Mental Health Status of Indian Migrant Workers in the United Arab Emirates during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Migration has become a de facto phenomenon in the contemporary globalized world and India is not untouched. Indian labourers from the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrated to the UAE in search of better jobs and prospects. They migrated alone and left behind their families. The distance between them and their family can also create mental disorders; therefore, it becomes necessary to analyze the mental health of the migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study is quantitative and based on a sample survey approach. The researchers collected 416 samples through a structured questionnaire and used the snowball sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation coefficient, chi-square test and logistic regression were utilized to analyze and interpret the results. The outbreak of coronavirus disturbed their livelihood resulting in a cut to their salary or earnings; in total, 83% of migrants were affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in terms of loss of their income, out of which 76% were affected by less than AED 1000. The respondents' mental health was worrisome, but they were hopeful for the future. In total, 73.5% of respondents felt nervous, 62% felt depressed, 77% felt lonely, 63.4% had a hard time sleeping, and 63% had difficulties concentrating. The findings of the study draw attention to the policymakers to carry out necessary provisions to the targeted psychologically affected community. The findings also suggest creating awareness among the people by using social networking sites and diagnosing mental disorders on an urgent basis.

Impact of COVID-19 on Nepal's Labour Migration

For many years, Nepal has relied on the import of labour by foreign countries to sustain its economy with income from remittances having approached 30% of the national gross domestic product for close to a decade. Besides being the most valuable source of hard currency, earnings by labour migrants have also contributed to reducing poverty levels drastically in recent years while also providing the impetus for rapid urbanization and rising consumerism. All of that has now been put in jeopardy as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic that has led to tens of thousands of Nepali workers being laid off in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the major destination for Nepalis in foreign employment. This chapter explores how the pandemic has affected the foreign employment sector with a particular focus on the number of Nepalis returning home, how the government plans to deal with a large number of unemployed young men and women, the expected reduction in remittances, and the possible social dislocations as a result of sudden loss of inflow of cash in the rural hinterlands of the economy. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Beyond the 'Triple Win': Pacific Islander farmworkers' use of social media to navigate labour mobility costs and possibilities through the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the global horticultural sector's reliance on migrant workers. Within Australia, public attention was focused particularly on Pacific Islanders employed through the Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) guestworker scheme. With national border closures resulting in significant labour shortages for the horticultural industry, special-purpose exemptions allowing limited groups of SWP workers to enter the country were celebrated as a source of reprieve for struggling farmers. For Pacific Islander workers and communities, however, the prospect of leaving Pacific countries (many of whom had at the time no, or very few, recorded cases of COVID-19) to labour for unspecified periods in a country experiencing much higher rates of infection, was fraught. In this paper, we examine the use of social media by Pacific Islanders to negotiate the costs and benefits of temporary labour migration amid the pandemic. For ni-Vanuatu workers, we argue, Facebook groups facilitated depictions and negotiations of guestwork that were significantly more complex and nuanced than the reductive and bifurcated terms of mainstream media discourse about the SWP scheme. We conclude by highlighting the necessity of foregrounding migrant workers' voices in evaluating guestworker schemes, and the value of social media as a dynamic space within which this might be done. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Economic migrants in the Czech segmented labour market: Covid-19 as a magnifying glass

Purpose: This study examines Covid-19-related policies as a showcase for priorities in migration governance, the role of the state and employers' associations, as well as gaps in social security and social protection. Design/methodology/approach: This paper looks at how immigration interacts with the labour market in the Czech Republic through the prism of the varieties of capitalism framework and its relation to the concepts of labour market segmentation and flexibility. Findings: The findings show that pandemic-related measures focused on continuously adjusting a legislative framework granting access to third-country workers. However, protective measures that would guarantee migrant workers and their families access to social rights, such as healthcare, were lacking. In this context, several lines of segmentation are observed: between migrant workers in standard employment and those in non-standard employment, when looking at their access to healthcare;between migrants hired directly by employers and those working through temporary agencies in terms of their wages, stability and protection;and, at a sectoral level, between the skilled workforce and migrants that are pushed to low-qualified poorly paid, and routinised jobs. Originality/value: This paper expands the existing literature on the preferences and influence of governments, employers and trade unions regarding the demand for foreign labour in varieties of capitalism by adding the perspective of a Central European economic model. At the same time, its findings contribute to the understanding that labour market inequalities are not fostered on the supply side of migrant labour, through exogenous societal or cultural characteristics specific to countries of origin, but rather through institutionalised measures, practices and policies in countries of destination. © 2023, Olga Gheorghiev.

