The impact of COVID-19 on the resilience of rural and island Scotland: implications for transitioning to a resilient rural and island future

Abstract

ABSTRACT Negligible attention has been given to how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted upon social and economic attributes of rural and island (R&I) places. The paper considers impacts of COVID-19 on the resilience of Scottish R&I communities during the crisis or emergency stage of the pandemic and then after its shift to what may be described as an everyday disruption, suggesting ways that communities could transition to a resilient future in a post-COVID world. The paper’s longitudinal, qualitative, Scotland-wide, and holistic assessment of community change and responses represents a novel approach to exploring the impacts of the pandemic on resilience between 2020 and 2022. It allows greater understanding to be gained about both the pandemic’s impacts on socio-economic aspects of Scottish R&I communities and the implications for transitioning to a more resilient post COVID-19 rural world. The paper reports that, when those who participated in the research discussed transitioning to a new future for R&I places, their thoughts about how it should change altered over time. Specifically, by addressing dual discourses of emergency and everyday resilience, the paper identifies how the impacts of COVID-19 affected resilience during different stages of the pandemic and what might be learned about ongoing resilience in R&I communities.