Social Links and Resilience to COVID-19

Sev­er­al stud­ies have shown that indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive resilience fol­low­ing a cri­sis depends to a large extent on the and the qual­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als’ social ties. While social bonds have been weak­ened and trans­formed by the pan­dem­ic, how is it pos­si­ble to pre­serve and strengthen?

After an analy­sis of the effects of the pan­dem­ic on social ties in the six bor­oughs of Mon­tréal, researchers from Cité-ID pro­posed to be more con­cerned with the qual­i­ty of social ties in the process of col­lec­tive recov­ery in the face of COVID-19. It is rec­om­mend­ed to inter­vene to break the cycle of iso­la­tion cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic for peo­ple who already ben­e­fit from a restrict­ed social net­work. Sec­ond, a strat­e­gy should be devel­oped to avoid a decrease in social cohe­sion due to an increase in dis­trust of young adults and strangers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Final­ly, the types of social links must be strength­ened in antic­i­pa­tion of crises, in par­tic­u­lar by strength­en­ing a strong and coor­di­nat­ed social infra­struc­ture between pub­lic author­i­ties (cities, min­istries) and com­mu­ni­ty organizations.

These rec­om­men­da­tions are based on a study by the Cité-ID team on the impact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on the links of res­i­dents of the city’s six bor­oughs. The objec­tive was to bet­ter under­stand how the social cap­i­tal of Mon­treal­ers can play a role in indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.