Viral Encounters: Lessons on COVID, Coping and Community from Chinese Migrants in Italy UMass Amherst anthropologist Elizabeth Krause finds the “threat of xenophobia, a preparedness to quarantine, and the will of solidarity motivated an entire migrant community to take action” during the pandemic
December 14, 2020
Elizabeth Krause
AMHERST, Mass. – As COVID-19 ravaged Italy during the early days of the pandemic politicians, public health officials and journalists feared that the northern city of Prato would be the most dangerous place in Italy due to its concentration of Chinese migrants who power the city’s “Made in Italy” fast-fashion garment industry. New research from University of Massachusetts Amherst anthropologist Elizabeth Krause has instead found that Prato emerged as a contagion exception as related to its Chinese migrant community, in part because of “viral encounters” – the social narratives, representat