Reframing vulnerable ‘groups’: a qualitative analysis of cross-cutting precarity during France’s COVID-19 response

France implemented wide-ranging responses to control SARS-CoV2 transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some measures targeted specific social groups considered to be ‘vulnerable’. Yet how diverse populations experienced and shared existing vulnerabilities within these public health responses remains poorly understood. Theoretical grounding of the present analysis relies on Florencia Luna"s ‘layers’ of vulnerability and David Napier and Anna Volkmann’s ‘vulnerability vortex’. Between January and July 2021, the research team led 156 ethnographic interviews among diverse participants residing in the Paris-Seine-Saint-Denis area and the Vendôme territory. We conducted thematic analysis of these interviews to elucidate the dynamic, situational experiences of vulnerability. We present in-depth cases of three participants, elaborating how differently situated people coped with the pandemic and its effects and showing that access to public services or informal forms of support was predicated on existing and dynamic forms of vulnerability, which came sharply into focus during the pandemic. Categorical boundaries between groups, we argue, were not useful in understanding some root causes of vulnerability. Rather, the consideration of existing and emerging cross-cutting forms of precarity and marginality was useful for understanding how individuals coped with the pandemic.