Abstract
Social distancing and isolation measures in response to COVID-19 have confined individuals to their homes and produced unexpected side-effects and secondary risks. In Latin America, the measures taken by individual governments to mitigate these new daily and experiential risks have varied significantly as have the responses to social isolation in each country. Given these new social circumstances, the purpose of this article is to investigate, from the sociological approach of risk-taking, the relationship between confinement, secondary risks and social inequality. The author argues that secondary risks, despite their broad scope, are deeply structured by social inequalities in contemporary societies, especially in developing countries. To corroborate this hypothesis, a quantitative comparative analysis is performed for the Argentine case. Using data from a web-survey and correspondence analysis (CA), there are three major findings: (1) there are some widespread experiences similarly distributed across all social strata, especially those related to emotional and subjective matters; (2) other risks follow socio-structural inequalities, especially those corresponding to material and cultural aspects of consumption; (3) for specific vulnerable groups, compulsory confinement causes great dilemmas of decision-making between health and well-being.
Introduction
Confinement and social distancing have meant that individuals have been secluded in their homes. As a result, many unexpected and secondary risks have emerged (objective and symbolic, public and private): domestic violence, compulsive gambling, extended periods of solitude, depression, anxiety, self-medication, privatised mourning processes, compulsive eating, alcoholism, reorganisation of care work because of teleworking, family conflicts for being ‘together all the time’, lack of concentration, sleep disorders, new ‘balcony police’ and extremely authoritarian surveillance strategies, multiplication of ‘free rider’ behaviours, temporary dislocations (social jet lag), weakening of individual freedoms, new ways of discrimination, communitarian confrontations among neighbours, and even political polarisation, among others (Auer et al., 2020; CEPAL, 2020; Liu, 2020; Naso, 2020; Panchal et al., 2020). The greatest paradox in these new domestic scenarios is that, in the midst of the pandemic, secondary risks do not emerge from the probability of getting ill, but rather from sheltering: for many, to stay at home has become a risk in itself.
Amidst these new experiences of social and psychological disorders, some varying forms of resistance as well as generalised reciprocity, organised gestures of social solidarity, collective expressions of recreation and gratitude, and resilience and cooperation have also arisen (Billie and Olsson, 2020; Cornelson and Miloucheva, 2020).
While governments and scientists struggle to deal with the disease, confined individuals must cope with these new realities of everyday life. Almost all of those confined around the world have been harshly affected by this global reality and suffer from some sort of biographical disruption. People have been affected in different degrees by these new social processes depending on how strict the lockdown measures were in each context, what kind of social and economic responses were taken by governments to mitigate the effects of lockdown and, also, the ‘amount’ of different sorts of individual and collective resources they had available to them to put up with the extensive confinement. At the same time, the variability in individual risk experiences could be related to the variability in how people perceive the pandemic. This could include differences in emotional responses, ethical principles, political values and social conditions, as well as individual beliefs about how the rest of society thinks and feels about lockdown (Billie and Olsson, 2020).
This article analyses, from the sociological perspective of risk-taking (Zinn, 2020), the relationship between the prevalence of these secondary risks and social inequality in Argentina, in order to understand social variations in the perceptions and practices of people dealing with lockdown. In this regard, Lupton (2021) notes that ‘when health crises such as pandemics are emerging, aspects of societies that might otherwise be taken-for-granted or hidden, such as entrenched social inequalities and social marginalisation, often come starkly to the fore’. Compared with other risk domains, far less is known about how individuals perceive risks associated with emerging pandemics (Dryhurst et al., 2020) and the relationship between this and measures of social inequality. At a societal level, this understanding is crucial for dealing with the secondary effects of the lockdown and this ‘new social order’. Social gaps in secondary risk experiences could mainly be related to social strata but also to individualistic and prosocial values, trust in government, science, and medical professionals, political preferences and personal and collective efficacy in dealing with negative emotions (Dryhurst et al., 2020).
The results of the study indicate that this new production of micro-social risks, despite its broad scope, is profoundly structured by social inequalities. The relationship between social risks and inequality in the context of the confinement is expressed in three general tendencies. First, there are some common, widespread experiences regarding the distribution of certain risks, especially those related to emotional and subjective matters. Second, other risks are deeply unequal, especially those related to material and cultural aspects of consumption. Third, compulsory confinement presents, for a lot of people, a dilemma between health and well-being (material and subjective). For certain social groups, especially the most vulnerable ones, confinement requires individualised decisions, responsibilities and risk-taking. If only some people are able to ‘stay at home’, risk-taking becomes a mechanism of reproduction of social inequalities.
