Transport inequities through the lens of environmental racism: Rural-urban migrants under Covid-19

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This paper reconsiders transport inequities through the lens of environmental racism. Based on participant observations of 1972 rural-to-urban migrants at 76 worksites and 25 residential communities in five cities in the Yangtze Delta Region, China, we identified two main challenges facing migrants experiencing ethnic discrimination during Covid-19. First, they were more likely to experience housing eviction and, consequently, bear heavier transport burdens when moving. Second, they were more likely to face difficulties when returning to the cities, such as repeated quarantine and displacement, long-time drifting on the highway and transport-related job uncertainty.Although the long-term effects of these policies on migrants’ everyday activity-travel behaviour may be limited, their experiences during the early phase of Covid-19 had a significant impact on their Spring Festival homecoming the following year. Regionally targeted transport policies to prevent Covid-19 have fuelled ethnic discrimination by officially classifying people from some provinces as “dangerous”. Moreover, transport policies favoured some ethnic groups over others, contributing to environmental racism and exacerbating transport inequity.