Migrants In A World Trying To Recover From The Pandemic
International Migrants Alliance and Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants - November 2022
In early 2020, the Covid-19 virus spread and swiftly turned into a pandemic, affecting the majority of regions around the globe. With the virus being contracted by millions of people worldwide, the stark weaknesses and incapacities of public health systems, economies and political systems built within neoliberal frameworks have come to the fore.
The pandemic has undoubtedly worsened the health and economic crises that the world has been experiencing. Almost half of the world’s workforce, migrants included, faced the risk of losing or actually lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
According to the World Migration Report of the International Organization on Migration, in 2022. 3.6 percent of the entire global population or around 280 million people are living in a country other than their countries of birth. This is almost double the data from 1990, and three times more than in 1970. Many more migrants are not officially reflected in records due to massive cases of undocumented status. The International Labor Organization (ILO), meanwhile, estimates that out of hundreds of millions of migrants, 169 million are migrant workers, nearly 5 percent of the global workforce.
Migrants had to grapple with a web of issues surrounding their rights to comprehensive healthcare, inclusive aid and relief programs, secure and decent jobs, and social justice. The issues they were facing prior to the pandemic became more apparent and palpable. The challenges that they were confronting as migrant workers, refugees, immigrants and displaced peoples were made more visible in the context of the global pandemic.
An increasingly privatized and profit-oriented healthcare system had made health services more inaccessible to migrant workers, especially the financially incapable. Other factors such as legal, cultural and linguistic barriers had also contributed to migrants’ inability to access these services.[1] Migrants who have entered countries through illegal channels were and still are unable to approach hospitals due to fear of apprehension. Refugees who were forced by their situation to enter foreign countries cannot access services or even inquire about them. Most requirements came in a language foreign and intelligible to them. Discrimination against migrants, displayed in unfriendly and racist demeanor, has also led to low prioritization or even outright denial with regard to healthcare and other services.
Prior to the pandemic, migrant workers have already been receiving dismally low wages and little to no benefits while working in precarious and dangerous jobs. These low wages were even subjected to wage cut schemes during the pandemic. While remittance flows generally increased, aside from a slight drop in 2020, the value of currencies in the Global South continue to depreciate amid rapid inflation growth and the economic crisis that the pandemic has exacerbated. This economic insecurity is further worsened by migrants’ exclusion from social aid and relief and other social protection programs.
Compounding the already dire situation, migrants have faced greater racism and xenophobia in their places of work and residence. Negative perceptions of migrants are perpetuated by ultranationalist politicians, parties and movements that fuel narratives that migrants “steal” jobs and other economic opportunities from citizens. These narratives serve as pretext for attacks against migrants in the areas of wages, jobs and services, along with outright discrimination, hateful demeanor, and verbal and physical abuse.
Three years into the pandemic, and amid relentless attacks on their rights to health, aid, jobs and justice, migrants must fortify their ranks, link their struggles, collectively fight for their welfare and stride together towards attaining a society where genuine equality and prosperity based on social justice reign.
Low wages and insecure, unsafe jobs
Even before the pandemic, migrant workers were already victims of low and depreciating wages, non-payment of wages and benefits, insecure and unstable jobs which are mostly contractual and seasonal, unsafe workplaces, and violations of trade-union and human rights.
In the Gulf states, migrant workers faced issues of what labor advocacy groups call “wage theft,” which includes outright non-payment of wages, reduced wages and benefits, decreases in remuneration and allowances without proper bargaining processes, non-inclusion in social security measures otherwise accorded to nationals, and non-payment of outstanding wages after the end of contract, or termination.[2]
Migrant workers are generally paid less than nationals, even with the same work done, qualifications, and skills earned. Most governments view jobs for migrant workers as transitory and non-permanent, and thus not a priority to be brought closer to international labor standards. The precarity and insecurity of jobs, as set up by labor flexibilization policies, cuts through the experience of many migrant workers across the globe. Due to their insecure employment status, migrant workers were first in line for termination due to rightsizing and declaration of redundancies by employers in migrant-receiving countries.
Seasonal farmworkers in Canada, for example, are only issued temporary work permits for 8-month stays, corresponding with their seasonal contracts. Due to their non-regular status, migrant workers cannot officially participate in bargaining, making them susceptible to labor rights violations such as non-provision of personal protective equipment, denial of benefits from the employer, and insecure residency status including problems in housing.[3] Construction and household workers in the Gulf States also had their contracts terminated, sent home without proper assistance, and were deprived of severance pay and back wages.[4]
Many migrant workers, due to the economic hardships in the migrant-sending countries, fall victim to human trafficking schemes which involve entering migrant-receiving countries through illegal and risky channels. Women, children, and youth are often targets of human trafficking, subjected to forced labor or made to engage in illegal and criminal activities.
