Did COVID-19 contribute to weaker relationships and closed borders?
During the pandemic, we were forced to live in isolation and interact with fewer people. Now, new research suggests this may have affected us more than we previously thought – particularly young people. The study, based on interviews conducted in 30 European countries, was led by Örebro University.
Read the full scientific article here: Staying inside the bubble: the unequal consequences of limiting weak ties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The rest of us may be able to return to how things were before the pandemic. For younger people, however, not attending school, staying at home and not socialising with friends during their formative teenage years has far greater consequences,” says Lina Sandström, a researcher in sociology at Örebro University, and continues:
“While it’s impossible to pinpoint the causal links with certainty, during the pandemic we saw an increased focus on family, more talk of closed borders and similar issues, which may have contributed to young people today holding more gender-conservative and migration-critical views.”
The study involved a total of 740 interviews across 30 countries. Sweden stood out for issuing recommendations rather than bans. In many countries, there were curfews, and in Turkey, older people were banned from travelling by train and bus.
Longing for a chit-chat with the supermarket cashier
“During the pandemic, people complained about longing after a chit chat with the supermarket cashier – what the research calls ‘weak ties.’ These kinds of relationships matter, and perhaps the impact is more far-reaching than we previously realised,” says Lina Sandström.
Researchers refer to relationships with family and close friends as ‘strong ties.’ But we also need so-called ‘weak ties.’ They can develop into close relationships and help us understand other people who are different from us.
Since we isolated ourselves during the pandemic, many such contacts were lost. It may have contributed to polarisation and increased hostility towards strangers and people who are different. We tend to form stronger ties with people who are like ourselves.
Strangers looked sicker
“During the pandemic, we learnt to fear strangers. Research has shown that we perceive those who don't look like us as looking sicker. In some Eastern European countries, it became clear to Romani ethnic groups, for example, that hostility towards them increased. They were seen as spreaders of infection and were marginalised even more than usual,” explains Lina Sandström.
When we lose our ‘weak ties’, it can also become harder to find work. People with contacts are not always found within the family or among close friends, but further out in the network.
Key lessons from the pandemic
“It’s actually a bit frightening how quickly we moved on: we need to learn more about how the pandemic affected us. We can understand a great deal from the difference between strong and weak ties in our relationships. When we focus on the strong ties, on our close relationships, other people will be left out,” says Lina Sandström.
Since the last interview was conducted in 2022, the material has been compiled and compared across countries. A description of the study has now been published in the journal Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. The interviews were often 1–2 hours long but were summarised in a shorter narrative by the national researchers. Participants were given the opportunity to approve the summary.