Migration, Workers, and Fundamental Freedoms

Hidden in Plain Sight: “Neutral” Enclosures for High‐Skilled Immigrants During COVID‐191

“…In order to understand the nature of "neutral" enclosures, we draw upon the insights of scholars from the Global South (e.g., Hans et al 2021), indigenous scholars (e.g., Smith, Linda 2012;Teufel-Shone et al 2021) and critical intersectional insights (e.g., Purkayastha 2021) to examine what is emphasized and what is silenced in discourses and practices against groups. Following indigenous scholars we think about the harmful effects of enclosures, as narrated by those who are confined within enclosures.…”

“…Many additional biopolitical controls were introduced as public health measures (Smith and Vasudevan 2017), many of the changes in policies, in states, workplaces, such as new work cultures that eroded the separation between work and family time/space, extreme technological surveillance of work (defined in very narrow ways) affected and continue to affect people today (Heath et al 2022). The pandemic offers, not a break with the past, but an intensified period of a longer neoliberal transformation of societies (also see Dingwall et al 2013;Hans et al 2021;Zinn 2021).…”

“…Nonimmigrants are enclosed within a thicket of increasingly stringent, opaque laws as well as frequently changing policies to enhance migrants' vulnerability to being swept into such detention and deportation processes (see Golash-Boza 2012). Scholars from the Global South, who write about indentured migrants, guest workers and trafficked individuals, documented the construction of "temporary" migrants within colonial regimes, and now, they analyze global neoliberal racialized regimes that seek to minimize labor and political costs by controlling migrants' ability to claim rights (e.g., Hans et al 2021;Seedat Khan 2012;Yea 2015;Yousaf 2018). Yea (2015), for instance, points out that Singapore created a series of laws that place politically unwanted labor migrants in systems of indenture designed to shield the state from charges of trafficking.…”

What Can We Learn about Migration and Migrants from Southern Scholars? A Brief Discussion

“…As Prasad (2017) and Hans et al. (2021) demonstrate, the neglect of internal migrants, including those internally displaced, obscures the neo‐liberal forces that extract labor, seize control of land, water and other resources, and foster insecurities in people's lives. Groups who live in these areas—indigenous groups, racial or religious or caste or ethnic minorities—must to move in order to survive.…”

Eroding Inclusions and Expanding Exclusions: Education During Pandemics

“…The COVID-19 pandemic, especially during 2020-2021, resulted in severe displacements and disruptions. As lockdowns began to cascade across countries, both country boundaries, as well as a myriad of local boundaries, were shut down to prevent people from moving, or in some countries, people were forced to move from their places of residence to distant homes (Hans et al, 2021). However, the most obvious and significant shift was that paid work, especially white-collar work-was moved to homes.…”