Post Pandemic: The New Advanced Society

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a global public health emergency of international concern. The pandemic has increased the suffering of humanity enormously. Loss of income and employment opportunities is the massive adverse effect of the pandemic. Due care needs to be taken by the top-level management of every sector to understand the adverse effect and causes or problems and to build the measures to overcome from the pandemic. The researcher had attempted and discussed the themes viz., areas of management, financial institutions cyber-crime, economic notion, human depression, school and colleges closures, returning of migrant laborers to identify the constraints and to come up with the remedial measures to overcome those constraints and how to build a new advanced society of Post COVID-19 era. © 2022 Scrivener Publishing LLC.

Pathways for advancing good work in food systems: reflecting on the international good work for good food forum

The crucial roles that workers, especially seasonal and migrant workers, play in our food systems have come under renewed attention in recent years. The coronavirus pandemic resulted in food workers being recognized as critical or essential workers in many countries. In 2021, this coincided with the UN International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (IYFV), highlighting the importance of horticultural crops to healthy lives globally. Yet, workers' quality of life in this most labor-intensive form of food production is often disregarded, or in the case of the UN IYFV, misconstrued. The agriculture-migration nexus-on which food systems depend-remains recognized as a challenge, yet there is limited debate about how it could be ameliorated and a lack of articulation of desirable alternatives. While alternative food and peasant movements propose food system transformation and alternative labor futures based on agroecology, labor lawyers and other advocates propose regulation and formalization of workplace regimes to ensure fair working conditions. Most recently, a third possibility has emerged from agri-tech innovators: a techno-centric future with far fewer agricultural workers. These three archetypes of agricultural labor futures (agroecological, formally regulated, and techno-centric) have the potential to leave food scholars and activists without a unified, coherent vision to advance. Addressing this gap, this paper reports and builds on insights harvested from the international Good Work for Good Food Forum, organized by the authors with the aim of shaping consensus on positive visions for work in food systems. About 40 scholar-activists across three continents discussed the current challenges facing food workers and crafted a collective vision for good food work. This vision is documented in the form of nine principles supported by a framework of seven enabling pathways. We conclude by emphasizing the need for a people-centered incorporation of technology and a re-valuation of food workers' contributions to global food systems. We offer the vision as a collective platform for action to advocate for and organize with workers in food systems.

A theoretical and empirical approach to foreign labour migration and employment: the case of agri-food migrant workers in developed economies

Most of the research on migration has focused on the scale and effects of people exodus from rural to urban areas rather than on rural areas as recipients of migrants, especially foreign migrants. This study aims to analyse employment of foreigners in agriculture and food processing sectors of selected developed countries, with particular emphasis on the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. It first reviews existing literature on ideas and theories about human migration through the history of economic and social thought. This theoretical background lies in the economic, social, health, demographic and integrated theories and concepts of migration that help understand the pull and push causes as well consequences of current international migration processes. Next, this article presents some facts about the employment of foreigners in agriculture and food processing in developed countries traditionally affected by severe labour shortages in these sectors, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employers and workers. The results reveal that labour shortages and labour exploitation are amongst the most frequent and relatively consistent issues associated with immigrant workers in the agri-food industry. During COVID-19, these problems were exacerbated and complemented with the workers' health risk due to coronavirus clusters on farms and at food-processing plants.

COVID-19 pandemic: impact of agricultural labour migration on income levels of farmers in Telangana

The present study was undertaken during 25th March 2019 to 25th March 2021 to examine the impact of agricultural labour migration due to COVID-19 pandemic on the income levels of farmers. Both primary and secondary data were used in the study, multistage sampling technique was used in selection of district, mandals and villages. Tools and techniques like tabular analysis, gross returns and net returns were used. Economic impact on farmers in the study area was studied by selecting three major crops viz., Paddy, Cotton and Maize. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in the kharif and rabi season, in all the three major crops, the labour availability was increased when compared with the period of before the pandemic. This situation was appeared due to reverse migration during pandemic. The average wage rates received by the agricultural labourers for almost all farm operations in case of paddy, maize and cotton crops were decreased due to increase in labour supply due to reverse migration. The available man days also clearly got increased for almost all the operations except harvesting of paddy and cotton crops. In case of paddy and cotton crops, net returns were found to increase. In case of Maize crop, the gross and net returns were decreased due to increase in total operation costs and decrease in price per quintal during rabi season of the pandemic period respectively.