With the pandemic as background, the violations of internationally-recognized labor standards have gone more rampant, intense and visible in the many areas of migrant worker activity.
As governments of different countries implemented lockdown protocols, cancellation of flights, and restrictions on mobility, migrants and migrant workers suffered multiple layers of hardship. Tens of millions of lost their jobs and were forced into a state of limbo or sent home. Those who were allowed to stay in migrant-receiving countries had to bear the burden of decreased wages under wage cut schemes, and the depreciation of their pay’s value due to rapid inflation as the pandemic raged. Some capitalists outrightly denied pay to their workers, rolled back benefits and violated other labor standards in the pretext of profit loss. The situation made it hard for migrant workers to send money home, with some sending reduced amounts and others temporarily suspending sending remittances.
In 2020, remittance flows fell by 4% in East Asia and the Pacific, and by 8.6% in Europe and Central Asia, with a sharp decline in April and May only to partially recover by June. In 2021, higher remittance flows were recorded in Latin America, South Asia, Africa, while a 3.3% decline was seen in East Asia and the Pacific.[5]
A number of migrant workers who were on their way to countries of employment were blocked or stranded due to travel and border restrictions, imposed alongside pandemic time protocols. This was the case from East Africans crossing the Gulf of Aden to work in the Gulf States to seasonal migrant workers from Eastern Europe working in Western European farms; from Venezuelans working in Colombia and in other South American countries to Afghans going to Iran and Pakistan; from Haitians going to the Dominican Republic and other Latin-American countries to Mesoamerican peoples going to the USA.[6]
Other migrants were sent back home only to return to migrant-receiving countries without proper opportunities for employment and livelihood. Some worked non-regular, unstable and unsafe jobs to ensure remittances to their families back home. Stranded migrants were met with less than decent conditions in quarantine and waiting facilities, while some were even detained for failing to provide proper documentation. Around 8.5 million migrant domestic workers suffered income losses, and endured physical and sexual abuse from employers during the imposition of the lockdowns and other protocols restricting mobility and cross-border travel.[7]
By the end of 2020, the ILO reported that migrant workers were receiving nearly 13% less than citizens, with some countries even recording up to a 42% wage gap. More than half of countries studied in ILO’s report recorded an increase in the wage pay gap, ranging from 1.3 to 26.4 percentage points. Women migrant workers experience double jeopardy as they face wage discrimination as both migrants and as women.[8] The pay gap is a perennial problem that migrant workers have faced prior and was more revealed once the pandemic began, and is nowhere seen to be resolved as the world moves on to the so-called normalization stage.
As the world recovers from the pandemic, stricter border controls, more stringent requirements for migrant workers and higher costs for migration are firmly in place. In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, more migrants are forced to flee to other countries to seek refuge. More migrants are forced into illegal entry channels and are victimized by human trafficking schemes.[9] Rights groups however present a huge problem in data collection, as victims hesitate reporting victimization due to fear of persecution because of their illegal entry to the migrant-receiving countries. The Covid-19 pandemic has also made it more difficult for agencies and organizations to track down victims due to restrictions in mobility.[10] While migrants who made it to receiving countries via illegal entry are hesitant to seek help from authorities, they also become deprived of the chance to receive healthcare services such as vaccines.
As the world prepared for a return to “normal,” returning migrant workers were required to complete their Covid-19 vaccination doses. This raised issues in the specific vaccine brands that are considered acceptable in migrant-receiving countries, but are lacking in migrant-sending countries. Some migrant workers, however, were still not able to return abroad due to their countries’ more stringent protocols, and the higher costs of return entailed by recruitment fees, travel costs, etc.[11]
As soon as borders incrementally opened, the severe impacts of the economic crisis worsened by Covid-19 made workers more desperate to find employment overseas, with a high number falling victim to illegal recruitment, human trafficking and forced labor.
