Japanese immigrants in Québec: Experience of health information access during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our study seeks to understand the effect of language on the dissemination of critical pandemic public health information in the Japanese immigrant community in Québec. As this group is not the only small community struggling with linguistic barriers on information access, the current study can serve as a model for investigating similar kinds of questions in other small linguistic minority communities. We first explore information access patterns of first generation, Québec-dwelling Japanese immigrants during the pandemic. We will document the community’s perceived limitations in their access and whether they experienced inconsistences and conflicting information between news sources in different languages. Secondly, we test if and how language proficiency prevented Japanese immigrants from accessing local COVID-related information (Canada and Québec), in English and in French. Finally, we will investigate the mental health and behavioural impacts of having limited Canadian COVID-19 information on this community.