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Extant theory suggests that crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic may change people's trust in others. A crisis-to-solidarity model suggests that people become more trusting, while a crisis-to-negative experience theory suggests that people lose trust, and a stability perspective predicts that social trust will largely remain unchanged. We argue that, when a crisis occurs, trust is likely to fall into distinct trajectories of change that will conform to these different perspectives, and placement into contrasting trajectories of change will be predicated on socioeconomic position. To test our argument, we use data from multiple waves of Canadian national surveys conducted from September 2019 to February 2021 and examine how two major forms of social trust-generalized trust and neighborhood trust-changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA) shows increasing, decreasing, and stable trajectories of trust, which conform to each of the proposed patterns. We further show that individuals' baseline socioeconomic position is a strong indicator of the placement in these trajectories. Both forms of trust increased among individuals with higher socioeconomic positions while decreased among individuals with lower socioeconomic positions. This research contributes to the literature on the social context of trust by reconciling contrasting views of the consequences of crises for trust, and also in showing that the segmentation of changes in trust are proscribed by structures of social stratification.

This article considers how county-level concentrations of Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites are associated with COVID-19 vaccination differently. I argue that racially specific mechanisms-differential concentrations of social vulnerability and political ideology by race-are likely to create diverse associations between racial concentration and COVID-19 vaccination not only across racial groups but also within racial groups over time from early rollout to the time after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available. I test this argument by drawing on data from multiple sources that include county-level information on COVID-19 vaccination rates, racial population make-ups, and measures of political ideology and community vulnerability. Results show that the association between racial concentration and COVID-19 vaccination changes substantially across and within racial groups over time. Counties with higher percent of Asians and percent of Whites have higher vaccination rates at earlier time intervals whereas counties with higher percent of Latinos and percent of Blacks show lower vaccination rates. This trend flips at later dates for percent of Blacks, percent of Latinos, and percent of Whites. Results from multilevel regression models and mediation analysis controlling for vaccine hesitancy show that social vulnerability and political ideology are the underlying factors and their differential associations with diverse racial concentrations help create the racially specific and time-varying patterns.

In this article, we provide a cultural explanation of a long-standing trust puzzle in Canada-Quebecers trust much less than their fellow Canadians. Specifically, we develop a novel approach to empirically assess the historical influence of the Catholic Church, using the Quiet Revolution (a period of abrupt modernization in Quebec) as a natural experiment. We find that older cohorts socialized prior to the Quiet Revolution are significantly less trusting-a distinctive trend that is most pronounced among Catholics. Conversely, in the rest of Canada older cohorts are more trusting, following the trend commonly found in other countries. Furthermore, measures of both religious beliefs and modernization account for a large part of the birth cohort trust gap in Quebec. The findings suggest that low trust in Quebec is rooted in the province's Catholic cultural heritage, but that the legacy of the Quiet Revolution is gradually changing the trust culture.Dans cet article, nous proposons une explication culturelle d'un casse-tête de longue date au Canada - les Québécois ont un niveau de confiance sociale plus bas que leurs concitoyens Canadiens. Plus précisément, nous développons une nouvelle approche pour évaluer empiriquement l'influence historique de l'Église catholique, en utilisant la Révolution tranquille (une période de modernisation abrupte au Québec) comme expérience naturelle. Nous constatons que les cohortes plus âgées et socialisées avant la Révolution tranquille font nettement moins confiance - une tendance distincte qui est plus prononcée chez les catholiques. Le contraire est constaté dans le reste du Canada : les cohortes plus âgées font davantage confiance, ce qui suit la tendance communément observée dans d'autres pays. De plus, les mesures des croyances religieuses et de la modernisation expliquent une grande partie de l'écart de confiance sociale entre les cohortes de naissance au Québec. Les résultats suggèrent que le faible niveau de confiance au Québec est enraciné dans l'héritage culturel catholique de la province, mais que le legs de la Révolution tranquille modifie progressivement la culture de confiance.

Research on international student’s post migration plans treats migration as a binary stay-return category and focuses on push-pull factors as the cause of this migration. In this paper we expand the definition of migration and consider the role of life experiences and aspirations, particularly the concept of home. We ask, what are the different conceptualizations of home and how are these tied to differential migratory plans? We analyze data from 232 interviews with international students from more than 50 countries who attended a flagship public university in Canada from 2006–2013.We find that students have four ways of thinking about home: as host, as ancestral, as cosmopolitan, and as nebulous. These understandings of home correspond to particular post-migration plans. While students who view home as a host plan to stay, and those who view home as ancestral plan to return, those with cosmopolitan and nebulous conceptions of home have more open migration plans.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak started in China, Chinese and Chinese looking East Asian Canadians have experienced more racist attacks, violence, and discrimination. In this article, we consider whether East Asian Canadians face a disproportionate mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and, if so, whether the increased levels of discrimination explain this differential impact. Analyzing data from a nationally representative survey we conducted in March and April, 2020, we indeed find that higher incidences of acute discrimination encountered by East Asian Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic explain their higher levels of mental health symptoms as compared to white Canadians. We call for a need to include mental health interventions and support designed specifically to address the needs of the East Asian Canadians in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why have the effects of COVID-19 been so unevenly geographically distributed in the United States? This paper investigates the role of social capital as a mediating factor for the spread of the virus. On one hand, higher social capital could imply greater in-person interaction and risk of contagion. On the other hand, because social capital is associated with greater trust and relationships within a community, it could endow individuals with a greater concern for others, thereby leading to more hygienic practices and social distancing. Using data for over 2,700 US counties, we investigate how social capital explains the level and growth rate of infections. We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths, as well as suggestive evidence of a lower spread of the virus. Our results are robust to many demographic characteristics, controls, and alternative measures of social capital. Finally, we discuss the channels through which social capital makes communities better able to respond to outbreaks.