Care crises and care fixes under Covid-19: the example of transnational live-in care work

The COVID-19 pandemic brought care work to the forefront of attention. In many countries in the Global North, people became painfully aware that they had ‘outsourced' a considerable share of this work to temporary migrants. Travel restrictions and lockdown measures disrupted transnational care arrangements and threatened the continuous provision of care. This article uses the example of transnationally organised live-in care in Switzerland to explore measures implemented to maintain care provision during the pandemic. Particularly, it investigates the impacts of these measures on the working conditions and lives of live-in care workers. We build on Emma Dowling's conceptualisation of ‘care fixes' and Brigitte Aulenbacher's notions of ‘abstraction' and ‘appropriation' to identify three short-term solutions and argue that they did not solve, but rather only displaced the underlying care crisis. Our insights are based on the analysis of policy documents, 32 in-depth interviews and informal conversations with workers, clients, care agencies and other experts carried out in Switzerland between April 2020 and April 2021. We emphasise the inequalities implicated in transnational care arrangements and their inherent fragility, both of which were exacerbated by the pandemic. We tentatively point to avenues for contestation and for a revaluation of care, which opened up as result of the pandemic-induced disruption of care.

Bangladeshi women migrants amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: Revisiting globalization, dependency and gendered precarity in South-South labour migration.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented societal disruption and disproportionately affected global mobility dynamics. Within such a troubled and intensifying crisis, the intersection of migration and gender is even more unsettling. Since the pandemic outbreak, Bangladesh witnessed a colossal crisis among millions of Bangladeshi migrants working overseas-a considerable section of them are women. By highlighting the plight of the Bangladeshi women migrants in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this study expands the emerging literature that addresses the nexus among migration, pandemic fallout and gendered labour. Redrawing our understanding of globalization from below, the study attempts to further advance the theoretical perspectives on the predicaments of globalization and gendered precarity in contract labour migration. The study argues that the focus on the power asymmetry between the host and sending countries remains too limited to provide a comprehensive understanding of how inequalities are reproduced and transformed. Instead, it suggests that the challenges and disadvantages women migrants endure are embedded in the asymmetries of deep-rooted economic and social structures in tandem with the systemic practice of otherness and exclusion.

Between Conflict and Solidarity: Pandemic Media Coverage of Romanian Intra-EU Labour Migrants

The Covid-19 pandemic affected Romanian intra-EU labour migrants in a particular way and challenged the established themes associated with and the social roles assigned to them in news discourses. During the first wave of the pandemic, Covid-19 hotspots were reported abroad in Romanian migrant communities, the most notorious example being at the Tönnies factory in Germany. The pandemic brought to prominence the precarious working conditions of labour migrants employed in agriculture and especially in the food industry. Wider discussions, conflicts, and solidarity actions were generated around this topic. In the present study, we identify the main themes and topics present in the Romanian media coverage of Romanian labour migrants, as well as the way foreign, particularly German, media perspectives were integrated into and domesticated in the Romanian coverage. Findings show that both the Romanian and German media used, to a certain extent, the media coverage of this exceptional pandemic situation to invite reflection on the general social costs of migration and on the responsibility of political actors in the migrants’ country of origin, in their country of destination, and at the level of EU institutions. However, the perspective of the migrants was underrepresented in the media coverage.

Understanding Migrant Farmworkers' Health and Well-Being during the Global COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada: Toward a Transnational Conceptualization of Employment Strain.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada imposed certain international travel bans and work-from-home orders, yet migrant farmworkers, declared essential to national food security, were exempt from such measures. In this context, farm worksites proved to be particularly prone to COVID-19 outbreaks. To apprehend this trend, we engaged an expanded and transnational employment strain framework that identified the employment demands and resources understood from a transnational perspective, as well as the immigration, labour, and public health policies and practices contributing to and/or buffering employment demands during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied mixed methods to analyze administrative data, immigration, labour, and public health policy, as well as qualitative interviews with thirty migrant farmworkers employed in Ontario and Quebec. We concluded that the deleterious outcomes of the pandemic for this group were rooted in the deplorable pre-pandemic conditions they endured. Consequently, the band-aid solutions adopted by federal and provincial governments to address these conditions before and during the pandemic were limited in their efficacy because they failed to account for the transnational employment strains among precarious status workers labouring on temporary employer-tied work permits. Such findings underscore the need for transformative policies to better support health equity among migrant farmworkers in Canada.