In the next section, we briefly expose the main approaches to the ‘risk-taking’ perspective. Then, in the third section, we present the survey design, our key variables and the statistical methods used in the study. Six correspondence analysis are presented in the fourth section. There, we compare the results of the CAs from three nested steps of analysis. In the first step we analysed the structural conditions of the confinement and described the material living conditions of the population and its relationship with certain sociodemographic profiles. In the second step we related these to diverse experiences of secondary risks. Finally, in the third step we controlled for political preferences and certain prosocial values to the extent that the CA enabled interpretation of how the whole variables related to each other. The fifth section presents some final thoughts about the main findings.
Risk-taking perspective
The perspective of risk-taking is a flexible conceptual framework that considers the complexities, dynamics and contradictions of people’s risk-taking. Three particular approaches of this perspective are important to this study. First, it jointly considers the so-called objective and subjective dimensions of social risks. This allows understanding risks as cognitive, emotional and material social experiences, simultaneously. Second, risk-taking is understood as a process of doing that involves reasons, decisions and strategies. Risk needs to be described as a social experience and, at the same time, this description needs to take into account the motives for risk-taking, as well as different levels of control and the various ways in which reflexivity about risk is rooted in the social realm (Zinn, 2015, 2016). Thus, these new everyday risks can be understood through their ‘practical reasoning’, namely, the evaluation of what is at stake in each risk activity.
According to the risk-taking perspective, people mobilise a great diversity of strategies when it comes to taking, accepting or dealing with risk perceptions (Zinn, 2008). At least three different strategies can be distinguished (Zinn, 2020): instrumental rationality, underpinned by (scientific) expert knowledge; non-rational strategies such as hope or faith; and strategies in-between such as trust, intuition and emotion which build on experience and tacit knowledge. People display their emotions, ethical values, cognitive and material resources, political preferences and social positions when evaluating their social situation and, as a result, perceive risks in different ways. In this perspective, risk is socially negotiated based on people’s experiences, resources, values and, also, trust in others (Dryhurst et al., 2020). This conceptualisation allows us to understand how risk is dealt with in everyday life and why and how risks are actively taken under confinement: individuals take risks to meet their lives and their challenges, which means preventing some risks and taking others.
Third, it is a socially anchored perspective. Risk-taking is dependent on concrete conditions in particular situations in which risks and gains are negotiated. They are socially situated risks. In general terms, risk perception refers to individuals’ evaluations of the probability and consequences of an adverse outcome. These evaluations are anchored in deep social structures and are socially constructed (Yildirim and Güler, 2020). This approach sheds light on how intermediate institutions (education, social security), conditioned by social structure, frame the production of risks. As Zinn (2015: 1) points out, ‘there is good evidence for how structural and cultural forces combine and shape risk-taking’. In this article we especially consider the larger social contexts and individual risk practices in everyday life during confinement.
Data and methods
In order to analyse the link between secondary risks and social inequalities, we adopt an approximation of van der Linden’s classic model of risk perceptions, which includes four main dimensions: cognitive (e.g. people’s knowledge and understanding about risks); emotional and experiential (e.g. personal experience); social-cultural (e.g. trust and values); and relevant social differences (e.g. class, gender, age) (van der Linden, 2017; see also Dryhurst et al., 2020).
Data were collected through an anonymous online survey, ‘Life in Quarantine’, conducted in Argentina during the first weeks of April 2020 (in Spanish: Encuesta sobre Vida en Cuarentena [EVC]). 1 The aim of the survey was to gather information about perceptions, experiences and social assessments related to lockdown and the pandemic. Nationwide, there were 21,213 respondents who participated in the study.
The survey was structured as follows. The first part included general sociodemographic and social status questions. The second part contained questions regarding the structural and/or material conditions of confinement (teleworking, income, type of household, etc.). The third part included changes in practices and behaviours during lockdown. The fourth part asked about general perceptions of the pandemic and the government’s performance in dealing with the crisis. Lastly, participants were asked to give the first word that came to mind when they thought about their ‘quarantine experience’.
From this word-association exercise we first used a qualitative approach in order to identify the key micro risks people referred to when they thought about their own confinement: 21,213 words related to quarantine experience were regrouped into seven categories of secondary risks: (1) emotional and subjective; (2) temporal; (3) material; (4) health; (5) voluntary; (6) moral; and (7) symbolic.
