Intersectional Marginalization and Family Strategies : Family Lives in Cubicle Homes Under Covid-19

The impact of COVID-19 on family life is widely documented, but more effort is needed to investigate how it has varied across social groups regarding their structural positions . This study focuses on the low-income families living in cubicle apartments in Hong Kong – an informal housing unit subdivided from a larger domestic quarter – to examine how the pandemic has exacerbated structural marginalization, which is manifested in everyday family life . Data was collected through ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews conducted with tenants living in cubicle apartments concentrated in two low-to-middle-income neighbourhoods in Hong Kong since January 2021 . The author interviewed 41 families, which included 41 caretakers and 22 children . The findings reflect how COVID-19 has disrupted the fragile equilibrium barely sustained through the tenants’ daily household maintenances before the pandemic, causing health risks, immobility, financial strain, and family conflicts, all of which severely threatened their well-being . In particular, the study examines the role of home space to illustrate how the access to and the lack of space might alleviate or aggravate the impacts brought about by COVID-19 respectively. Based on the data, this article identifies the spatial, virtual, and collective strategies employed by the families in coping with the adversities caused by COVID-19 . The study shows that while the pandemic has separated these families from their extended or immediate families in Mainland China and increased the burden of caretakers, especially women’s, it nonetheless motivated them to expand and utilize their social networks and participate in community-based collective actions . This study contributes to a multi-faceted understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on family life in conjunction with housing inequalities and spatial injustice, revealing how structural inequalities, such as those rooted in class, gender, and migration status, are operated, reinforced, and contested in everyday practices