As of mid-May 2020, the Department of Labor reported that nearly 3 million people are filing for unemployment insurance per week, bringing the total tally of unemployed to 36.5 million people. At the same time, amidst shelter-in-place orders and school closures, service providers and scholars across the have reported an increase in rates of family and intimate partner violence across the globe. Sociologists of disasters have long analyzed broad trends of social and economic instability during and after disasters at the same time that disasters have disproportionately affected marginalized groups, such as Black, Latinx, indigenous, poor, and disabled communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has followed similar patterns while also including another dimension—a sizable backlash against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans that has triggered nearly 1,500 reports of verbal harassment, shunning, and physical assaults. This project investigates the compounded impacts of COVID-19 on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities to look at how illness, racism, and economic instability­­ are shaping the lives of individuals, families, and institutions in this understudied demographic, both in the present moment and for the next several decades.

The AAPI COVID-19 Project is a collaborative project bringing together eleven senior and junior faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students from institutions across the US. The project uses a mix of qualitative methods, ethnographic participant observation, survey-based statistical analysis, and social media content analysis to analyze how AAPI people are responding to the impacts of COVID-19 in six key areas: (1) labor and economy, (2) family and caregiving, (3) health, (4) education, ( 5) community-based organizing and advocacy, and (6) digital media.