Vulnerabilities of Internal Returnee Migrants in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic in India

The study surveyed 227 returned labor migrants in four districts of western Odisha to comprehensively analyze the socio-economic vulnerabilities faced by internal returnee labor migrants caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The results show that the partial and complete lockdown caused factory and workplace closures in the entire country. Consequently, millions of migrants suffered a loss of income and faced an uncertain future which motivated migrant workers to return to their home villages. Upon arrival, they met socio-economic vulnerabilities, encountered social and economic discrimination, and were excluded by their family members and fellow villagers, which impacted their behavioral health.

The Coronavirus Crisis and Migration: The Pan-Syndemic and Its Impact on Migrants

he coronavirus crisis exposed and exacerbated inequalities that already existed. Simultaneously, it has transformed inequalities, changing old ones, generating new ones, intertwining the old and the new. A test of these processes, in particular, of the differentiated impact of the health crisis, may be observed in migration. After examining the ecological-social origins of the novel coronavirus and the COVID-19 related racial health inequalities, the article analyzes the consequences of the pandemic on the health and working conditions of immigrant workers, asylum seekers, emigrants in travel. It highlights the syndemic situation affecting them.

Duševno zdravje in migracije: Uporabnost programa Prva pomoč na področju duševnega zdravja

Članek presoja uveljavljanje programa opismenjevanja o duševnem zdravju – Prva pomoč na področju duševnega zdravja – in njegove vpeljave med etnične manjšine in migrante. Osredotoča se na preoblikovanje programa v smeri kulturno občutljivih vsebin in metod izvajanja. Na podlagi evalvacije njihovih uporabnikov povzema predloge za nadaljnje izboljšave in prilagajanje njihovim »kulturnim potrebam«. Glede na rezultate omenjenih evalvacij članek opozarja na nujnost premika od upoštevanja »zgolj« kulturnih razsežnosti duševnega zdravja k obravnavi strukturnih ranljivosti, ki vplivajo na živete izkušnje migrantov, kar vključuje tudi kritično presojo samega koncepta opismenjevanja.

The Coronavirus Crisis and Migration: Inequalities, Discrimination, Resistance

Deriving from multiple ecological-social causes, the novel coronavirus and, subsequently, the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected all spheres of societies of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered and amplified an economic crisis that existed before the health crisis. The combination of the two crises into a double “ecological-­healthcare” and “socio-economic” crisis has had multiple consequences for everyone on the economic, social, political, and cultural level; however, it has affected social classes, workers, genders, and territories in different ways, deepening social inequalities and worsening the social conditions of disadvantaged social groups: among the most affected social groups, we find migrants.

Intra-EU Mobility: The Employment and Welfare Experience of Temporary EU Workers in the United Kingdom

This article explores the mobility pathways of temporary EU workers and the implications that transnational temporary mobility has on their labor market outcomes and access to social rights and benefits. The experiences of temporary EU migrants working in the UK show that despite the narrative of the borderlessness of the common European labor market, access to host countries’ labor market and welfare is shaped by their employment status and welfare eligibility criteria that produce worker precariousness. Temporary EU workers’ experiences are characterized by employment insecurity and unequal access to labor and social rights, effects which might increase since the UK has left the EU.

The Muslim Precariat of Assam: Contagion, Migrants, and COVID-19

This article examines the plight of migrant Muslim garbage pickers during the COVID-19 lockdown in India and their struggles to return home to Assam. Their financial hardships were exacerbated by social, political, and religious prejudices. Belonging to the Bengali-speaking miya community, deemed “Bangladeshi,” government authorities neglected them. The lockdown’s hyped-up anti-Muslim propaganda also reduced them to “corona jihadis.” The author reads their struggles as a case study of the Muslim condition in India and argues for civic engagement for redressing the condition of the marginal and vulnerable. The research was conducted through telephone and Zoom calls and in-person interviews.

Old Rhetoric and New Devices: Quarantine Ships as an Instrument of Externalization

The article aims to illustrate and explore the rhetoric and institutional approach toward migrants – asylum seekers in particular – undertaken by Italy following the COVID-19 crisis. Through the account of the different “narrative phases” and the consequent institutional action undertaken, this article intends to demonstrate how the health crisis has sharpened and even intensified pre-existing attitudes and practices. The actions taken in the last year can be understood as a further step in the process of externalizing the borders. Through the instrumental use of rhetoric and illegitimate practices, a sort of de-territorialization has been implemented through the use of quarantine ships.

Book Review - Annemarie Steidl, On Many Routes: Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration in the Late Habsburg Empire; West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University Press, 2021, 344 pp.

Simplistic notions of understanding human mobility have long burdened migration studies. Often, such notions relied on categorizations imported from state apparatuses. As a result, migration scholars have treated human movements in a binary and exclusive fashion, dividing between seasonal and permanent, legal and illegal, and most notably between internal and international migration. Building on recent scholarship that has challenged these shortcomings, in her most recent book, Annemarie Steidl draws on the area of the Habsburg Empire to demonstrate the complex and multifaceted character of migrations. Steidl, a distinguished migration scholar and professor at the Department of Social and Economic History at the University of Vienna, has chiefly applied quantitative analysis to explain migration history in her numerous publications.

Social Stigma and COVID-19: The Experiences of Bangladeshi Returnees from Italy

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated social discrimination against migrants around the world. However, research on the forms of social stigma faced by the returned migrants in their home countries is absent. Based on in-depth interviews with Bangladeshi migrants who returned from Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic, this article explores their experiences of discrimination and social harassment in Bangladesh. Drawing on Link’s and Phelan’s (2001) conceptual framework of social stigma, this study finds that returned migrants experienced different forms of social harassment and stigmatization, including labeling, stereotyping, social separation, status loss, and discrimination.

Entry Denied: Japan’s Border Restrictions in the Time of the COVID-19 Emergency

With the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic, Japan adopted controversial policies to contain the virus. Unlike many highly developed countries, it enacted strict policies banning entry through its borders to all non-Japanese citizens regardless of their residency status. The further peculiarity is that these measures equalized low-skill and high-skill foreign workers, affecting them identically. Along with describing how the emergency has been handled in relation to foreign nationals, this article highlights how pre-existing socio-cultural dynamics of differentiation between “insiders” and “outsiders” have evolved in response to the pandemic.