The second set of relevant variables is related to measures of social inequality: income, social status, labour condition, sex, age, marital status, housing characteristics, type of household, etc.
We also employed other variables of interest such as changes in practices and behaviours during lockdown as well as political preferences, ethical values and assessment of government performance. The vast majority of these variables were self-assessments on a 10-point Likert scale (changes in everyday life, consumption behaviours, new practices during quarantine, etc.), through which we tried to elicit participants’ perceptions.
With regard to the methods of analysis, we first explored each ‘dependent’ variable (types of risk, changes, practices, perceptions) and its correlation with a set of explanatory variables (socioeconomic status and ascriptive characteristics). Then, due to the categorical nature of our variables we used correspondence analysis (CA), which allowed us to describe the ‘distances’ between the perceptions of certain risks and their association with other social categories. To interpret the graphs, it is very important to ‘look at’ the variable distributions by the dimensions (coordinates) instead of the ‘quadrants’ (Greenacre, 1993).
Each of the six performed CAs adjusted quite well to the data, explaining 60–75% of the association between variables (inertia or variance). In the following section we present our models. The first model only describes the social conditions of living in quarantine in order to recognise the specific contexts in which people were confined. The second model assesses the association between these social conditions and different micro-social risks, in order to visualise the distribution of the seven types of risk throughout the Argentine social structure (relevant social differences of risk perceptions). Then, we developed three models to differentiate risk experiences: (1) common or widespread; (2) unequal; and (3) singular. In these models we also included variables related to changes in practices or behaviours during confinement (cognitive and emotional dimensions of risk perceptions). Lastly, the sixth model shows the association between previous variables, political preferences and ethics values (sociocultural dimension of risk perceptions), with the intention of looking for links between social inequality, secondary risks and individual moral orientations (Billie and Olsson, 2020; Dryhurst et al., 2020; van der Linden, 2017).
Results and discussion
On 19 March 2020, the Argentinian government declared ‘mandatory preventive social isolation’, which prohibited free movement of people throughout the national territory; only minimum and indispensable trips to get medicine and food were allowed. Essential workers or those who needed to go out for emergency reasons (such as visiting the doctor or assisting older adults) were required to have a special permit; otherwise, severe economic fines would be applied. The great majority of the population complied with these restrictions (Traeder, 2020). In addition, economic measures were taken to fight the crisis resulting from the lockdown: rent freezes; deferral of payment of taxes and services; loans for businesses; and private salaries paid by the government, among others (Ernst and Lopez Mourelo, 2020).
Structural conditions of the collective lockdown
In this general context, to test whether risk experiences varied according to people’s socio-structural conditions, we first grouped the interviewees on the basis of the socio-structural variables of the survey. 2 Data show (Figure 1) that there are three typical social groups, determined by a number of key variables: sex, age, social class, income, labour status, social security, level of education, type of household, household characteristics and private outdoor spaces. 3
Structural social conditions of confinement, Argentina 2020.
The first group contains people of low social origins or belonging to the working class; this group earns less than the equivalent of US$700 month, has only secondary education on average, does not have social security or access to the health care system and lives in extended household families (with a higher probability of overcrowding). Their jobs do not allow them to work from home; at the same time, this is the group that performs the most essential services: transportation, food supply, garbage collection, among others. People in this group have the fewest individual options for complying with the confinement.
The second group comprises the typical Argentinian middle class: salaried employees of active age (30–49 years old) who earn between $1000 and 2000 a month, live in a small family group (or have no children), in centrally located apartments, with balconies, terraces or windows overlooking the streets. People in this group have many more opportunities of working from home than those in the first group; they have separate spaces for teleworking and continued receiving a salary (or income) during the lockdown.
Finally, the third group is made up mainly of the upper-middle class: people who earn over $2000 a month, some of them self-employed individuals or small business owners. They live in nuclear families and have one or two separate spaces where they can work at home. Like the second group, this group has a higher degree of freedom which enables them to endure the quarantine without significant difficulties.
The results show, in this regard, a clear social structuration of the confinement: everybody is confined (to the extent that it is mandatory), but not everybody is confined under the same conditions. These structural differences, as shown below, impact directly on the production and distribution of micro risks caused by social isolation.
Production, distribution and reproduction of secondary risks during the confinement
Seven large groups of secondary and experiential risks produced by the confinement have been identified in the analysis. In all these types, it is a matter of understanding not only risk as a process of doing, as a dynamic and social activity, but also as a concept that comprises four constitutive elements (Zinn, 2015): larger social context; some sort of decision (though varying in its scope ); a subject that practises it; and a specific outcome.