Broken health systems, wider inaccessibility
Neoliberalism has forced governments to succumb to turning supposedly public services such as education and healthcare into profit-oriented businesses. It has long ravaged public health systems around the world, and the pandemic has swiftly unraveled and made more palpable the serious weaknesses of these systems, especially in poorer countries.[12]
Preventive and community-based healthcare has long been neglected in favor of privatized and commercialized healthcare, with hospitals providing curative care almost exclusively to those who can pay. Faced with the pandemic, and due to decades of neoliberal policies, public health systems were overwhelmed and broke down, leading to millions of deaths from Covid-19 and other comorbidities.
Access to health services is doubly difficult for migrants. In a 2022 report, the World Health Organization declared that migrants are not inherently less healthy than the population in the countries that receive them, but are rather sidelined due to factors such as high healthcare costs, and a variety of legal, linguistic and cultural barriers.[13] Migrants are either denied or put on a lower priority in receiving care because of unfulfilled residency requirements or documents. Many migrant workers and refugees are also not aware of proper channels to access care, or are unable to gather important information due to language barriers, xenophobia and fear of deportation if found undocumented.
Worse, migrant workers are more likely to face occupational health and safety issues as they are designated to jobs that are categorized as dirty and dangerous. Migrants also faced infection risks due to the poor living conditions in their residence areas. Migrant workers in West Asia and North Africa are cramped in groups of six to twelve in labor camps with poor sanitation, which makes social distancing -- a minimum health protocol against Covid-19, nearly impossible.[14] In Singapore, the epicenter of a particular wave of Covid-19 infections was at a cramped dormitory complex housing around 1.7 million blue-collar workers, including migrants.[15]
At the height of the pandemic, this inability to access proper healthcare on top of work-related health and safety issues has led to a higher number of deaths among migrants. For example, in California, 50% of total deaths were either migrants or foreign-born persons.
While many migrants were deprived of much-needed healthcare, health systems in advanced capitalist countries have relied heavily on migrant healthcare workers to effectively handle the pandemic. Almost 30 percent of the workforce in highly affected sectors in OECD countries is foreign-born.[16]
At least 11 out of the 15 countries most affected by the pandemic -- the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland and Chile -- depend on migrant workers in their healthcare systems[17]. Migrants also form 12 percent of the 1.9 million workforce of the UK health system and 17 percent of the 12.4 million workforce of the US health system [18]. Migrant healthcare workers are forced to work more hours than recommended due to surges in infections and lack of personnel. Without proper hazard pay and protection equipment, they are at a greater risk of contracting the virus and dying in the line of duty.
At the same time, multinational pharmaceutical companies continue to rake in superprofits from putting a price tag on essential Covid-19 vaccines, medicines, medical supplies and equipment. This makes it more difficult for the majority of the people of lower economic status, including migrants and refugees, to access treatment and medication.
After several months, migrant-sending countries such as Indonesia began sending new batches of migrant workers to migrant-receiving countries. While vaccination was ensured by the national government, other necessary requirements to travel abroad such as RT-PCR tests were shouldered by migrant workers themselves. At the same time, many migrant workers do not have sufficient health insurance packages to cover the expenses of treatment and medication should they contract the virus in the migrant-receiving countries.[19]
A few years into the pandemic, and with the relative relaxation of lockdown restrictions, migrant workers were again exposed to the virus, this time in many of their workplaces, considered as transmission areas. Migrant workers’ workplaces remain as hotspots where outbreaks can occur. Many migrant workers asserted, through their organized strength, that proper health protocols be put in place: mass testing, contact-tracing, constant health monitoring, sanitation, and emergency protocols.
As the world reels from the debilitating economic impacts of the past three years, workers are at a greater risk of contracting the virus while some governments focus on reviving the economy at the expense of workers’ health and safety. While most enterprises are already under a “business as usual” mode, a roadmap for a safe return to workplaces and the protection of workers against Covid-19 and other diseases are still lacking.
Excluded from aid, left to fend for themselves
Cash support and in-kind relief packages are only short-term, emergency solutions to the grave challenges the pandemic has brought about. Moreover, the weaknesses that have been exposed and aggravated by the pandemic mainly relate to the lack, or inequity, of the policies forged by governments engaged in labor migration to effectively protect workers, both legally and socially, in both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries. Therefore, social protection and aid are not just matters of receiving measly cash aid, but also a matter of comprehensive policy review.[20]
Many migrant workers and refugees were denied the necessary aid, relief and support from migrant-receiving governments where they were stranded due to enforced lockdowns. Because of legal, procedural, and cultural obstacles, migrants’ migratory status has caused them to be treated as second-class citizens, therefore unworthy or at a low priority to receive aid. Among Southeast Asian countries, only Thailand was evaluated as responsive to giving migrant workers equitable unemployment benefits and support.[21] According to the ILO, these conditions are exacerbated by insufficient duration of employment and/or residence and lack of bilateral or multilateral agreements between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving governments to secure social security and protection for migrant workers.
