It is often said that migrants, like other ethnic minority workers, are the last hired and first fired. This is certainly the case today as a consequence of the global economic and financial crisis. Businesses are no longer hiring new staff and there are major lay-offs, generally starting with dismissal of temporary workers. Some companies are resorting to adhoc arrangements, such as reduced hours and pay for personnel remaining on the payroll or putting workers on part-time employment or unpaid leave, but, the growing uncertainty leaves more question marks than assurances.
It was a short period of ‘denial’ before the world woke up to Covidisation. Reality jumped many quantum levels with a still continuous redefining of the stable state. Those who risked being in the valence shell in hope of keeping connections, suffered the lack of nucleus protection and the nature of the virus that indiscriminately made all bonds, lethal. The lockdowns have emerged as the only prevention while we search for a cure, but #StayAtHome is not an option for everyone. Especially poor migrants for whom home is just a notion and not where the heart is.
Migrants tend to be among the workers most hit by economic downturns for several reasons. Migrant labour is often used, as a cyclical buffer and a skill balancer, like other macroeconomic policies aimed at maximising growth and minimising unemployment. From a social and political perspective, in times of economic insecurity, migrants easily become scapegoats to xenophobic sentiments and discrimination. Domestic migrants at all levels, at least have the security of nationhood and federal structures, it is the lower strata of trans-national migrants that suffers social and economic alienation without the safety net of social or governmental support.
However, many migrant workers are not returning home voluntarily. They tried keeping hope in the re-rise of their livelihoods but hope soon became a function of money, as no light could be seen across the tunnel and the voids that awaited them back home. This was the case even when they were offered financial incentives to voluntarily depart. Simply put, they were just choosing the bad option from the worse. As aircrafts return from all over the world, naval ships make Samudra Setu, trains carry interstate transients and the picture of families walking back home, on endless highways, becomes an uncomfortable routine, this ‘flight to safety’ is becoming a parallel pandemic.
This return ‘home’ process broadly has two major impacts; the likelihood of an import of corona virus infections and a major drop in international remittances. Policies and processes will try and offset the virus threat, but the drying up of money inflow will hurt ones who depend on it the most. India gets approximately $80 Billion in remittances, a big chunk of that has already started fading. This financial loss gets further amplified when the out of work migrants fall back on the system that depended largely on their contributions.
So whose problem is this migrant crisis? When there is lesser to go around, a different trait of human psychology comes to fore. Employers have no sales to save jobs, government has less tax to offer welfare and the society that had adopted the comforts of excess, wants to hold on to them. In India, the scale of the issue and the compassion fatigue caused by the over-exposure on all media platforms further worsens the case. We hardly remember the lifeless body of a Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi and the new generation is bereft of the wounds of Partition. Our society might not be at war but the pain of being displaced is the same.
Economic survival is also a fundamental right, more so for the invisible workforce that was such a vital contributor to it. The typical forced migrant breadwinner must find a good job, and quickly, to mitigate his or her family’s plight, and to overcome the poverty, uncertainty, and humiliation. At the same time, new investments occur too slowly or are deterred by a fragile investment climate or by economic instability, which is made even worse by a large inflow of migrants. The lethal effects corona virus on top of this job market mismatch is already severe and might become extreme and persistent. Economic revival being the only hope is the difficult need of the hour.
Since this is an ongoing transition, even when the lockdown opens, there will be migrants; stranded at their place of work, still moving on roads towards home or at their home towns, thus labour shortages will continue and would in turn threaten industries dependent on migrants, particularly agriculture where the crop seasons wait for none. There is also a feel that large distance migration may reduce, as people will be averse on getting stuck in far off places. This will severely impact the revival of the businesses, something we are counting on to offset the crisis. Breaking these circular (or cyclic) dependencies is where the national political will comes into play when at the cost of financial prudence, the government will have to bail out businesses and put money back into the hands of people and encourage spending instead of tilting towards regressive taxation policies.
And when you take focus on the individual who is migrating with his family or alone, maybe on a flight from Gulf or on a train from Mumbai or just walking on a highway in UP, the only thing that matters is reaching home safe. The other battles seem distant as the journey converges all socio-economic realms and becomes a humanitarian crisis. This is not something new to us, as migrant labour has seasonally been moving back home during holiday or harvesting times but it was hit by mobility lockdowns. The challenge now is to avoid human loss from this unprecedented and unplanned displacement as well as the disconcerting virus. The more we are able to manage this efficiently, the smaller would be the add-on crisis this movement of humanity brings.
This maybe a big catastrophe for us all, but drawing on ethnographies of poor migrants, there is often a ‘constant prospect’ of crisis woven into their social fabric in contemporary times. When you are neither where you are supposed to be nor where you want to be, the place has no meaning and the streets have no names. When Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Its the not the Destination, It's the journey,” he surely did not have migrants in mind.
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