The first group is comprised of subjective or emotional risks. In this group, the most frequent words associated with quarantine are: tiredness, anxiety, anguish, depression, boredom, sadness, fatigue, feeling of ‘suffocating’, uncertainty, asphyxia, desperation, claustrophobia, pain, being fed up, impotence, discomfort, panic, loneliness, worry, fear. These emotions touch upon existential, intimate risks that result as a direct and instantaneous product of the social disruption that the quarantine entails. From a theoretical perspective, these subjective and emotional risks allow us to tap into the reflexive dimension of risk-taking (Zinn, 2015); namely, the relatively clear awareness of what both the pandemic and the lockdown represent, which at the same time implies an evaluation of the situation as emotionally problematic and conflictive. Those who perceive this type of risk are not misinformed or act non-rationally; instead, they develop subjective processes of sense-making that allow them to evaluate the lockdown as emotional and subjectively exhausting while, at the same time, accept that it serves a greater, common good.
The second group comprises what I have identified as temporal risks (social jet lag), namely, sensations and perceptions linked to the loss of social orientation of time during the lockdown. Some of the words that are linked to those risks are related to time dislocations: eternity, infinite, finiteness, exception, suspension, unawareness of the time or the day or the week, endless, long, parenthesis, transition, pause, impasse. This group is mainly affected by the disruption between ‘objective’ time and social time, routines and everyday life.
The third group is that of material risks, that is, the material or socioeconomic effects of the lockdown: loss or reduction of income, economic crisis, secular stagnation, poverty, exclusion, deprivation and unemployment are some of the ideas expressed by interviewees who associated these risks with confinement.
The fourth group is comprised of health risks, those directly linked to the physical health of confined people, as well as the subjective probabilities of getting infected or being hospitalised (Billie and Olsson, 2020): contagion, illness, death, symptoms and bad health are some of the principal references used by interviewees.
The fifth group is formed by the so-called voluntary risks (Lyng, 2005; Zinn, 2015). These risks have two central components: firstly, they are perceptions that relate confinement to willingness, deliberation and individual decision; secondly, they are risks that connote a certain positive result (unlike emotional risks, whose connotations are exclusively negative). People who relate confinement to this type of risk refer to the following expressions when they think about their own ‘quarantine experience’: empathy, hope, introspection, opportunity, possibility, reflection, resilience, respect, solidarity, tolerance, unity, safeguard, security. This type is directly linked to the dimension of control and agency in risk-taking: risks that give the individual the feeling of being in a decision-making situation and in relative control. Lockdown is perceived as a voluntary act from which positive learning can be gained (for example, a higher resilience, both individual and social). This kind of risk-taking is not independent of the processes of sense production: ‘I confine myself because it is my will to do so, but I expect everybody to behave the way I do.’ As will be seen later, voluntary risk prevails among the lower socioeconomic groups. At the same time, this group favours harsher social sanctioning of those who do not respect confinement.
The sixth group is about moral and normative risks, related to the collective duty of complying with the confinement: commitment, correction, duty, precaution, preservation, prevention, protection, responsibility, are some of the main words associated with the quarantine in this group. This type refers to the motives and reasons for taking risks, which are deeply rooted in the social realm: ‘I stay at home because it is my duty to do so, to take care of myself and to take care of others.’
Finally, the seventh group is comprised of symbolic and political risks. These are risks generated by the confinement which affect individual freedom and the personal autonomy of those confined: lack of freedom, authoritarianism, jail, captivity, control, dictatorship, exaggeration, excessive, extreme, fascism, imposition, cage, oppression, prison and repression are some of the main references used by interviewees who identify these risks as a direct result of the quarantine. As will be seen later, this type illustrates an important equation of risk-taking theory: the more external pressure applied (more mandatory nature, sanctions and fines), the less the sensation of control and agency there is amongst individuals to be able to manage confinement.
Figure 2 shows the distribution of secondary risks according to an individual’s position in the social structure. First of all, subjective/emotional and health risks are mainly associated with women, salaried employees who are able to work from home during confinement (but without separate rooms to do so) and middle-class individuals who live in apartments and are between 30 and 49 years old. These risks, although linked to emotions, do not necessarily lack reflexivity (Zinn, 2015): to express them, subjects need to evaluate and reflect on their own feelings, accepting or recognising them as something negative.