Making Money, Missing Home: Reflections on Timorese Informal Labour Migration to Britain

In the two decades of economic recovery in post-Independence Timor-Leste (2002–2022), there has been a growing interest and commitment, especially among young people, to pursue temporary and circular labour migration. In this paper I draw on a survey of returned Fataluku-speaking labour migrants who have spent varying periods of time working in the UK (Britain) and reflect on their experiences and the benefits or otherwise that have resulted from these efforts. The survey was undertaken in late 2019, just before the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The subsequent lockdown and border closures marked the effective end of this remarkable, two-decade long, informal Timorese circular labour migration to the UK. A post-Covid landscape may yet see a lively resumption of this livelihood pathway, but it will do so in the uncertain terrain of a post-Brexit landscape in the UK and the prospects of new labour migration options available closer to home in Australia under the Seasonal Workers Program and Pacific Labour Schemes (PLS). [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Rethinking labour migration: Covid-19, essential work, and systemic resilience.

Many of the 'essential workers' during the Covid-19 pandemic are migrants, playing an important role for the continued functioning of basic services - notably health services, social care, and food supply chains. We argue that this role should be taken into account when assessing the impacts of migrant workers and in the design of labour migration and related public policies. Existing studies highlight how the employment of migrant workers in essential services is shaped by interests of employers, sectoral policies, and national institutions. Considerations of how migrants may affect the systemic resilience of essential services - in a pandemic or similar crises - are pervasively absent, not only in policy-making but also in research. Drawing on several disciplines, we outline the concept of systemic resilience and develop implications for the analysis and regulation of labour migration. We call for shifting the focus from the role of migrants in specific occupations and sectors in particular countries to transnational systems of production and service provision. To study how migrant workers affect systemic resilience, we propose an agenda for comparative research along three lines: comparing migrants to citizens within the same system, comparing migrants' roles across systems, and comparing strategies for resilience adopted in different systems.

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar.

Migration and mobilities are vastly underestimated in India. In particular, circular migration remains poorly captured as circular migrants move back and forth between source and destination regions. Based on survey data from rural Bihar, an important source region of migration in India, this paper finds that a vast majority of migrants work and live in precarity in predominantly urban and prosperous destinations across India. However, those at the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder in source regions-the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, other backward classes I and the labouring class-are the worst off at destination; they are part of the most precarious shorter-term migration streams, earn the lowest incomes, have the poorest conditions of work, and live in the harshest circumstances. The paper shows that social and economic hierarchies, and in turn, precarity in source region is reproduced at destination, and, thus, there is little evidence that spatial mobility is associated with social mobility. Focusing on migrants' location, work, employment, income, housing, and access to basic services at destination, the paper foregrounds migrant precarity and adds to a small body of empirical literature that is significant in understanding the spatial and structural elements of circular migration in India and in turn, the migration crisis that emerged as a result of the economic shock of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Estimating Earnings Losses of Migrant Workers Due to COVID-19.

While the wide-ranging impact of COVID-19 on incomes and livelihoods of people around the world will take some time to become known and understood, it is already clear that those who are in manual, mostly low-wage, occupations are among the worst-hit workers. This paper uses data from a sample survey of migrant workers to come up with useful parameters for estimating the potential losses from possible retrenchment of migrant workers due to the pandemic. The paper employs a simple estimation model using parameters derived from data collected from a KNOMAD-ILO survey of low-skilled migrant workers in the India-Saudi Arabia migration corridor, conducted during 2016-2017. An important finding is that the aggregate losses that low-skilled Indian workers in Saudi Arabia are likely to incur due to COVID-19-related retrenchment may be as high as 21% of their expected earnings. Adding recruitment costs can push up their losses to 36% of expected or potential earnings, while the aggregate remittances to their families could drop by USD 2 billion.