The spring of 2020 brought fear, death and grief to hundreds of thousands across the globe. In the few months that the second year undergraduate journalism students taking Professor Doppelt’s spring 301 writing and reporting Immigrant Connect course were getting to know immigrants and refugees, more than 400,000 people died of the coronavirus pandemic. More than ¼ of them died in the U.S.

As the class was meeting for the first times in early April, they decided to focus our reporting on the pandemic’s effect on different immigrant and refugee communities.

What the group came to realize is that one of the potential effects of a global pandemic is to recognize that the experiences of migration and decisions about cross-national travel may pull the U.S., willingly or not, out of its exceptionalist posture and into a more cooperative arena.

Here are their stories on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected different immigrant and refugee communities:

How have Chinese students handled what to do as the spread of COVID-19 limited their options to return to China? By Connie Deng 

Are people turning to traditional Chinese medicine during the coronavirus pandemic? By Lydia Rivers

How have Korean Americans prepared for COVID-19?  By Chloe Jeonghyun Heo

How have Indian grocery stores been impacted by COVID-19? By Rachel Baldauf

How have African refugees coped with COVID-19?  By Michael Fitzpatrick

How did COVID-19 affect Ramadan celebrations in the Arab American community around Dearborn, Michigan? By Bailey Pekar