This book looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrants globally who bear disproportionate burdens of health disparities. Centering the voices of migrants as anchors for theorizing health, the chapters adopt an array of decolonizing and interventionist methodologies that offer conceptual communicative resources for re-organizing economics, politics, culture, and society in logics of care.
Each chapter focuses on the health of migrants during the pandemic, highlighting the role of communication in amplifying and solving the health crisis experienced by migrants. The chapters draw together various communicative resources and practices tied to migrant negotiations of precarity and exclusion. Health is situated amidst the forces of authoritarianism, disinformation, hate, and exploitation targeting migrant bodies. The book builds a narrative archive witnessing this fundamental geopolitical rupture in the 21st century, documenting the violence built into the zeitgeist of labor exploitation amidst neoliberal transformations, situating health with the extractive and exploitative forms of organizing migrant labor.
The book is essential reading for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses for scholars studying critical and global health, development, and participatory communication, migration, globalization, international and intercultural communication interested in the questions of precarity and marginality of health during pandemics.
Author(s): Satveer Kaur-Gill, Mohan J. Dutta
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 242
City: Cham
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
1 The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Migrants: An Outbreak of Inequality
The Relationship Between Outbreak and Communicative Inequalities
Precarities as Ecological
Health Information
Digital Spaces
Vaccines
Health Equity and Precarious Migrants
References
2 The Role of Contemporary Neoliberal Government Policies in the Erosion of Migrant Labor Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Examination of Executive, Legislative and Judicial Trends in India and the United States
Caste Inequities and the Informal Labor Market in India
Migrant Workers’ Health Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Undocumented Labor in the United States
Systemic Barriers to Undocumented Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Discussion
References
3 The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Health of Rohingya Refugees
COVID-19 and Refugee Health
Rohingya Health
Culture-Centered Approach
Method
Findings
Struggles with Food
Struggles Accessing Masks and Hand Sanitizers
Scarcity of Rohingya Interpreters for Communication
Long Waiting Time
Discussion
References
4 Listening for Erasures as Method in Making Sense of Health Disparities: Culture-Centered Constructions of Health Among Refugees
COVID-19 and Refugees at the Margins
Culture Centered Approach
Method
Results
Communicative Gaps
Structural Inequalities
Communicative Agency
Discussion
References
5 The Implications of Being Thrice-Marginalized: Work Migrants in India During the Coronavirus Lockdown
The Health Consequences of Distress Migration
Stresses of the Pandemic
The Culture-Centered Approach (CCA)
Power Dimensions
Method
Voices of Distressed Migrants
Recruitment
Data Gathering
Analysis
Findings
When Income Stops and Loans Run Out
Home Is Health, and the Stigma of the Infected City
Healthier at Home
Home to Stigma
Being Triple-Marginalized
References
6 Extreme (Im)mobility and Mental Health Inequalities: Migrant Construction Workers in Singapore During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Pandemic Measures for Migrant Construction Workers
Communicative Inequality and the Culture-Centered Approach
Extreme (Im)mobility
Mental Health Interventions
Living Conditions
Family and Precarity
Agentic Community Building
Ecological Precarities as Health Violence
References
7 Indonesian Domestic Workers in Malaysia During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Introduction
Women, Patriarchal System and Gender-Based Inequality
Foreign Domestic Workers
Covid-19 Challenges and Struggles Experienced by Domestic Workers
Dysfunctional Migration Governance
Recognition of Women and Identity of ‘Domestic Work’
Domestic Work as Cultural Threat?
Conclusion
References
8 Conducting Digital Ethnography with Precarious Migrant Workers in a Pandemic
Introduction
Why Digital Ethnography?
Field Sites in Digital Ethnography
Configuring Field Sites
Positionality of the Researcher
Research Design and Preparation
Methods of Digital Ethnography
Participant Observation
Photography, Videography, and Audio Recording
Ethnographic Interviews
Surveys
Fieldwork Analysis
Ethical Guidelines
Conclusions
References
9 Profiling the Diseased: Tablighi Jamaat and Racist Experiences in Assam
Introduction
The Tablighi Case and Judgement
Segregation and Bangladeshi Question in Assam
Profiling of Patients: Media and Assamese Middle Class
Conclusion
References
10 Community-Based Art Interventions, Migrant Health Inequalities, and COVID-19 Coping
Migrant Experiences, Acculturation Stress, and Health Outcomes
The U.S. Context, Immigrant Inequalities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Art as Therapy, Collective Healing, and Migrant Coping
Arts-Based Interventions, COVID-19, and Migrant Coping: Case Studies from the United States
Quarantined Across Borders: Collective Storytelling Intervention on COVID-19
Conclusions
References
11 Culture-Centered Migrant Organizing at the Margins: Resisting Hate Amidst COVID-19
Extreme Neoliberalism and Worker Exploitation
Hindutva and Far-Right Hegemony
Culture-Centered Approach
Method
Findings
Co-creating Class Consciousness
Challenging Disinformation
Forging Connections
Discussion
References
