In order to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the majority of governments have introduced population containment Certain population groups, including immigrants in precarious situations, are experiencing the impact of this measure in a brutal manner This article is based on accounts of containment experiences collected by telephone within the framework of a pre-existing intervention research carried out among immigrants to France from Sub-Saharan Africa who are in a precarious situation It highlights certain social effects of containment and the logics at work in the precarious situations This research shows how this a priori unprecedented situation affects individual capacities to act and generates a ‘disaffiliation process’ causing individuals to shift towards ‘social non-existence’, repeating lived experiences and exacerbating pre-existing logics The ordeal of containment proves to be an ordinary experience for these individuals
Immigrants facing COVID 19 containment in France : an ordinary hardship of disaffiliation