Type of micro-social risks and social conditions during confinement, Argentina 2020.
Secondly, the symbolic/political, temporal and material risks are mainly associated with people between 50 and 69 years old, who have private health insurance, belong to the upper-middle or upper class, are part of nuclear families and are mainly men. This group is the one that most perceives that their freedoms have been reduced, those who have a major temporary dislocation regarding their everyday activities, and those who have the greatest fears about the economic situation (both of the country and their own businesses and companies). The sociodemographic profile of this group is related, in general, to conservative values and lower levels of social cohesion (Middlebrook, 2000).
Thirdly, voluntary and moral/normative risks are associated with the working and lower classes, between 18 and 29 years old, who do not have access to social security, work in essential jobs and live in extended households. For this group, confinement acts as a means to reach a higher goal, as well as a concrete response to the pandemic. These people are aware of the risks of lockdown but are willing to tolerate or manage them to improve the general well-being, as well as to protect their own lives and those of other people. As Dryhurst et al. (2020) indicate, the act of making sacrifices for the greater benefit of society is a relevant dimension of risk communication as it reveals the social nature of risk: ‘appealing to altruistic and prosocial motives can be an important aspect of solving social dilemmas during pandemics’ (p. 1003). It is not a coincidence that this sense of solidarity in the confinement comes from the lower classes. These findings are generally consistent with the literature on social ties, solidarity values and the working class in developing countries (Inglehart, 1994).
Taken altogether, these results highlight not only the close relationship between secondary risks and social variations, but also the enormous variety of ‘reasonable’ strategies that individuals display as efficient ways of dealing with the confinement (Zinn, 2015). Different aspects combine in various ways when people manage their quarantine. For some, emotional aspects are central, for others exercising their agency, ethical and moral commitments are at the centre, while others relate to their trust in governmental institutions. These approaches, however, vary with a number of key variables: ascriptive ones such as age or sex, socioeconomic status, and cognitive and practical resources (Dryhurst et al., 2020).
Risk experiences and social inequality
When variables regarding changes in practices or behaviours during lockdown are added to the correspondence analysis, three large groups of risk experiences emerge: (1) common experiences; (2) profoundly unequal experiences; and (3) singular or particular experiences. The first are experiences shared, to a lesser or greater extent, by different population groups relatively independent of their social position. The second, on the contrary, are experiences directly linked to social inequality. Finally, singular experiences are those that vary with sex, age or family characteristics.
Figure 3 shows that, during the confinement, some social risks were widespread. People confined for over 60 days live rather similar lives within certain dimensions. For example, tiredness associated with the lockdown, sleep and eating disruptions, fear, anguish, the feeling of fragility and uncertainty are not only the most intensely experienced risks but also the most ubiquitous throughout the whole social structure. Old and young, rich and poor, men and women, all are affected by these emotional and subjective risks. Missing friends and family or longing to go out to socialise, also represent emotional risks that are experienced in a generalised manner.
Common risks during confinement, Argentina 2020.
It is of the greatest importance to highlight here the particular relationship between emotions and risks that emerge from our data. We conceive this connection in two ways: emotions as a resource to cope with daily life (strategic positive emotions) and, at the same time, as a particular type of risk produced by the confinement (Shanahan et al., 2020). This emotional dimension of perceived risk is related with worry, concern and fear about a potential threat (Yildirim and Güler, 2020). From a social perspective, confinement entails uncertainty, ambiguity and loss of control, each of which is known to trigger emotional risks, including anxiety, depression and/or anger, among others. As Shanahan et al. (2020) point out, confinement can be considered a ‘perfect storm’ for increases in emotional risks.
Another social practice that has been relatively generalised during lockdown is care and domestic work. Interestingly, those who have increased these activities the most are men in their thirties and forties, educated, salaried, and with few children. These are individuals who under ‘normal’ circumstances would not do these tasks, but now have considerably increased their participation in them. On the other hand, poorer families, less educated women and individuals from the lowest socioeconomic groups continue to bear the biggest burden of care work. Other studies show that, while in the middle and upper classes confinement offers an opportunity for gender roles to shift within the home, in the lower classes, families’ care roles continue to be assumed disproportionately by women (CEPAL, 2020; Nesbitt-Ahmed and Subrahmanian, 2020).
Two other relatively generalised practices are online socialising and the use and approval of masks in public spaces. This is consistent with literature on the important role of risk perception in motivating health protection behaviours (Dryhurst et al., 2020). In this group of perceptions and practices, confinement appears as a relatively equalising social apparatus (Foucault’s dispositif).
