Photo: “Sea Eye” Karsten Jaeger, 2020.
As COVID-19 is changing the world, what happens to global migration?
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or a moment, as borders were re-opening and international travel resumed, the world seemed to be going back to normal. A much-awaited event for the roughly 272 million people classified as international migrants (including refugees and asylum seekers) who have found themselves in unquestionably dire circumstances in these recent months. While writing this, however, a new rise of infections proves to us that Covid-19 could remain a threat for some time to come. Despite this uncertainty, people make predictions of a future which is not taunted by the virus. So too will I attempt to peer past the pandemic and discuss what global migration might look like in a ‘post-Covid’ world. Government responses to Covid-19 have generally not panned out well for irregular migrants and asylum seekers. Algeria forcibly expelled hundreds of migrants to transit centres in Niger. The Malaysian government continued their crackdown on and xenophobic hate speech towards Rohingya refugees. Many countries that closed their borders did not take asylum seekers into account. Some countries have however taken a more inclusive approach. During the escalation of the virus’s outbreak in Portugal, for instance, the country
Briefing
written by Isabelle Bienfait temporarily granted migrants and asylum seekers full citizenship rights which included access to Portugal’s healthcare system. Italy set out an amnesty law which allows for around 200,000 migrant labourers to apply for legal residency. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Covid-19 pointed out the consequences of migrant workers having their basic rights denied in often jam-packed accommodations – this prompted a promise to provide healthcare regardless of legal status. Unfortunately, even such positive developments have their shortcomings. Not only is it often unclear whether asylum seekers and migrants have had access to the treatment they were promised, but the promises are time-bound to the threat of the current pandemic. Italy’s legal residency permits are only valid for a sixmonth period. This may make sense on the surface, but it overlooks some obvious longer-term consequences of Covid-19. So, besides not knowing if the pandemic will have passed by this six-month mark, the existing vulnerabilities faced by migrants are exacerbated by the current crisis and may very well outlast it - making their ‘post-Covid’ realities sombre. A UN Policy Brief from June 2020 outlines three of these vulnerabilities.
Autumn 2020 • Dialogue 15