Beyond gratitude: lessons learned from migrants' contribution to the COVID-19 response

This paper provides a snapshot of migrant workers across countries and sectors, looking at the scale of their contribution to the global workforce before COVID-19. The analysis of the stories gathered in the media tracking and presented in the 'Key workers' data visualisation in Chapter 3. This focuses on migration-related reforms and initiatives by national and local governments over the past year in response to the pandemic. Recognising that the contributions of migrants will remain essential to our societies during our collective recovery from the pandemic, Chapter 4 presents conclusions and recommendations for policy-makers. These are based on the lessons that could inform more sustainable solutions for migration reform in the future.

How did COVID-19 affect food and nutrition security of migrant workers in northern Vietnam?

This study explored how measures to curtail the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) in Vietnam affected the livelihoods and food and nutrition security of internal migrant workers. While Vietnam has made impressive progress towards food security in the past decades, marginalised groups of people such as ethnic minorities and migrants continue to face significant challenges. The project team investigated how the pandemic affected the precarity of these groups' income-generating opportunities and how the level of income generated affected the quality, as well as the quantity, of food consumed by migrant workers in Hanoi, the capital, and the Bac Ninh province, which hosts large industrial zones. Our research shows that income for migrant workers significantly reduced as a result of Covid-19-related lockdown measures. Almost half of the respondents were considered to be either moderately or severely food insecure. Financial support provided by the government hardly reached migrant workers because of the registration system required to receive unemployment benefits. To reduce the vulnerability of migrant workers, we conclude that: Short-term crisis responses need to focus on providing nutritious, healthy, and ample food to migrant workers;Policies that impose minimum standards of living need to be effectively enforced;The coverage of existing social safety nets by the government needs to be expanded;and A radical reform of labour law is needed to improve labour rights for migrant workers.

The economic impact of covid-19 and the role of AI

The present article is being written against the backdrop of the worldwide microeconomic crisis, which has raised a question mark on our very existence. Of course, during the last few centuries, several epidemics and pandemics have ravaged this world. The COVID-19 infection has spread its tentacles far and wide. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries worldwide resorted to lockdown to break the chain of viral infection. Confinement of people to four walls has staged the micro economy to its belly button. The crisis has opened a new theme to anchor globally to recognize the migrant laborers and understanding their capabilities, developing an artificially intelligent data trust and cognitive response system to address the ongoing challenge. The present chapter is outlined to address the latent psychological response of migrant laborers, the potential for establishing micro skill clusters and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat Covid-19. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Syrian refugee labour and food insecurity in middle eastern agriculture during the early COVID-19 pandemic. (Special Issue: COVID-19 and the world of work (part II).)

Drawing on ethnographic data from the 2019 SyrianFoodFutures and the 2020 From the FIELD projects, this article provides insights into the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugee labour in agriculture in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. In spring 2020, movement restrictions and supply chain disruptions caused displaced Syrian farmworkers to lose their jobs and face increased food insecurity. The authors situate their findings in the context of host countries' use of legal ambiguity in governing refugees, Middle Eastern agriculture's reliance on migrant labour, and the region's long-standing food insecurity. They conclude that formalizing refugee labour cannot alone address exploitation.