Figure 4 shows how, in contrast, certain risks associated with the lockdown have deepened social inequalities in Argentinian society: whereas the upper classes increased consumption and internet shopping, the lower ones have dramatically reduced their purchasing. This difference is explained mainly because the former are still working from their homes or they just have savings, whereas the latter, those without savings, may also be losing their jobs or any other source of income, leaving them with little to support their families. Recent studies have made claims about the impact of social distancing on social inequality and changes in poverty in different countries. These changes increase with the duration of the lockdown and vary according to the country under consideration. In general, research has found that workers with less ability to work from home have indeed been less able to follow the ‘stay at home advice’ and that they have suffered higher increases in unemployment and a large decrease in consumption (Dingel and Neiman, 2020; Palomino et al., 2020).
Unequal risks during confinement, Argentina 2020.
Social inequalities are also expressed in four extremely important experiences. First, the middle and upper classes have increased their cultural consumption during the lockdown (movies, plays, and even operas using digital platforms). On the other hand, the cultural consumption of the lower classes has declined. A similar trend was observed when participants were asked about what new things they learned during confinement. Those of a higher social class increased their participation in workshops and online courses (cooking, arts, yoga); the lower classes decreased their participation. Thirdly, the ‘family climate’ also varies according to socioeconomic status: whereas the upper classes were found to have a very good climate during the quarantine, among the lower classes (where unemployment and overcrowding are higher), family climate was more conflictive. Finally, a similar pattern of inequality emerges with subjective well-being. Among the upper classes, subjective well-being has increased during confinement, while among the lower classes it has decreased. Other studies have shown the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on parents’ and children’s well-being, where dealing with quarantine is a particularly stressful experience for parents who must balance personal life, work and raising children (Brodeur et al., 2020; Prime et al., 2020). Nevertheless, in general, such research has not taken into account social inequalities and their impact on these conflicts.
Also noticeable is the fact that, while alcohol consumption increased among the upper classes, the lower classes increased their tobacco consumption. Qualitatively, it seems that consumption of alcohol and tobacco have become a sort of ‘healthy risk’: people upload photos about brands and flavours, take pride in starting to drink at earlier hours of the day, or make fun of their own weight gain. Such attitudes, especially among the middle and upper classes, contribute to the presentation of a responsible, controlled identity which assumes certain risks under the generalised uncertainty generated by the pandemic.
Figure 4 also shows important gender inequalities. In risk studies, it is well known that risk perceptions tend to be lower and judged differently by men as opposed to women, to the extent that sociopolitical factors such as power or status are strong determiners of people’s perception and acceptance of risks (Finucane et al., 2000). The intersectional theory of risk suggests that ‘doing risk’ is, in fact, a power technology that hides other social structures that make gender inequities a matter of individual choice or perceptions (Nygren et al., 2017). In the Argentine case, most distinctively upper-class behaviours are associated with men. Women, by contrast, shop less and take fewer courses. In addition, women are more afraid of contagion (particularly their own contagion or that of their families) and fear the collapse of the health system. This is interesting because it shows how risks associated with care (family transmission, health system collapse, missing their loved ones) are mostly feminine, while those linked to ‘macro’ or external matters are almost exclusively masculine (economic crisis, collapse of the financial system, reduction of income). Confinement, in this regard, reproduces the gendered distribution of ‘classic’ risks.
The third category of risk experiences are ‘singular’ for some population groups (see Figure 5). Young people between 18 and 29 years old experience difficulties with online classes (despite being intensive users of virtual tools), are more worried about the environmental consequences of the pandemic, are much less afraid of contagion (especially compared to adults over 70), and experience somewhat conflictive family climates. Males in this group also miss night life and seeing friends and are more concerned about the use of technology in the future. Among young women, these specific risks also appear, but they are more concerned about environmental risks and new hygiene practices for the future. These are clearly age-related behaviours and perceptions, and are only slightly related to socioeconomic conditions.
Specific social risks for different population groups during confinement, Argentina 2020.
The second group is that of people who live alone and have been in lockdown for over two months without a lot of interaction with anybody else. Women report missing their partners, but they also miss their workplace or school, contact with family and friends. They practise much more virtual sex than any other group, consume less alcohol and tobacco than before the confinement, and are less afraid of physical contact with others. They are also the ones who have had to go out to do shopping or replace supplies.
