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| author |
Lydie Ngoie
| | title |
Immigrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ethical Dilemmas
| | abstract |
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored and deepened preexisting structural inequities affecting immigrant and marginalized communities in the United States. This qualitative case study examines how members of an immigrant community experienced health care, social support, and moral tensions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, drawing on in-depth interviews, field observations, and document analysis, employs thematic and interpretive approaches grounded in naturalistic inquiry and the ethics of care; it reveals how participants navigated fear, exclusion, and institutional mistrust while relying on informal networks, religious faith, and community-based efforts to meet urgent needs for information, material resources, and emotional support. Their accounts also suggest that their local faith-based initiative played a noticeable, though informally understood, role in sustaining care and solidarity during the crisis. The analysis highlights how race, immigration status, gendered labor, and spiritual commitment shaped these experiences of care, revealing both resilience and vulnerability among community members. The study contributes to scholarship on health equity, qualitative ethics, and care ethics by foregrounding how everyday practices of care, as described by community participants, complicate and enrich prevailing models of public health. Implications are discussed for policy, public health ethics, and future engagement with community and faith-based actors in emergency preparedness.
| | school |
The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University
| | degree |
D.M.H. (2026)
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| advisor |
Gaetana Kopchinsky
Merel Visee
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| full text | LNgoie.pdf - requires Drew uLogin |
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