Solidarity and COVID-19 in Chile: tensions and challenges to face the pandemic in solidarity

Abstract

COVID-19 has generated both, a socio-sanitary and an economic crisis, requesting collaboration from many institutions, at global and national scale. Moreover, this pandemic has driven to the construction of a collective sense of compliance with the emergent socio-sanitary measures taken by the governments in order to control the spread of Coronavirus disease. However, the meaning of such solidarity, its specific content, and the set of conditions that make its implementation possible seem somewhat ambiguous. This article contributes to promote discussion from an approach oriented to personal experiences acquired during pandemic, with a focus on the way people sense such solidarity, plus the descriptions and evaluations of the conditions that make it possible. These enquiries are addressed from a qualitative research carried out in four regions of Chile, whose results from the interviewees show that solidarity is understood from a moral sense of responsibility over the collective care, which depends mainly on three interrelated dimensions: the institutionalization of solidarity, government management, and the challenges associated to collective and interpersonal practices, in the follow-up of socio-sanitary measures.