The COVID-19 pandemic: extreme poverty put to the test at the end of lockdown

Abstract

The way in which the COVID-19 pandemic was handled resulted in public health measures that had varying impacts on different segments of society. We consider the experience and feelings of a group of ATD Fourth World activists in precarious living situations, specifically during the end of the first lockdown period. In this article we will analyze, from their speech, the risk perception and the related attitudes in this specific period (April to July 2020). The end of lockdown represented a liminal state where fear was ever-present. Their behaviors were affected, some not daring to go outside while others feeling liberated. The masks, an essential element of protection in order to go outside, and their financial accessibility, did not seem to be equally available to all. Moreover, they had many questions about the consequences of positive test results or even the possibility of being a "contact case". These questions seemed provoked out of fear of social control, and personal fear of disruption of their daily lives. Our data, based on a collection gathered over time in order to grasp the evolution of risk representation as well as the contradiction between representation and attitudes, also reveals different levels of rationality that prevail in their ambivalent attitudes in a context of scientific uncertainty. The lifting of confinement measures produced a change in prevention model, from a constraining one to a hybrid one, involving individual responsibility.