ABSTRACT Despite numerous studies that have demonstrated widening social inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not yet see research on whether the surge in social inequalities would also have unequal consequences for people's subjective experience. By linking the countrywide Understanding Society COVID-19 longitudinal survey with the latest wave of the main-stage survey, we examine whether and how the psychological costs of economic lockdowns are unevenly distributed between UK-born and foreign-born working men. Findings provide direct evidence for a widening gap in mental well-being resulting from the widening socioeconomic gap between immigrant and native-born working men, during COVID-19 lockdowns. Employment disruption does not necessarily hurt mental well-being of the native-born, as long as their income is protected. For immigrants, however, work hour reduction is generally accompanied by psychological costs, with greater mental suffering among immigrant men who experience work hour reduction without income protection – particularly in the extreme scenario of reduction to no work hours.

ABSTRACT Research on happiness finds that rising incomes do not generally lead to increases in happiness. This finding suggests that economic migration – i.e., migration motivated by the prospect of increased income – might not bring greater happiness: when economic migrants believe that migration will improve their lives, that belief might be misguided at least insofar as ‘improvement’ is conceived in terms related to happiness. Perhaps economic migration under certain conditions even results in lower happiness, if it involves sacrifices in other respects that are more consequential for happiness. This paper explores these propositions via comparison of Romanian migrants to non-migrants (using data from the European Social Survey) and finds that returned migrants report lower happiness than non-migrants (controlling for other variables), while migrants who have not returned are not different in happiness from stayers. The cross-sectional analysis cannot directly answer questions about the consequences of migration and return – there are no data on the migrants' happiness prior to migration. But the analysis sharpens the questions that might be asked in future research and considers how various scenarios would be consistent with the findings produced here.