Migrating Methods in a Pandemic: Virtual Participatory Video with Migrants in Hong Kong

Can methods travel the way migrants do? We reflect on this question through the development of what we call 'virtual participatory video' or the delivery of participatory video methods for migrant domestic workers and asylum-seekers in Hong Kong – transnationally, online and over Zoom during the pandemic in 2020. The pandemic realities that we grappled with as migration studies scholars and participatory video practitioners reflect realities that working-class and precarious migrants were routinely required to navigate long before the pandemic (e.g., family separation, restriction of personal mobility, maintaining connection through technology). Therefore, we paid particular attention to the challenges and opportunities posed by virtual participatory video, particularly on resultant changes to attention, creativity, and relationality (core tenets of face-to-face participatory video) when time and space are, by necessity, fragmented. The fragmentation of time and space in virtual participatory video entailed a greater presence of migrant realities and demands into the method itself, perhaps most notably a tangible sense of competing demands that participants were expected to negotiate at any particular moment. Attentiveness to competing demands can be particularly valuable when working with members of communities that may experience varying forms of scarcity in relation to time or space, such as migrant domestic workers or asylum-seekers. Re-thinking fragmentation as part of the texture of virtual participatory video illustrated the durability of creativity when day-to-day realities are permitted to intrude on learning over Zoom. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Journal of Qualitative Methods is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

Low-skill no more! essential workers, social reproduction and the legitimacy-crisis of the division of labour

Workers in the realm of social reproduction - e.g. nurses, carers, cleaners, food preparation workers etc. - are considered low-skill and are poorly remunerated. During the Covid-19 crisis they have been recast as 'essential', leading to unprecedented praise and attention in public discourse. Nonetheless, public praise for these 'essential' workers so far has not translated into a commitment for higher wages and improved working conditions. In this article, we argue that skills hierarchies continue to determine labour market outcomes and social inequalities. We pinpoint that these are embedded into the logic of capitalist social relations, rather than being an expression of the features of jobs themselves. We also show how some socially reproductive sectors resist the tendency to automation precisely because of the prevalence therein of a workforce which is portrayed as un-skilled. By focussing on low-skilled workers' engagement in various forms of labour unrest and their demands for long overdue recognition and wage rises. the article puts into question the inherited skills-lexicon according to which low-wage jobs are unproductive and lacking in skills and competence. The authors conclude that these workers' fights for the recognition of the dignity and importance of their jobs and professions can facilitate a rethinking of the division of labour in our societies.

Impact of COVID-19 on agriculture, countryside and farmers and countermeasures

COVID-19 outbreak has great impact on agricultural and rural farmers. In order to effectively cope with the impact of COVID-19 epidemic and promote agricultural and rural development, this paper expounds the impact of the epidemic from three aspects of agricultural production, farmers and rural development, and puts forward corresponding countermeasures: building development platform for rural electric business, implementing the development mode of "Internet plus agriculture", strengthening the input and publicity of agricultural insurance to benefit farmers, and increasing support for local employment and entrepreneurship of migrant workers.

Saving Bavarian hops in a "parallel universe": lessons on the biopolitics of agricultural labor in Germany during the Corona pandemic. (Special Issue: More than disaster: creativity in growing, distributing, and accessing food during covid-19.)

When countries closed their borders to curb the spread of COVID-19 in spring 2020, seasonal migrant workers in agriculture were either unable to travel or faced unsafe conditions when performing "essential" field work. Some countries, like Germany, subsequently implemented policies to let them travel to work, and simultaneously, called on their residents to temporarily help farmers harvest crops. This paper explores the case of these temporary pandemic workers on Bavarian hops farms. Based on ethnographic research and interviews, this paper discusses the complex relationships between temporary pandemic workers, farmers, and the mostly absent seasonal workers in the exceptional moment of a global pandemic. The researchers argue that in the state of exception of the Corona pandemic in Germany, biopolitical sorting highlighted migrant workers' indispensability and disposability in a peculiar way: their short-term replaceability through recruited temporary pandemic workers formed a self-ascribed "parallel universe" or "Coronal bubble". Through new encounters (with farmers) and hands-on experiences in agricultural fields, the parallel universe often also meant uncomfortable insights into an unjust agricultural system. For those widely unexposed to agriculture, the state of exception revealed both the general and temporary biopolitics of seasonal migrant workers in agriculture and the key role they play for German agriculture as a whole.

Special Issue: The COVID-19 pandemic: precarious migrants and outbreak inequality. (Special Issue: The COVID-19 pandemic: precarious migrants and outbreak inequality.)

