The Invisible Backbone: Migrant Workers in Asia
Photo by Travis Essinger/Unsplash.
Migrant workers were always part of a second class of the workforce but once COVID-19 brought work to a screeching halt, their precarious status led to complete abandonment.
BY WAJAHAT MAHMOOD AND HARSH TRIVEDI
Migrant workers are an integral element of the economies of the world, numbering in excess of 164 million as of 2020; this number only accounts for international migrants. The distribution for workers within Asia alone spans every nation including but not limited to India, Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam. The migrant workers are promised that their body, their traded labour, and the deteriorating connection to their homes is a worthwhile exchange, opening doors to prosperity, a better life, and security for them and their loved ones. That when they contribute to the economic and social mobility of their families from afar—to the tune of over $110 billion in 2016 in South Asia alone—they also make their motherland, their community, and their family stronger and more resilient.
The impetus is that there will be time for family later, once they are free from debts, when a future free from financial concerns has been secured and the life that they deserve can be provided. Their families are going nowhere, and the workers will soon be back home with them. Thousands spend their lives in indentured labour, not surviving to see that dream fulfilled.
The world has ended,
and those who pretended otherwise
have been the first to safely hide.
Houseboats of gold are floating
on an ocean of bodies;
thrown overboard by the metropolitan portside.
Employers may claim that the contributions of migrant workers are invaluable to the economy of the host country and that their compensation takes that value into account; however, the compensation paid out is dwarfed in comparison to the savings.
Studies by the International Labour Organization estimate a savings ratio of at least 3:1 in salary differences between hiring domestic nationals versus migrant workers for work across the construction, agriculture, manufacturing and domestic work sectors.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant workers have kept the economies running and growing, while their employers pocketed the savings, benefiting from high productivity and fixating on their individual wellbeing. In the early stages of the pandemic, while upper management began their social distancing and quarantining, work continued even as cases exploded within worker dormitories. Quarantine quickly became a luxury that only some could afford.
Due to the impact of COVID-19, many employers are shipping their migrant workers home. Packed like produce and exported like refuse. At least 50 million, spread out internationally over the region between Asia Pacific and The Arab States, returning to unemployment and uncertainty. Remitting a virus, instead of income. Fifty million workers unaccounted for in government plans for subsidies, transportation, housing, and healthcare. And that number doesn’t account for the tens of millions of migrant workers that never travel across international borders within the South Asian region.
The very lack of accounting in the actual numbers for migrant workers is shocking, with ranges within India alone swinging from 50 to 100 million. The intra-national migrant workers move from towns to cities, cities to neighbouring states and provinces, and have now had to relocate en masse with barely any notice. In buses, on trains, and even on foot they are trying to return home.
The caravan moves under pain of death,
exiled from cities made of their blood and sweat,
to the music of pots and pans overhead
that are surprised to be held
in hands without calluses;
hands that will return to careless scrolling,
the minute their minute-long drama ends.
Migrant workers were always part of a second class of the workforce. Their safety and health were not priorities even when they contributed to profitability and productivity. Once COVID-19 brought work to a screeching halt, their vulnerability and precarious status turned to complete abandonment. In instances where migrant workers weren’t callously deported to their native countries, it exposed the lack of consideration given to the living and working conditions of migrant workers. While the rest of the world was social-distancing or in lockdown, migrant workers continued going to work in unsafe conditions, returning to clustering in cramped dormitories at the end of the day.
Singapore has recently begun addressing the spread of the virus in migrant workers, though this was only considered vital once the concentration of workers was seen as a hazard to the health of the general populace. The conditions that the migrant workers were subjected to, and the treatment meted out to them, during the pandemic were overlooked until they started impacting the rest of the population.
The living conditions provided to the workers essentially guaranteed the spread of the virus and adequate steps were not taken to aid the prevention or treatment of those afflicted. First priority went to those who could afford medical care, and those who were citizens.
Singapore is the exception to how the rest of Asia has dealt with the prospect of managing the crisis amongst their population due perhaps to their rapid response amongst their own population allowing further attention being paid to the vulnerable migrant workers; the results remain to be seen. Elsewhere, migrant workers have been shipped off with no concrete plans in place for their return home, and subsequent care and treatment.
The love of a mother
turns a suitcase with wheels,
into the first bullet train
this country has seen.
More real than the metal veins
laid across the land,
is the strength within her caring hands;
pulling the future along by the reigns
abandoned by those in command.
This is further exacerbated by the stigma of being a travelling worker during this crisis. In India, some migrant workers have had to walk more than 500 kilometers in order to return home, carrying their supplies with them, sometimes even their children. In addition, they are demonized as a cause for the rise in new cases, ignoring the fact that the lockdown that began their exodus ended at the peak of the outbreak, leading to an ongoing spread of the virus.
Nor does this narrative take into account the lack of testing, which accounts for obfuscation of accurate case reporting over time. Government officials either urge compassion or buy into the hysteria demanding “action;” when the situation has reached an unmanageable stage in most cases. The plan has evolved into “herd immunity,” which effectively translates into watching things play out until enough people have survived the virus to slow its spread. This is now all but unspoken policy, not something to be stated outright for fear of the panic it could induce. Nonetheless, this is what it has amounted to for intra-national and international migrant workers.
The countries the workers hold dear treat them as diseased inconveniences, a major source of the continued collective misery experienced by hundreds of millions of people, quarantined for their own safety.
Migrant workers and their jobs take on many forms and faces. In many cases, these workers are unable to exercise the luxury of halting work and returning home; Housemaids and cooks stay on to serve the homes of families unused to manual labour. Drivers chauffeur around children who continue their socializing with friends. Construction workers continue to build houses for wealthy families, who plan to move in this fall in time for school, no matter what. All the while, those they work for laud their own lack of effort as heroic; and deride the concept of affording their employees the same freedom and safety net. These essential workers have no recourse during this time, nor beyond it.
“The economy can only suffer so much”,
Lament the priests, their lines rehearsed.
They feed the beast till it bloats
Once beached, they carve their piece,
Leaving the scene before it explodes.
Tomorrow
The waves recede, stars emerge.
Blistered feet rest under trees.
Whispered dreams in dry mouths,
Resting in safe memories.
Migrant workers continue to be the invisible backbone of Asia.
WAJAHAT MAHMOOD is a bookkeeper by day and a writer by night. He is co-host of The Claro Podcast, using his background in Political Science and Philosophy. Follow @wajmahmood or @claropodcast on Twitter for current and future projects.
HARSH TRIVEDI is a Vancouver-based student and writer of political philosophy. He is the founder of the Ambedkar Reading Group, leading discussions on Anti-Caste education and organizing within the South Asian diaspora. He co-hosts The Claro Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @harsht17 or @claropodcast.