The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Labor Migrants: Accentuation of Inequalities

PIZARRO, CYNTHIA

Conferencia; Opening Conference of the Unit Research ?The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities?.; 2021

The onset of COVID-19 brought along the closing down of national borders, virtual elimination of air passenger travel, and a variety of lockdowns and quarantine policies at different scales. In Latin America, such measures have varied and evolved along with the development of the pandemic. Lockdowns aiming at containing the spread of the virus implied the closure of all activities in person, except those considered essential. As regards the entry of foreign nationals, countries have increasingly put bans that vary from limiting the access to people of certain nationalities to others that place bans on all arrivals. Each affected region has imposed social distancing measures and lockdowns on local mobility. Those people who are privileged enough to have safe and secure homes were confined to their homes, but for many others, the disruptions to life together with the economic consequences, and the health risks they had to take (whether through continued mobility and social interaction or immobility and lockdown) were far more severe. Thus, modern societies are built on ?different intersecting regimes of mobility? in which some people?s movements are ?normalized? while others? were ?criminalized?.The pandemic produced an exacerbation of existing social inequalities and has also given rise to new ones. This is so especially in the particular case of Latin American migrant population which has been subjected in recent years to violent processes of social, labour and reproductive precariousness throughout the continent. Some of the factors that put this population at risk are harsh and dangerous migration routes, lack of livelihoods, inadequate access to housing, exposure to discrimination and xenophobia and human trafficking. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), migrants in the Americas have sustained the largest impact of COVID-19 on their daily lives, scoring higher than any other region in the world.