omnipotence. It has put humanity in front of its limit and weakness. This unpleasant contact opens the way to an uncertain future. Change seems inevitable, but the nature of it is still unknown. Whether it will be a regressive or evolutionary transformation will depend only on us, as individuals, societies and species.

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Francesca Granier

Papers

Three-Layered Psychological Analysis of an Epidemic: Impact and Legacy of Covid-19