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An agency mapping of marginalized communities and aid providers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia
Abstract
Background: Given the urgent need for help amongst vulnerable populations throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, civil society organizations (CSOs) and members have stepped up to provide support for impacted communities. The process of responding to these urgent needs reflects the agency and resilience of civil society members in accessing or providing resources. There is still a lack of understanding of how is human agency exercised in the context of power imbalances. Such an understanding is important not only for creating an effective and inclusive aid delivery mechanisms but also improving preparedness for future public health and economic crises.
Methods: This study utilizes Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory to comprehensively map the agency landscape of aid providers and marginalized populations during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. Assuming that these populations’ main goals are access to aid while providers’ main goals are to provide aid, this study categorizes the different modes of agency involved and highlights environmental facilitators and constraints for each of these groups in achieving their goals. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with 34 participants. Using a hermeneutic content analysis based on a sample of 824 textual excerpts from the interviews, we explore the relationship between each component of the agency landscape to understand the relationships between them.
Results: We find that marginalized populations are often unable to achieve their goals despite clear intentions to survive. Additionally, we find that proxy agency is problematic for marginalized populations and characterize why this is the case.
Conclusions: Finally, we present policy recommendations which prioritise marginalized populations and their needs, while removing barriers to accessing aid.
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Background: Globally, vulnerable populations have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent responses, such as lockdown measures and mass vaccinations. Numerous ethical challenges have arisen at different levels, be it at the policy-making level or on the ground. For example, policymakers have to contain a highly contagious disease with high morbidity using scarce resources, while minimizing the medium- to long-term social and economic impacts induced by containment measures. This study explores the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations in Malaysia by using an intersectional framework that accounts for overlapping forms of marginalization.
Methods: This study utilizes in-depth qualitative data obtained from 34 individuals and organizations to understand the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on vulnerable populations in Malaysia. We utilize four principles of ethics to guide our coding and interpretation of the data – namely beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and autonomy. We utilize a frequency analysis to roughly understand the types of ethical issues that emerged. Using hermeneutic content analysis (HCA), we then explore how the principles interact with each other.
Results: Through the frequently analysis, we found that although beneficence was very prevalent in our dataset, so was a significant amount of harm – as perpetuated through injustice, the removal or lack of autonomy and maleficence. We also unearthed a worrying landscape of harm and deep systemic issues associated with a lack of support for vulnerable households – further exacerbated during the pandemic.
Conclusions: Policy recommendations for aid organizations and society to mitigate these ethical problems are presented, such as long overdue institutional reforms and stronger ethical practices rooted in human rights principles, which government agencies and aid providers can then use in the provision of aid to vulnerable populations.
Significance
School closures have been a common tool in the battle against COVID-19. Yet, their costs and benefits remain insufficiently known. We use a natural experiment that occurred as national examinations in The Netherlands took place before and after lockdown to evaluate the impact of school closures on students’ learning. The Netherlands is interesting as a “best-case” scenario, with a short lockdown, equitable school funding, and world-leading rates of broadband access. Despite favorable conditions, we find that students made little or no progress while learning from home. Learning loss was most pronounced among students from disadvantaged homes.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are one of the important players during a pandemic, including the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia (IMAM) Response and Relief Team (IMARET). During COVID-19, IMARET played a key role in assisting health relief efforts in Malaysia. We are sharing this experience as a medical NGO’s response to the pandemic. This report presents data from the 18 th of March to the 10 th of June 2020 retrieved from IMARET’s database with approval from the Executive Committee (EXCO) and the IMARET COVID-19 Task Force. We report IMARET’s task force consists of 30 people, mostly medical doctors. Aids distributed included Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) with other medical equipment such as portable ultrasounds and ventilators. IMARET engaged with 33 collaborators and 92 partners and funders. There were 135 volunteers, majority of them being medical volunteers. IMARET raised more than RM 3 million (USD 740,000) garnering support from over 40,000 donors in 85 days. In conclusion, NGOs play a significant role that effectively enhance and complement the consolidated works by the authorities and public in the effort to overcome COVID-19 challenges.
All over the world, urban communities take initiative in order to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. This study conducts a literature review and an international exploratory study in order to identify pathways within which Community Resilience Initiatives (CRIs) emerge within different governance contexts. The CRIs target vulnerable communities, which are hard to reach. Our study results identify four pathways: (1) informal bottom-up community initiatives; (2) formal community initiatives emerging out of existing community-based initiatives; (3) initiatives of external actors, often NGOs, universities or governments and (4) networks of organisations whom together initiate action in response to COVID-19. The pathways lead to different types, scales and complexities of the initiatives. However, all face similar barriers related to funding, weak networks and limited cooperation. CRIs often perceive the government agencies to be unreliable and unsupportive which in turn also hampers CRI’s emergence.
The social work profession, more than any other, is most hurt by the rampaging coronavirus (aka, COVID-19) pandemic given the scourge's pernicious impact on society's underserved and undervalued populations. More so, the pandemic has undermined the profession's historical value commitment to social justice and human rights while overturning our insistence on the importance of human relationships. The purpose of this essay is to explicate the nexus between social work and COVID-19 pandemic. While noting the deafening silence of the profession in the global discourse of the pandemic, it advocates for the urgency of our response if our profession is to attain significant public value amid the current loss of lives and threats to human rights. Strategies for our professional action, in flattening the curve of the contagion, are laid out.
In early 2020, a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) began to trickle through global communi-ties, resulting in a pandemic of proportions not seen since 1918. In the US, while the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, initially affected international travelers and their close contacts, it is now ravaging many disadvantaged communities. As in past pandemics, social and economic determinants will strongly influence susceptibility to and health outcomes of COVID-19; thus, it is predictable that low-income and vulnerable US populations will be dis-proportionately affected. Certain “hot spots” have already demonstrated high rates of COVID-19–related mortality in minority populations, particularly those of impoverished communities, likely due to increased prevalence of comorbid conditions as a result of unequal socioeconomic factors and inadequate access to timely healthcare [1–5]. We can anticipate similar outcomes in other vulnerable populations, particularly in immigrant communities, which have similar socioeconomic status and rates of comorbidities. With over 46.7 million immigrants currently living in the US, of which 11 million are undocumented [6], a socioeconomic perspective of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic within the US immigrant community is neces-sary. Here, we will focus on the potential impact of COVID-19 on immigrant communities in the US, particularly those in Texas.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global crisis, and, while Malaysia has controlled the infection more than most countries with early exposure to the virus, the Movement Control Order (MCO) has required major economic sacrifices. This, in addition to a COVID-19-caused global economic slowdown, threatens a budget crisis for Malaysian households. Malaysian households often carry a great deal of debt and have little savings; without a source of income, many households could quickly lose access to necessities like food or housing. In response, the Malaysian government has created a series of stimulus packages.
This report uses a survey of Malaysian household income and expenditures conducted from the 20th to the 27th of March to analyze the effect of these stimulus packages on the cash-flow and solvency of Malaysian households. We find that they are likely to address most of the cash-flow issues brought on by the COVID-19 crisis, at least in the short term. While a substantial minority of M40 respondents and a nearly half of B40 respondents reported negative cash-flow due to the crisis, the stimulus policies are able to decrease negative cash-flow rates among our respondents to levels at or below those that persisted before the COVID-19 crisis for the month of April, assuming income and expenditures from March persist. Among the minority who still have negative cash-flow, most have enough savings to survive for more than three months.
However, a small minority of respondents in our survey are still likely to run out of money in the next few months, especially among the B40. If policymakers wish to further protect households from budget crises after the one-time transfers of April, our analysis shows that transfers to lower-income households—families making RM 4,000 or less and single individuals making RM 2,000 or less—are dramatically more effective than transfers to higher income households.
There are several caveats to our conclusions: our sample is not representative, and our cash-flow estimates are only approximate, so our results should only be viewed as suggestive. Additionally, our responses come from the beginning of the MCO, so they likely undercount the number of Malaysians who have lost their jobs or have decreased income. Finally, this analysis assumes benefits can be easily and quickly disbursed to distressed households. Elderly individuals or those in rural areas may not have the internet access or expertise to secure their benefits, and delays in disbursement could be catastrophic for households with no savings.
Most studies on sustainable mobility focus on technological, socio-structural, or psychosocial influences while neglecting individual motivations and practices. In this study, we examine mobility motivations and practices as part of a complex interplay between psychosocial and socio-structural dimensions within the mobility infrastructure of Metrorail in the Western Cape. Drawing on Albert Bandura's theory of personal agency and the model of triadic reciprocal causation, we interviewed 38 commuters (mean age 33 years, SD 11, 50% women/men) and analyzed the data using hermeneutic content analysis and multidimensional scaling. Based on our analyses, we identified three pathways that describe the mobility practices of Metrorail users, each with its own purpose and function. We explore these pathways and their consequences for sustainable mobility in relation to daily commuter agency, motivations, and past experiences.
This article presents the research conducted in the grassroots “sewing masks at home” movement in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. One of the authors (Kamińska-Sztark) was among the leaders of an informal group in Wroclaw that started work with two sewing machines, ended with 124 engaged, and with a total result of more than 13000 masks produced and donated free to nursing homes, hospitals, schools, cultural institutions and individuals in need. The gender dimension of this action is outlined although not examined in depth. The focus is on grassroots strategies and their dynamics and opportunities for urban politics. The authors use Sennett’s theory of cooperation as a framework for interpretation. The research findings lead to recommendations for urban strategies, local governments and leaders.
As the architect of racial disparity, racism shapes the vulnerability of communities. Socially vulnerable communities are less resilient in their ability to respond to and recover from natural and man‐made disasters when compared to resourced communities. This essay argues that racism exposes existing practices and structures in public administration that, along with the effects of COVID‐19, have led to disproportionate infection and death rates of Black people. Using the Centers for Disease Control's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) authors analyze the ways Black bodies occupy the most vulnerable communities, making them bear the brunt of COVID‐19’s impact. Findings suggest that existing disparities exacerbate COVID‐19 outcomes for Black people. Targeted universalism is offered as an administrative framework to meet the needs of all people impacted by COVID‐19.
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International and national crises often highlight inequalities in the labor market that disproportionately affect individuals from marginalized backgrounds. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting changes in society due to social distancing measures, has showcased inequities in access to decent work and experiences of discrimination resulting in many of the vulnerable populations in the United States experiencing a much harsher impact on economic and work-related factors. The purpose of this essay is to describe how the COVID-19 pandemic may differentially affect workers of color, individuals from low-income backgrounds, and women in complex ways. First, this essay will discuss disproportionate representation of workers from low-income and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds in sectors most affected by COVID-19. Second, it will discuss the lack of decent work for low-income workers who perform “essential” tasks. Third, this essay will highlight economic and work-related implications of increased discrimination Asian Americans are experiencing in society. Finally, role conflict and stress for women who are managing additional unpaid work, including caretaking responsibilities, while needing to continue to engage in paid work will be examined. A research agenda will be set forth throughout the essay, calling for vocational psychologists to engage in research that fully examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting vulnerable communities.
This article presents an agentic theory of human development, adaptation, and change. The evolutionary emergence of advanced symbolizing capacity enabled humans to transcend the dictates of their immediate environment and made them unique in their power to shape their life circumstances and the courses their lives take. In this conception, people are contributors to their life circumstances, not just products of them. Social cognitive theory rejects a duality between human agency and social structure. People create social systems, and these systems, in turn, organize and influence people's lives. This article discusses the core properties of human agency, the different forms it takes, its ontological and epistemological status, its development and role in causal structures, its growing primacy in the coevolution process, and its influential exercise at individual and collective levels across diverse spheres of life and cultural systems.
© 2006 Association for Psychological Science.
This article presents the basic tenets of social cognitive theory. It is founded on a causal model of triadic reciprocal causation in which personal factors in the form of cognitive, affective and biological events, behavioral patterns, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants that influence one another bidirectionally. Within this theory, human agency is embedded in a self theory encompassing self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective and self-regulative mechanisms. Human agency can be exercised through direct personal agency; through proxy agency relying on the efforts of intermediaries; and by collective agency operating through shared beliefs of efficacy, pooled understandings, group aspirations and incentive systems, and collective action. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Growing transnational imbeddedness and interdependence of societies are creating new social realities in which global forces increasingly interact with national ones to shape the nature of cultural life.
Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to improving ways of assessing the effectiveness of development interventions. This is to be welcomed, especially with regard to community-based or participatory aid projects, since considerable resources are currently being earmarked for these by almost all types of donor agencies, including large international organizations. Such projects are vulnerable to elite capture at local level, and this problem must be mitigated if most of the aid funds thus disbursed are to reach the intended beneficiaries. This article discusses several methods available to achieve that objective. In particular, it argues that the sequential and conditional release of aid funds may not be sufficient to keep elite capture well under control, making it necessary to resort to co-ordination mechanisms among aid agencies, such as multilateral reputation mechanisms. Even these are not going to be effective enough, however. In the end, an active role will have to be played by the ultimate purveyors of aid money, whether the taxpayers or the contributors in fund-raising campaigns.
Incl. bibl., abstract. Several developing economies have recently introduced conditional cash transfer programs, which provide money to poor families contingent on certain behavior, usually investments in human capital, such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centers. The approach is both an alternative to more traditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complement to the supply of health and education services. Unlike most development initiatives, conditional cash transfer programs have been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness using experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluation results for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressing many of the failures in delivering social assistance, such as weak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfare impacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generation of programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raising household consumption. Many questions remain unanswered, however, including the potential of conditional cash transfer programs to function well under different conditions, to address a broader range of challenges among poor and vulnerable populations, and to prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
Multidimensional scaling is the problem of representingn objects geometrically byn points, so that the interpoint distances correspond in some sense to experimental dissimilarities between objects. In just what sense distances and dissimilarities should correspond has been left rather vague in most approaches, thus leaving these approaches logically incomplete. Our fundamental hypothesis is that dissimilarities and distances are monotonically related. We define a quantitative, intuitively satisfying measure of goodness of fit to this hypothesis. Our technique of multidimensional scaling is to compute that configuration of points which optimizes the goodness of fit. A practical computer program for doing the calculations is described in a companion paper.
The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one's life pursuits. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one's behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort. Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.
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