How COVID-19 may alleviate the multiple marginalization of racialized migrant workers

The Case for Permanent Residency for Frontline Workers

“…While those taking risks to avoid destitution are not owed gratitude-based permanent residency, those taking risks freely or to help others are. The same applies to some or all of the approximately 200,000 agricultural workers in the US on H-2A visas (Flocks 2020), approximately 200,000 agriculture workers in Italy on six-months visas (Isaac and Elrick 2020), and 40,000–80,000 seasonal agricultural workers in the UK 6 . It would additionally apply to potentially all 29,010 health care workers in the UK given temporary visas between 2017 and 2019 (Sumption and Kierans 2019), and approximately 25,500 health care workers in the US on H1-B visas or without Green Cards (Painter 2020).…”

“…There is some evidence that COVID-19 can expand the provision of rights to far more migrants. According to Isaac and Elrick, COVID-19 has heightened awareness of migrants' general contributions, with resistance to calling agricultural workers "low skilled" (Isaac and Elrick 2020). If the pandemic has shifted perceptions of what "skilled" means, popularizing the idea that many migrants are owed gratitude-beyond those assuming risks during the pandemic-perhaps permanent residency to frontline workers will help rather than harm the status of other migrants.…”

“…This is because gratitude-based arguments presumed consent: citizens would consent to risks frontline workers assume, and so the consent condition for gratitude is met. This assumption may be untrue for migrants without visas, including over five million agricultural workers in the US (Budiman 2020; Dudley 2020) and roughly 100,000 in Italy (D’Ignoti 2020; Isaac and Elrick 2020). While citizens might consent to such workers tacitly—for example, Brock (2020, 96) and Rubio-Marìn (2000, 83) suggest citizens tacitly consent to undocumented workers if knowingly benefiting from their work and raising no opposition—this is controversial.…”

“…Luck Egalitarianism is violated when frontline workers in low-pay industries cannot easily switch professions because of lower educational attainment (Rho, Brown, and Fremstad 2020), given that poverty in one’s youth—for which one usually lacks control—can be an obstacle to educational attainment (Stumm et al 2020). Violations of Relational Egalitarianism are also rife, with many frontline care workers facing abuse (Doward 2019) and an inability to legally change employment, further restricting their agency vis-à-vis employers (Isaac and Elrick 2020).…”

Citizenship and COVID-19: Syndemic Effects

“…Across the world, the pandemic has reworked concepts of risk and skill such that it could be conceivable to develop new frames of deservingness that do not replicate the pitfalls of current approaches and that can decrease rather than increase the effects of marginalization. 167 These are the raw materials on the basis of which societies can truly "build back better. "…”