Human Rights of Forced Migrants During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Opportunity for Mobilization and Solidarity

Abstract

The question of human mobility is inextricably tied to the COVID-19 pandemic that started in late 2019 and whose effects continue to unfold. Human mobility-especially with global advances in transportation and interconnectedness-is an important factor in the spread of the pandemic. Yet, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the millions of people forced to migrate for safety and economic reasons has received little attention. In this article, we provide an overview of human rights challenges that forced migrants currently face during this pandemic. While we do not address all dimensions of the impact COVID-19, we highlight several troubling situations that have emerged for refugees and asylum seekers. These include entry restrictions into some countries that had formerly welcomed asylum seekers, overt and covert forms of exclusion of migrants from labor markets due to rising unemployment and economic hardship, and implementing new deportation policies, as well as new exclusionary policies for immigrants who would have been authorized to work in past. Without concerted efforts to amplify solidarity with all forced migrants and ensure their human rights, discriminatory and restrictionist policies enacted in the Global North over the past decade will become entrenched. As a result, fewer refugees and asylum seekers will be accorded protection and continue to face violence and persecution in their home countries.

Migrants’ human rights and health protection during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Mediterranean Sea: what we have learnt from direct inspections in two Italian hotspots

“…However, some countries implemented inclusive policies, such as Portugal's decision to grant full citizenship rights to all migrants and refugees for the duration of the pandemic to ensure that they could freely access health care, testing, and vaccinations. The Spanish government also implemented openness policies, releasing detainees from migrant detention centers to mitigate the risk of the COVID-19 infection (17). These kinds of decisions remained an exception, as most European countries used the pandemic to provide reasons for increased border controls and exclusionary measures targeting refugees.…”

“…Nevertheless, considering the sometimeslimited resources made available and the transnational dimension of the phenomenon, the need emerges for wider initiatives for migrants' rights and inter-agency cooperation among international organizations (1,16). The migration phenomenon has been inevitably affected by the situation determined by the still ongoing, though reduced, COVID-19 pandemic (17). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on millions of migrants received relatively limited attention, although the migration phenomenon did slow down during the pandemic (10).…”

Immigration, Refugees and Responses

“…But it was quickly shown that the contrary was in fact true and that Covid‐19 and the subsequent measures put in place to contain the pandemic had far worse impacts on those who were already marginalised in society through the intersection of racialised and gendered structures of inequality and violence, including refugees (Crawley, 2021). There were some glimpses of hope for improvement in the conditions for refugee reception, such as Portugal's decision to grant full citizenship rights to all migrant and refugees for the duration of the pandemic in order to ensure that they could freely access healthcare, testing and vaccination, or the Spanish government's decision to release detainees from migrant detention centres where they were at risk of catching Covid‐19 (Libal et al ., 2021), and these policies showed that there are other less securitized means of promoting health without marginalising migrant and refugee populations. However, these types of decisions unfortunately remained the exception as most EU States used the pandemic to justify tightening border controls and exclusionary measures aimed at refugees.…”

Solidaridad y COVID-19 en Chile: tensiones y desafíos para afrontar la pandemia solidariamente

“…La cuestión de la relación entre solidaridades intergrupales y grupales ha sido desde antes un importante foco de atención, ya que un exagerado acento en un sentido de la solidaridad intragrupal, podría debilitar una solidaridad intergrupal, cuestión sensible para grupos en situación minoritaria y vulnerable (Banting y Kymlicka, 2017). Ante la COVID-19, se han demostrado como necesarias, pero también críticas, la solidaridad de las elites económicas hacia el resto de la población (Bobzien y Kalleitner, 2021), y hacia grupos determinados como la población migrante (Libal, 2021), ante el racismo (Cipriano et al, 2020) o hacia la tercera edad (Ayalon et al 2020). Federico et al (2020) encontraron que un alto sentido de la membresía grupal valorado en sí mismo, sería un buen predictor de la solidaridad en la pandemia; mientras que una identificación narcisista con un grupo inhibiría la solidaridad intergrupal.…”