The third group is comprised of salaried men in the most active age group (30–49 years old), who seem to be the ‘biggest losers’ of the quarantine. Their lives were highly structured by daily routines before the confinement (take children to school, go to work, go home from work, bathe their children and have some family life before going to sleep; go out with friends at the weekend, go on holiday at least once a year). Now, it is in this group where alcohol and tobacco consumption has increased the most, and they show the highest incidence of eating disruptions. They have less sex during the confinement, have increased care work, miss their family and friends the most and have very little cultural consumption. They also fear the decrease of family income (many of them are the sole income provider) or an economic crisis in the immediate future. This shows to what extent confinement directs these new social risks towards a particular group of the working population, depending on what everyday life was like prior to lockdown.
Political preferences and perceptions regarding COVID-19
Finally, we considered the relationship between secondary risks, political preferences and general perceptions of government decisions related to the confinement. Some recent studies in the USA and Europe have shown how individual attitudes towards the quarantine are related to ideology or political values (Cornelson and Miloucheva, 2020; Pennycook et al., 2020; Rothgerber et al., 2020). From the perspective of risk-taking, this relationship needs to be assessed in terms of both the practical reasoning and the multiple, informal ways in which people produce meaning in the context of confinement; this is a process that combines values, emotions and everyday ethics (Zinn, 2015).
Figure 6 shows these relationships. Two large social groups emerged from the analysis. The first was comprised of people from the middle and working classes, who receive a regular salary, are less than 70 years old, with middle incomes and social security. This group identifies itself with a centre-left or left-wing ideology; strongly approves the mandatory measures adopted by the government and its performance with regard to the pandemic (it should be remembered that the Argentinian government is left-leaning); puts health above the economy; does not believe in conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID; and is convinced that taxes for the rich should be raised. Furthermore, they believe that once a vaccine is found, it should be mandatory.
Social perceptions of confinement and political ideology, Argentina 2020.
At the same time, the linkage between left-wing ideology and governmental performance approval is mediated by (1) the type of risks prevailing in this group; and (2) the level of social control that is executed over others.
The prevailing risks for this group are health risks, voluntary and moral. Voluntary risks are those that are not only taken in a relatively autonomous manner (the choice of staying at home as opposed to the mandatory nature of the measure) but, besides, are positively evaluated regarding the experience of the quarantine (living at home as a safe shelter, the possibility of ‘getting to know myself’ better, resilience, the possibility of cooperation and solidarity). Moral risks refer to the ability to assume certain measures individually so that the result is positive (to safeguard myself I have to take care of others); caring for others is thus conceived as an integral part of complying with the quarantine.
This configuration of ideology, governmental support and secondary risks also shows a close relationship with the informal social control measures that have emerged among the population regarding the confinement. The so-called ‘balcony police’ (reporting neighbours who do not respect the quarantine) is frequent within this group. The opinion that neighbours should coordinate to impose informal sanctions in case somebody does not respect the quarantine is also prevalent.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the opinions are the exact opposite. Among the upper classes, where a right-wing or centre-right ideology predominates, the evaluation of governmental performance is highly critical. This group do not consider that the COVID-19 vaccine, whenever it arrives, should be mandatory; its members believe more in conspiracy theories than any other group and place importance of the economy over people’s health.
Accordingly, the risks prevailing in this group are those of the material, symbolic and political type. Material risks are those related to the possibility of an economic downturn, reductions in income, or the possibility of going out of business. Symbolic (and political) risks refer mainly to the lack of individual freedoms resulting from government measures. This social group criticises state control of everyday life and the limitation of individual freedoms and sees mandatory lockdown as authoritarian, and even ‘fascist’. Simultaneously, these attitudes are related to a preference for much less social control over citizens who do not respect the quarantine. If a neighbour breaks the confinement, indifference is the most frequent answer (an everyday attitude closer to libertarianism).
Additionally, this group is the one that misses going out the most, as well as practising outdoor sports. By contrast, the left-wing group misses contact with affective ties more. The difference between the perception of micro- and macro-economic risks is also interesting. Whereas the upper classes are more concerned with the macro-economic crisis, the popular classes express a particular concern about the reduction of their own income regardless of the macro-economy.
There is a third social group, which is comprised of unemployed or inactive individuals who belong to the lower classes and do not have social security. This group stays away from political ideology, from evaluating the government or measures of social control. It is a very vulnerable group of people that, amidst the quarantine, can only worry about subsistence; such material urgencies distance them from the political ‘crack’ which has dominated Argentinian society over the last few years.
