A Qualitative Study on Older Korean Immigrants' Experience of Anti-Asian Racism and Coping Strategies During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objectives: Incidents of anti-Asian racism sharply increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding direct and indirect (vicarious) racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, perceived discrimination contributes to adverse mental health in older Korean immigrants. Thus, it is important to better understand the experiences of anti-Asian racism among older Korean immigrants in the USA and their coping strategies during the pandemic. Therefore, in this study, we qualitatively explored how older Korean immigrants perceived discrimination related to their ethnicity and race and how they coped with the discrimination experiences during the pandemic.

Methods: We recruited 18 older Korean immigrants with perceived discrimination from church sites and non-profit organizations in rural and urban areas in the USA and invited them to participate in focus group sessions. We conducted the thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti software to reconstruct and categorize the qualitative data.

Results: Older Korean immigrants experienced direct and vicarious discrimination before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, which evoked feelings of anxiety, anger, sadness, and displeasure. They coped with adverse mental health by staying home or doing religious activities. Participants who had no coping strategies to alleviate their discrimination-related stress tended to discriminate against people of Chinese descent.

Discussion: Future studies are required to investigate the mechanism of reproduced discrimination against people of Chinese descent among older non-Chinese Asians with a lack of coping strategies and healthcare resources in the community.