Italy has been the European country first struck and most heavily affected by COVID-19 Exploring the outbreak's impact on the migration reception system in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna region, we show how anthropological tools have been applied to mitigate public health misunderstandings and the effects of legislative measures among vulnerable mothers, asylum seekers, and refugees Following a description of the legal horizon and migrant reception systems, we explore the gaps in representations of COVID-19 containment measures By observing the underlying structures of social inequality and the relationship between individual/social/political bodies, this essay offers an ethnographically grounded analysis It investigates how the outbreak has been experienced and represented by vulnerable migrants-diseased adult men, sex trafficked, and mothers migrants-living in reception structures Although their experiences differ with gender, age, and material conditions, they all show what is at stake: the cultural diffraction of disease representations and symbolic meanings according to a visible/invisible conceptualization in particular institutional forms Monitoring the social pandemic and local response to COVID-19, we shed light on the reconfiguring of sociocultural beliefs and people's lived experience of containment measures, quarantine, and prescribed behaviors
"I Told You the Invisible Can Kill You": Engaging Anthropology as a Response in the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy