Alienation during crisis: experiences of COVID-19 vaccine sceptics in Singapore

This article revisits the unfolding of the COVID-19 public health crisis with a focus on the societal ruptures that emerged from the vaccine roll-out in Singapore, a country that has achieved one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. This ethnographic study provides insight into the everyday life experiences of people who were encouraged or felt pushed to get vaccinated by ever-tightening movement restrictions and how these measures shaped the relationship between the "jabbed," the reluctantly "jabbed," and the "unjabbed." Public health authorities tied moving out of this crisis to certain vaccination milestones that gave vaccinated people hope, but the unvaccinated population faced ever-tightening movement restrictions. I examine the relationship between alienation and crisis, showing how crises can shed light on the social processes of alienation and that alienation is an underexplored feature of crises. I find that crisis plays a double role in how people can experience a loss of place in society.