In Between Escapade and Peril: The Impact of COVID-19 on Nepali Returnees and Their Families

The outbreak of COVID-19 has damaged the world economy, resulting in the termination of thousands of jobs which affects migrants and their families who have both economic and other investments in migration. This article explores the experiences and challenges of Nepali migrant workers who returned from Malaysia and their wives who were left behind when they originally migrated. We discuss the aspirations of returnee workers, their life and experiences in Malaysia during the pandemic and their experiences of tackling the bureaucratic challenges of the return process in Malaysia and Nepal. We find that any problems in migration also affects those family members who are left behind and discuss the experiences of husbands affect migrants' wives, including their understanding of the foreign employment situation of the husbands and their involvement in different decisions related to foreign employment and the return of their husbands. The study follows a qualitative methodology. Phone interviews were conducted with ten returnee migrants from Malaysia and ten as well as three informants who have knowledge and experience of the sector. The article argues that both migrants and their family members face the consequences of any failures and challenges in migration and that policies should encourage joint discussion among governments of source and host countries on coping with the challenges of migration including in the context of a global pandemic.

Impacts of COVID-19 on Wives of Nepali Migrants and Future Foreign Employment Decision-making

With over 55% of households having labour migrants and over 25% of the GDP attributable to migrants' remittance, migration plays an important role in economic development of Nepal but also in overall wellbeing of the Nepali households. While there have been considerable studies on the impact of migration both from social and economic perspectives, little is known about how migrants and their households make decisions to migrate. Moreover, there is limited research on how crisis in destination countries affect migration decision-making among migrants and their left-behind household members. Taking the example of the current COVID-19 crisis, this article discusses the context within which people are taking migration decisions and how the experiences of crisis affects decision-making about pursuing foreign employment for people who have previous migration experience. This article discusses the experience of migrants' wives during the pandemic in relation to their husband's migration, alternative livelihood experience of migrants (returnees, those on a holiday and aspiring migrants) in the home country, impacts of COVID-19 ban on aspiring migrants, and aspiring migrants and their wives' perspectives towards future foreign employment. The article argues that given a high interest amongst the returnees and their spouses to work in Nepal, current employment programmes brought forward by the government should take the opportunity as a way of retaining the human resources in Nepal.