Conclusions
This article assessed the secondary risks associated with the mandatory confinement in Argentina during the COVID pandemic between March and April 2020. Despite the extensive evidence regarding the economic and psychological effects of the lockdown, much less is known about the experiential, social and cultural factors that drive COVID-19 risk perceptions around the world (Dryhurst et al., 2020) as well as their relationship with social inequalities. In this regard, sociological insights and social risks studies could be relevant in understanding these untold micro-social inequalities and their effect on everyday life after the pandemic.
Our main finding is that inequality and social class differences mediate the relationship between secondary risks and confinement. Subjective and emotional risks are the most prevalent across different social strata. To a greater or lesser extent, all of us feel anguish, anxiety or sadness. Other risks are distributed in a clearly unequal manner. For privileged classes, the lockdown became a family shelter and also a sort of epojé from the daily grind, allowing them to obtain certain subjective rewards. Among the least favoured, confinement is, basically, a social apparatus, or dispositif, that reproduces survival problems but also enormous subjective disadvantages. Finally, there are some risks experienced by specific populations: risks typical of the young; risks typical of those who live alone; risks of those who have undergone the most social changes during the quarantine: middle-class, salaried fathers in their active years, who see their daily lives and routines profoundly altered. We also found a relationship between political ideology, perceptions about government performance and attitudes towards communitarian social control. Paradoxically, those who can work from home are the ones who claim more freedom to go out, while those who need to go out every day consider staying at home a moral duty.
Altogether, the analysis identified the great diversity of strategies (rational, non-rational or in-between; Zinn, 2008) that are mobilised when it comes to taking, accepting or dealing with the risks caused by large-scale confinement. People display their emotions, ethical values, cognitive and material resources, political preferences and social positions when evaluating their social situation under lockdown and, as a result, perceive risks in different ways. The idea that risk is socially negotiated based on people’s experiences, resources, values and trust in institutions is reinforced here (Dryhurst et al., 2020).
As risk-taking theory indicates, social risks are anchored in deep social structures and this establishes the conditions under which particular risks are taken, and which particular risks are not. In the context of the pandemic and mandatory social isolation, such a premise is dramatically corroborated in the Argentinian case: almost everyone can afford the ‘luxury’ of taking emotional risks and feel anguished; only a few ‘privileged’ people are able to work from home and not lose income; only vulnerable populations take the risk of going out to do essential work, possibly getting infected on the way. In this latter case, clearly, people take the risk of going out in order to deal with the lockdown-induced vulnerability (Zinn, 2015). Facing this vulnerability, it is only possible to observe very reduced agency in dealing with the competing risks of health versus economy, both of which are beyond their control (Wallman, 2001).
Essential workers, those who cannot open their own businesses, those to whom payment of salaries has been suspended; the young, who do not have spaces or tools to access virtual classes; women virtually forced to live with violent men; the elderly who cannot receive assistance or help from family members; these people are not in a position to prevent or overcome the risks generated by the lockdown. As Wallman (2001) indicates, being encouraged to take risks or to tolerate them, without having the power to prevent exposure to the risk, is a source of suffering that should be seriously considered in public policy once the confinement ends.
The call for mandatory isolation, even with a minimum transfer scheme to protect those who could be affected by the ‘health vs economy choice’, has confronted the vast majority of the Argentinian population with an individualised dilemma of taking risks. The COVID-19 pandemic shows that not all individuals have the same possibilities of choice and, therefore, not all of us have the same effective rights (Bernardi, 2020). It is in the face of this type of social quandary (when ‘risk society’, albeit briefly, radicalises), that risk-taking is revealed to be a structural problem of inequality and human rights.
People taking secondary risks in the midst of the pandemic need to deal with a social reality, they challenge this reality and also try to change the expected (and contingent) future (Zinn, 2020). In a broader context, this evidence points to the sociological importance of understanding the unexpected side-effects of the confinement and the different ways in which people, in everyday life, engage with secondary risks on the basis of their biographical experiences, moral orientations and larger social conditions.
Long-term social consequences of these new risks are still unrevealed as well as how confinement will increase persistent inequalities. In fact, in a future work, we hope to deepen and distinguish between the circumstances and motives that are a consequence of the anguish and fear suffered by people in confinement, since these could vary between social strata. In the same vein, it could also be important to include a qualitative approach to emotions, suffering and the inability to make decisions in risk-taking situations. Finally, a challenge for future research is to assess the impact of this new social disorder in other middle-income and developing countries.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