This special issue includes 8 articles that analyse and reflect upon COVID-19 and its multiple effects on migrant populations and migrant workers in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Italy, and the USA.

The system dynamic model of the labor migrant policy in economic growth affected by COVID-19. (Special Issue: Covid-19.)

At the end of 2019, the new virus called Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) spread widely from China all over the world. In March 2020 the World Health Organization declared a new virus outbreak as "a global pandemic", and recommended social distancing and quarantine. Most countries in Europe have been quarantined. The social aspect of this issue is complicated by the fact that Europe nowadays hosts 82 million international migrants. If migrant workers leave the host country, it reduces the Covid-19 spread. Nevertheless, if migrant workers do not return, it will worsen the situation with the economic crisis. The subject of the study is the instrumental and mathematical aspects of impact simulation of labor migrants' policy on the economic growth of the host country affected by COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the work is to develop the system dynamics model for assessing labor migrants' policy impact on the economic growth of the host country during COVID-19 pandemic. It examined through hypotheses of different scenarios of labor migrants policy impact on the host country economic growth in Covid-19 pandemic. The proposed model combines epidemiological and the economic growth models and relies upon real statistical data. The analysis was carried out in four European countries. The results of the study enabled to state that without migrant workers the gross domestic product may fall to 43% in Italy, 45% in Netherlands, 37% in Spain and 200% in Switzerland in 2020.

Vulnerable, inequitable, and precarious: impacts of COVID-19 on newcomers, immigrants, and migrant workers in rural Canada. (Special Issue: COVID-19 and rural Canada: rural impacts and resilience.)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed crucial flaws in Canada's immigration systems. While the majority of newcomers to Canada reside in urban centres, a substantial minority work and live in rural areas and small towns where crucial immigrant services are far less developed and greater geographical distances hinder efforts to support immigrants. Rural immigrants face distinct challenges, including increased social isolation and economic marginalization, which have only been amplified by the pandemic. Furthermore, the inaccurate perception of immigration as an exclusively urban issue hinders efforts to combat these problems. Building on rural immigration literature, this paper examines the ways in which the pandemic has impacted rural immigrants, including newcomers, refugees, and temporary foreign workers. Findings highlighted include the difficulty of providing immigrant support services in rural areas, the vulnerability of migrant farm workers to illness and isolation, and the lack of awareness and funding for immigration issues in rural areas relative to their urban counterparts. The paper draws on journalism and academic literature from the past year into these issues. In doing so, it demonstrates the need for renewed academic, policy, and rural development practice interests in rural immigration.

The Ethnicization and Feminization Process of Labor: Women and Georgian Labor in Tea Agriculture

Ethnicization and feminization of labor are intertwined processes. Although each has its own internal history, they have been taken to new dimensions with capitalism and neoliberalism. In this respect, gender and race are instrumentalized for the exploitation of labor. There have been several studies on the inclusion of race and gender in the labor market in considering wage labor. However, not many studies focus on nation-state building before labor markets, race, and women as unpaid family members. In this study, the issue of unpaid female labor in tea agriculture is examined. It also considers the ethnicization processes of Georgian labor. These two processes are explained by the labor value theory by placing tea agriculture at the center. Moreover, the effect of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the processes will also be discussed. Because the process of ethnicization and feminization are multidimensional and multi-agency processes, qualitative interviews were conducted with 48 people from different structures and actors. The interviews were recorded, resolved, and multiple structure analyses were performed. Survey data applied in a different context in another study for Georgians were also used as data sources in this study as ethnicization and feminization of labor are fed from a similar background and are used interchangeably in case of crisis.

On the question of access to welfare and health for women during the initial phase of the pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, women migrant workers were placed at a distinct disadvantage. Millions of women workers in labour-intensive occupations, from domestic work to construction lost their jobs, while also shouldering the responsibility of caregiving. This study draws on in-depth interviews with women workers in Delhi to document their life and experiences in the aftermath of the national lockdown in 2020. It brings to light a range of challenges around food security, caregiving, income security, and social protection. It documents the impact of existing inequalities of gender, migration status, and class on access to support, which has implications on the long-term repercussions of the current economic crisis.