In the midst of restrictions to mobility, border closures, and grave impacts on the economy,, migrant workers and refugees were left on their own to figure out ways to survive. Some businesses and workplaces were closed due to the lockdowns and imposed a “no-work, no-pay” scheme.[22] Filipino migrant workers, especially those who work in blue-collar jobs, were more vulnerable. Only 53% of them received assistance under medical and social protection schemes. Many were denied because they lacked the overseas employment certificate (OEC) issued by the Philippine government as proof of employment.[23]
Even repatriated workers faced challenges in accessing aid and support from governments that sent them overseas. Only around 25% Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand gained access to IDPoor cards, which would make them eligible for cash support from the Cambodian government.[24] In the Philippines, many repatriated workers were not given enough assistance after they were brought home.
Migrant workers, both those stranded and repatriated, were left to rely on themselves or on occasional and short-term relief and aid efforts of charitable groups and non-government organizations to meet their needs amid the absence, insufficiency, or denial of government support.
As the world treads the path to recovery, social protection, aid and relief programs previously rolled out were arbitrarily and prematurely discontinued, even as migrant workers try to make ends meet amid depreciating wages and soaring prices of basic goods due to inflation. In the unfortunate case that they contract Covid-19 again, access to healthcare and other essential services will again depend on whether they can pay or not, with the measly pay they receive. That is, if they have anything left after they send money home to their families.
Seeking justice for inhumane treatment
Racism, xenophobia and other exclusionary behavior suffered by migrants in receiving countries are not confined to opinions but have real impacts on their economic, political and other rights. These mindsets and behaviors worsen inequalities between migrants and citizens, cheap and local labor, and cause migrants to be denied of healthcare, decent housing and other social services. Migrant women are targeted for sex trafficking and abusive behavior. Their children are denied legal identities and citizenship.
Migrants are also denied the right to organize and form unions, and are relegated to dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs. Migrant jobs are unstable and insecure, and migrants are first in line for termination in the event of a crisis. Undocumented immigrants and refugees are rendered “invisible” with no access to basic services and no respect for their human rights. Migrants and refugees easily become scapegoated for economic, social and health issues like unemployment, diseases and criminality.[25]
Employers’ and governments’ treatment of migrant workers has worsened due to, and during, the Covid-19 pandemic. Sections of political elites and ultranationalist groups blamed migrant workers for the quick spread of the virus on a worldwide scale. These individuals and groups peddled their false, particularly anti-Asian, narratives that migrants are “virus carriers.” These narratives further fueled xenophobic and racist remarks and action towards migrants, contributing to violations of their rights and plunging them deeper into social isolation.
Most notorious among these politicians are former US president Donald Trump, who called the virus “Chinese virus,” and his State Secretary Mike Pompeo, who called it the “Wuhan virus.” Trump even expanded the anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment to cover migrants of other ethnicities such as Latin Americans and migrants from Islamic countries. [25] Political parties of the right-wing in the UK, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, Germany and Brazil have spewed similar rhetoric. Their statements have fueled attacks against people of Asian descent in the said countries and even in Australia and Russia. Discrimination against Asians was also reported in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa, even as discrimination against the Chinese was also reported in South Korea, Japan and Indonesia[26].
Xenophobic bullying and racism had a myriad of effects to migrant workers -- denial of aid and support, psychological distress, physical and verbal harassment, denial of medical care, and overall decline of their quality of life in a foreign country.[27]
Aside from promoting the “virus carrier,” narrative, governments that failed to adequately respond to the pandemic and their supporters used migrants and refugees as scapegoats and excuses for incompetence. To evade accountability for the criminal impacts of their policies, they blame migrants for shortfalls in public services, even as these have long been eroded by cuts in funding and other neoliberal schemes.
