Grief at a distance: Migrants' constructions of grief during the COVID-19 pandemic

<p><strong>Loss and mourning are fundamental aspects of human experience, whether through the expected progression of ageing or sudden, unanticipated deaths. Societies worldwide have established cultural practices and mourning rituals to help people process their grief and honour the deceased. However, the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted these traditional approaches to death and grief. This disruption particularly affected migrants, who comprise 3.6% of the global population (International Organisation for Migration, 2024) and maintain transnational family ties across continents (Trask, 2010). Prior to the pandemic, advances in transportation and technology made it feasible for migrants to return home for important family events, including funerals. The pandemic, however, introduced multiple layers of complexity to migrants’ grieving processes. They faced not only physical distance from their families but also strict travel limitations, health risks from COVID-19, and the challenge of reconciling different cultural approaches to grief between their countries of origin and residence.</strong></p><p>This thesis examines how migrants made sense of grieving at a distance during the unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a social constructionist lens, which emphasises that the way people perceive and understand the world is socially produced, the research aims to understand the constructions of migrants’ grief at a distance. The research achieves this aim through two studies: an analysis of how international media outlets framed migrants’ grief at a distance, and in-depth interviews with bereaved migrants living in Aotearoa New Zealand to explore their constructions of grief.</p><p>The first study employs qualitative framing analysis to examine nine international online newspaper articles, examining media representations of migrants’ grief at a distance. This analysis identifies three frames: (1) grief as an impossible situation, (2) migrants confronting impossible choices, and (3) grief as culturally mediated. The first frame focuses on the impossibility of grieving during the pandemic due to the lack of physical presence and the inability to travel home. The second frame depicts a challenging dynamic between agency and external constraints as migrants navigated the difficult decision of travelling back home. The third frame is the portrayal of grief through a cultural lens with practices, rituals, and support systems as a resource in the grieving process. The three frames emphasise the complex choices migrants faced due to their personal situations and cross-cultural experiences. They illuminate how psychological experiences of grief interweave with broader societal and cultural contexts, while shaping public perceptions of migrants’ grief. The second study involves semi-structured interviews with 13 adult migrants in Aotearoa New Zealand who experienced parental loss during the pandemic and were unable to travel home for the funeral. Participants, aged 30-65 and from diverse backgrounds, provided insights into grief experiences shaped by dual cultural contexts. Using reflective thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022), I identify three main themes of grieving at a distance: (1) being trapped, (2) being excluded, and (3) being a bad child. The first theme explores how external constraints of pandemic restrictions transformed grief into an involuntary private practice. The geographical distance, social disconnections and institutional neglect created the construction of being excluded, which is the second theme. The last theme displays how cultural and familial responsibilities and the inability to fulfil those construct feelings of moral failure and guilt in migrants. These three themes are unified by the overarching construction of grief at a distance as “disconnection”, emerging through the complex interplay of external constraints, social disconnection and social expectations. This research contributes to our understanding of transnational grief in three key areas. First, it extends theories of grief by demonstrating how transnational contexts fundamentally shape constructions of grief. The findings reveal grief as not merely personally and culturally mediated, but also geographically constructed through the interplay of distance, mobility constraints, and structural barriers. Second, this research contributes to migration literature by conceptualising ‘grief at a distance’ as a distinct form of transnational experience, characterised by complex tensions between agency and constraint, belonging and exclusion, and cultural expectations and institutional frameworks. Third, it provides insights into how global pandemics transform fundamental human experiences, showing how the COVID-19 pandemic created new forms of social suffering that particularly affected transnational populations.</p><p>These theoretical contributions have significant implications for policy and practice. The findings underscore the urgent need to incorporate migrants’ culturally specific needs into grief-related policies and support services. Moreover, they suggest that future pandemic preparedness must extend beyond physical health measures to address the psychological and cultural dimensions of crisis response, particularly for transnational populations.</p>