The current world scale coronavirus crisis is likely to instil radical changes in virtually all aspects of our societies, economies and polities. While the rhetoric of ‘Build Back Better’ clashes with calls for ‘Just Recovery’ and ‘Build Forward Better’ (e.g. Morrison, 2020) the future Covid-19-shaped global society is in the making, and permanent, long-term consequences are still unclear. In the meantime, some conclusions can be drawn regarding the massive and abrupt changes imposed on many aspects of present day-to-day life. Among these stands transnational economic migration, a perhaps overlooked reality that has been greatly affected by the pandemic. The International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2020) recognised migrant workers as a particularly vulnerable category in the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic, which exacerbated existing inequalities and created new problems.
Before Covid-19, migrant workers were regularly exposed to systemic and individual discrimination, precarity, inadequate living and working conditions, and deep socio-economic inequalities. These often translated into limited access to primary services as healthcare, housing, pension schemes, or trade union support, fuelling a social exclusionary machine.
The advent of Covid-19 aggravated existing marginalization and gave rise to new risks like unemployment and deportations. Productive slowdowns impacted many economic sectors employing prevalently low-skilled migrant workers, often operating within multinational supply chain networks across low or middle income countries, where the profit-driven need to source low-cost workforce has been usually met with mass transnational labour migration. Pandemic-imposed productivity decreases put migrant workers at higher risk of layoffs, with some being stuck without livelihood in hosting countries amid border closures, and others being returned to countries of origin, contributing to the virus spread (Piper & Foley, 2021).
Not all of these choices are strictly determined by Covid-19. As Piper and Foley (2021) demonstrated, the compression of worker rights is, at times, deliberately pursued, with employers taking advantage of the pandemic to unlawfully dismiss migrant workers and withhold wages and benefits to increase profit margins, even when the business is thriving. Migrant workers have been forced into accepting poorer employment terms and conditions, including wage cut or delays, resulting in widespread food insecurity and homelessness.
This phenomenon is reproduced – with local specificities – across the globe. South and Southeast Asian countries, typically heavily relying on a transnational workforce and having limited social protections, have been particularly affected by economic disruption. However, this is far from being a locally-circumscribed anomaly. A report from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre tracked a 275% increase in labour abuses against migrant workers in Gulf countries amid Covid-19 (Archer & McMullan, 2020). Reported human rights violations amount to lack of adequate healthcare, inhumane living conditions, food, housing and visa deprivation, as well as ‘the endemic issue of wage theft’ – situations that resemble features of modern slavery. Neither migrant workers in Western countries are exempt from the negative impact of Covid-19. For example, Fasani and Mazza (2020) found that third-country migrant workers in the European Union are more disadvantaged by Covid-19, being more likely to be exposed to temporary and unsecure employment, lower wages, and digital divide.
Overall, this situation has a global socioeconomic and humanitarian impact that transcends individual, dramatic situations. Data confirm that migrants – particularly in lower paid jobs – are more vulnerable to infection (Migration Data Portal, 2020). Figures from the World Bank (2020) show that global remittance flows to low and middle-income countries – usually in constant growth – fell by approximately 7.2% in 2020, and are expected to experience a further decline of 7.5% in 2021 due to weak economic growth and job uncertainty in migrant-hosting countries, including decreases in migrant workers’ wages and job losses driven by the pandemic. In addition, migrant workers, particularly irregular and informal ones, are broadly excluded by national labour protections and are a particularly neglected category under international human rights law. To date, only 25 states have ratified the ILO Migrant Workers Convention, and the 56 state parties to the UN Convention on Migrant Workers are almost exclusively African and Latin American countries.
The pandemic is also a pretext for states to shrink civic spaces and curtail human rights and civil liberties, both in the Global North and South. According to Civicus (2020), serious restrictions have alarmingly increased over the past year and 87% of the world’s population currently lives in countries with closed, repressed or obstructed civic space, which includes limited labour rights, freedom of association and anti-slavery protections.
In conclusion, the current pandemic has seemingly played a crucial role in worsening pre-existing vulnerability factors for migrant workers. The adverse socioeconomic impact hit developing countries, that already had struggling economies and poor labour rights records, often relying on cheaper immigrant workforce from neighbour countries, harder. The virus has exacerbated not only the North- South divide, but also intra-regional inequalities and transborder social conflicts. As many before, the Covid-19 crisis is a driver of self-reproducing inequalities.
References
Archer, I. and McMullan, D. (2020), COVID-19: Spike in allegations of labour abuse against migrant workers in the Gulf, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre [online] Available at: <https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/blog/spike-in-allegations-of-labour-abuse-against-migrant-workers-in-the-gulf/> [Accessed 19 January 2021].
CIVICUS (2020) Civic space on a downward spiral [online] Available at: <https://findings2020.monitor.civicus.org/downward-spiral.html#covid-19> [Accessed 15 January 2021].
Fasani, F. and Mazza, J. (2020), A Vulnerable Workforce: Migrant Workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic. EUR 30225 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Ispra [online] Available at: <https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC120730/online.pdf> [Accessed 17 January 2021].
ILO (2020), Policy Brief ‘Protecting migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic Recommendations for Policy-makers and Constituents’ [online] Available at: <https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_743268.pdf> [Accessed 15 January 2021].
ILO Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143)
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank (2020), Phase II: COVID-19 Crisis through a Migration Lens Migration and Development Brief 33. Available at: <https://www.knomad.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Migration%20%26%20Development_Brief%2033.pdf> [Accessed 17 January 2021].
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, adopted by General Assembly resolution 45/158 of 18 December 1990
Migration Data Portal, Migration data relevant for the COVID-19 pandemic [online] Available at: <https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/migration-data-relevant-covid-19-pandemic> [Accessed 20 January 2021].
Morrison, J. (2020), Building Forward Better: Thoughts on Intergenerational Justice, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre [online] Available at: <https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/blog/building-forward-better-thoughts-on-intergenerational-justice/> [Accessed 25 January 2021].
Piper, N. and Foley, L. (2021), The other pandemic for migrant workers: wage theft [online] openDemocracy. Available at: <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pandemic-border/other-pandemic-migrant-workers-wage-theft/> [Accessed 17 January 2021].
Bio
Andrea Maria Pelliconi is a GTA and PhD candidate in Law at City, University of London, and is visiting lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. Her doctoral research focuses on demographic engineering, forced migration and international law. She holds an advanced master in Human Rights from Sapienza University and a combined BA&MA of Law from Bocconi University. She practiced law in Italy and gained international professional experience in human rights, refugee and migration law.