Workers’ rights, and political rights such as the right to freedom of expression and protest, have been subjected to even more repressive measures under militarized lockdowns, using the health crisis as a pretext to clamp down and prohibit protests calling for action on urgent people’s issues. In the Gulf states, individuals using social media to comment on social issues were prosecuted.[28] Blue-collar migrant workers in Singapore who were in their jobs and workplaces were framed by mainstream media as sources of Covid-19 transmission, disregarding the fact that there are other places in Singapore where mass gatherings happen. This fuels disdain for workers and migrants alike, and assigns blame to economic frontliners, instead of supporting and assisting them.[29]
Migrant workers who have experienced exploitation and abuse in the hands of employers largely felt discouraged to voice out their grievances, because of legal and procedural hindrances, fear of deportation, or outright harassment and suppression. Many workers, due to their non-permanent status, are barred from organizing and joining unions, making them unable to bargain and improve their wages and working conditions.[30]
Many Filipina domestic workers in the Gulf States experienced domestic abuse, rape, and sexual harassment which caused them physical and mental trauma. Many were forced to remain silent out of fear of termination and deportation.[31] In the Maldives, migrant workers who staged protests to assert their rights to fair pay and better working conditions were arrested and charged and their activities were tagged as “politically-motivated.”[32]
The struggles of migrants and refugees to be free from discrimination, racism and xenophobia have undoubtedly become more layered and more pronounced during the pandemic. With the rise of ultranationalist leaders and groups, attacks against migrants and refugees are being justified and normalized through a vast network of hate speech and disinformation, pounding on the heavy burden migrants are carrying in migrant-receiving countries.
Forced migration as a failed development strategy
With all the weaknesses the pandemic has exposed in the economies and political structures of different governments across the globe, one undeniable truth is that workers, including migrant workers, are the backbones of the world economy. The pandemic has brought out one fact that elites are trying to suppress -- that workers are essential. Migrant workers, including undocumented ones, played the integral roles of providing essential services -- caring for the sick and vulnerable, cooking and caring for children in residences; harvesting crops, processing, packing and delivering food; serving in supermarkets; transporting people and goods; providing security and other "frontline" activities.
Despite their important role to economies before the pandemic, and even during the pandemic, migrant workers were among the first to be disregarded during the crisis,and were immediately burdened by the weight of the crisis: wage cuts if not retrenchment, denial of assistance and health services, among others. During the height of the pandemic, those who are essential were treated as inessential.
But with all the challenges and problems faced by migrant workers in the aspects of health, aid, jobs, and justice, it is necessary to highlight the failed promise of labor migration in bringing about long-term and genuine development for migrant-sending countries. Migration-for-development as a strategy has been exposed by the pandemic as failure.
The pandemic has emphasized what previous crises have shown: that migrants’ jobs can easily be attacked or eradicated entirely when employers and elites see the necessity in these. With mass joblessness and repatriation among migrants, the pandemic has revealed a deep-seated problem, which has been there all along – migrant-sending countries are incapable of providing stable employment and livelihood opportunities to their citizens, a reality that has propelled labor export in the first place.
From the start of modern-day labor migration in the 1970s to the present, the impetus for migrations remains to be a lack of employment opportunities in poorer countries, forcing workers to seek jobs abroad. Migration, in the final analysis, has not brought about development but has instead made migrant-sending countries more dependent on remittances, and their economies vulnerable to the effects of crises in the Global North. Thus the reason why migrants left their countries in the 1970s remain to be the reason why migrants are leaving their countries at present.
Without a program to build economic and political self-reliance through programs and policies that aim to develop rural, economically backward regions and build robust, self-reliant national industries, migrant-sending countries will continue to fall victim to crisis upon crisis.
Forced migration from the Global South is a striking symptom of economies that are underdeveloped, controlled by foreign powers and a handful of elites, and unsustainable due to agrarian backwardness and a lack of industries. The pandemic teaches us an important lesson: the people, including migrant workers, from underdeveloped and foreign-dominated nations must struggle for immediate, meaningful reforms and build their power towards achieving fundamental changes, and attain a world where economies are genuinely self-reliant and prosperous, nations are truly independent and democratic, and families will not be forced to be apart.
Building migrants’ power
While some of the advanced capitalist countries are now cautiously heading towards recovery, the pandemic is far from over for most countries. In the poorer countries in the Global South, overloaded healthcare systems continue to hang by a thread. The economies of migrant-sending countries continue to be in shambles amid rapid inflation growth and the global economic crisis. The situation propels repatriated workers to seek ways to return overseas, pushes a larger number of workers in the Global South to find opportunities as migrant workers, and eggs on states to continue on their dependence on migrant workers’ remittances.
