This paper analyses how COVID-19 and the resultant lockdown policies in Nairobi have impacted migrant community interactions. Drawing on data collected among Eritrean and Ethiopian diasporas, it demonstrates the following: Lockdown policies have greatly impacted migrants’ lives through loss of income and reduced remittances. Even those in employment often relied on additional remittances from diaspora members in the Global North. More importantly, COVID-19 policies have reduced or eliminated the social spaces that determine diaspora lives to more important degrees than material resources. Lockdown policies had profound implications on the ability to attend religious gatherings and coffee ceremonies. Both are vital social focal points from where interactions within the diaspora community, but also with other residents in the city, are being created and maintained. These dynamics have severe implications for migrant communities who draw considerable strengths from these social encounters. Government responses have affected migrants’ livelihoods in ways that are ill-understood or ignored. Findings from the paper contribute to a better understanding of the complex dynamics that determine such livelihoods. This in turn is to help inform public policy so that in the mitigation of future pandemics, the policy response takes holistic migrant well-being better into account.