The International Migrants Alliance (IMA) reiterates its call on all migrants and refugees in sending and receiving countries to defend our dignity and assert our rights amidst the global pandemic and its aftermath and the current economic crisis. We must strengthen our internationalist unity across migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries to end forced migration, the commodification of migrants, and the imperialist system at the root of these conditions. We must unite with workers’ and people’s movements in seeking to advance these objectives and system change.
As the world strides toward pandemic recovery amidst a grave economic crisis, we refuse to return to “normal” which means returning to intensified violation of rights, exploitation and oppression. Instead, we push on to create a new and better normal for migrant workers, and all workers around the world, where we can live and labor with dignity.
We demand that governments of migrant-sending and -receiving countries:
Push for a comprehensive policy to create decent jobs in migrant-sending countries;
Ensure fair pay, better working and living conditions and respect for the trade union and human rights of migrant workers;
Activate mechanisms to ensure safe and stable work for migrants and other workers;
Ensure access of migrants and refugees to health and other social services regardless of their legal status;
Protect migrants and refugees from xenophobic attacks and discrimination;
Stop criminalization, brutal crackdowns, targeted raids and deportations of migrants and refugees;
Respect, protect and fulfill the rights of migrants, refugees and their families enshrined in various human rights instruments of the UN, ILO Conventions, and commitments under the Global Compact for Migration and Global Compact for Refugees.
Objectives
To build-on, link-up and amplify the struggles of migrants and their organizations against the worsening exploitation, abuse, discrimination, criminalization, and violence directed at migrants and refugees amidst the COVID-19 crisis
To deepen the awareness of migrants and other sectors about the role of neoliberalism and imperialism in exacerbating and prolonging the devastating effects of the COVID pandemic on poor countries, the working classes and migrant communities
To popularize our vision for an alternative post-COVID future that is free of exploitation and abuse, and where no one is forced to become a migrant
To encourage more migrants organizations and pro-migrants groups and institutions to join the IMA especially in countries and sub-sectors with relatively fewer IMA members
To strengthen and establish more cooperative linkages with allied individuals and groups for the advancement of migrants’ and refugees’ rights and dignity, and an end to forced migration.
This research was made with the support of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness.
[1] https://www.who.int/news/item/20-07-2022-who-report-shows-poorer-health-outcomes-for-many-vulnerable-refugees-and-migrants
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14680181211012958
[3] https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/library-document/migrant-pay-gap-understanding-wage-differences-between-migrants-and-nationals_en
[4] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/changing-tide-gulfs-migrant-workers
[5] https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_821985.pdf
https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/remittances
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/world/americas/coronavirus-migrants.html
[7] https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_821985.pdf
[8] https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/library-document/migrant-pay-gap-understanding-wage-differences-between-migrants-and-nationals_en
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_763798.pdf
[9] https://jphe.amegroups.com/article/view/8264/html
[10] https://www.unodc.org/documents/Advocacy-Section/HTMSS_Thematic_Brief_on_COVID-19.pdf
[11] https://www.ilo.org/asia/events/WCMS_854073/lang--en/index.htm
[12] IMA Campaign Memorandum 2021-2022
[13] https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/07/1122872
[14] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/04/23/migrant-workers-in-cramped-gulf-dorms-fear-infection
[15] https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2020/05/how-singapores-second-wave-exposing-economic-inequalities
[16] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/immigrant-health-care-workers-united-states#Trends_Projection https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/internationalmigrationandthehealthcareworkforce/2019-08-15
[17] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/04/23/migrant-workers-in-cramped-gulf-dorms-fear-infection
[18] https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2022/2563684/
[19] https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/RessourcePDF.action?id=55654
[20] IMA Manifesto on Covid-19 2020
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_816971.pdf
[21] https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/labour-migration/policy-areas/social-protection/lang--en/index.htm
[22] https://www.dailyguardian.com.ph/filipino-migrant-workers-potentially-vulnerable-due-to-lack-of-access-to-social-protection-study/
[23] https://thediplomat.com/2021/09/rethinking-social-protection-programs-cambodian-migrant-workers-deserve-better/
[24] https://www.hurights.or.jp/wcar/E/tehran/migration.htm
[25] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2022.2044314
[26] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide
[27] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02560-3
[28] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/04/annual-report-covid19-decades-of-oppression-inequality-abuse-2/
[29] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00065/full
[30] https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/stranded-irregular.pdf
[31] https://gchumanrights.org/preparedness/article-on/the-plight-of-filipina-domestic-workers-in-times-of-covid-19.html
[32] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/25/maldives-covid-19-exposes-abuse-migrants
