Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Communication, Inequality, and Transformation 9811973830, 9789811973833

Table of contents :
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

Citation preview

Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic Communication, Inequality, and Transformation Edited by Satveer Kaur-Gill · Mohan J. Dutta

Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Satveer Kaur-Gill · Mohan J. Dutta Editors

Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic Communication, Inequality, and Transformation

Editors Satveer Kaur-Gill The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine Dartmouth College Hanover, NH, USA

Mohan J. Dutta Department of Communication, Journalism and Marketing Massey University Palmerson North, New Zealand

ISBN 978-981-19-7383-3 ISBN 978-981-19-7384-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Julio Etchart This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

For all migrants freezing in blizzards scorched by the sun hunted by hate kept behind cages left without loved ones.

Preface

This edited book collection highlights applied communication research that analyzes the experiences of migrants and refugees from a structural approach. The book aims to bring to the fore the voices of migrant communities, theorizing health inequalities from a grassroots perspective. Through ground-up theorizing, we pay attention to how migrants frame pandemic communication as unequal. Constitutive of their experiences of the pandemic are their narratives of outbreak inequality. The health experiences and outcomes of migrants during the pandemic were unequally felt throughout the world. The dominant global health communication literature limitedly engages the experiences of migrants from the Global South, with the disciplines’ excessive focus on traditional message effects, public health responses, policy making, health literacy, and strategic and culturally sensitive health promotion in the discussions on the COVID-19 pandemic and migrants. Neutering scholarship focused on community-led theorizing directed at structural transformation, the hegemonic global health communication scholarship enables the perpetuation of the exploitative and extractive capitalist-colonial status quo in its production of migrant health as lens for experts and expertise, not engaging the voices of migrants. The curation of these chapters assembled in this book is an attempt to address the gap in communication scholarship on the experiences of migrants in and from the Global South, where communication theory and praxis with its traditional episteme of global health communication

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limitedly marks and groups the experiences of migrants from a gaze of otherness and simultaneously pathologizes the Global South as culturalist difference. Instead, we hope this edited book brings to our readers how communication, while deeply unequal for many communities around the globe, can also be transformative for social change when led and anchored by communities at the margins, foregrounding questions of class, organizing, social and racial justice, and resistance. Singapore, Singapore Palmerson North, New Zealand

Satveer Kaur-Gill Mohan J. Dutta

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the labor of migrants at the global margins who form the infrastructures of scholarship exploring the effects of COVID-19 among migrants. Mohan would like to acknowledge the support of his whanau, his parents, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, children and partner Debalina for their sustained support in building registers of solidarity across spaces of marginality in global labor chains. He would like to acknowledge the community researchers and organizers, activists, and advocates that have sustained and held up the networks of organizing at the “margins of the margins.” Satveer would like to acknowledge her greatest cheerleader and best friend, Jaipal, who continues to champion her scholarship through care, commitment, and unwavering support. Embodied in the writings of this book are Jaipal’s constant reminders to remain principled in the face of power, no matter the sacrifice. Always insufficient, Satveer also shares her profound gratitude to her mother for working tirelessly to give her the opportunities she now has. Despite retiring, you continue to share your labor, just so that your daughter can have a little more sleep at night. And finally, Satveer acknowledges her Ma and Baba, and to all the Mas and Babas, who despite incredibly perilous journeys, enduring immense pain and suffering, made their homes away from home just so their children could have better lives and opportunities.

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Contents

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The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Migrants: An Outbreak of Inequality Satveer Kaur-Gill and Mohan J. Dutta 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 Rati Kumar The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Health of Rohingya Refugees Md. Mahbubur Rahman and Mohan J. Dutta Listening for Erasures as Method in Making Sense of Health Disparities: Culture-Centered Constructions of Health Among Refugees Pooja Jayan and Mohan J. Dutta The Implications of Being Thrice-Marginalized: Work Migrants in India During the Coronavirus Lockdown Devalina Mookerjee and Shubhabrata Roy

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Extreme (Im)mobility and Mental Health Inequalities: Migrant Construction Workers in Singapore During the COVID-19 Pandemic Satveer Kaur-Gill, Samira Hassan, and Yeo Qin-Liang

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Indonesian Domestic Workers in Malaysia During the COVID-19 Pandemic Asha Rathina Pandi

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Conducting Digital Ethnography with Precarious Migrant Workers in a Pandemic Yeo Qin-Liang, Satveer Kaur-Gill, and Samira Hassan

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Profiling the Diseased: Tablighi Jamaat and Racist Experiences in Assam Suraj Gogoi and Rohini Sen

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Community-Based Art Interventions, Migrant Health Inequalities, and COVID-19 Coping Srividya Ramasubramanian and Anthony Ramirez

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Culture-Centered Migrant Organizing at the Margins: Resisting Hate Amidst COVID-19 Mohan J. Dutta, Indranil Mandal, and Pankaj Baskey

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Notes on Contributors

Pankaj Baskey is an Indigenous (Santali) Community Researcher with the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) based in West Bengal, India. Mohan J. Dutta (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication and the Director of the Center for CultureCentered Approach to Research and Evaluation, developing culturallycentered, community-based projects of social change that articulate health as a human right. His research examines the role of advocacy and activism in marginalizing structures, the relationship between poverty and health, political economy of global health policies, the mobilization of cultural tropes for the justification of neo-colonial health development projects, and how participatory culture-centered processes and strategies of radical democracy serve as axes of global social change. Suraj Gogoi is a sociologist interested in social, political, and ethical life in South Asia. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, RV University, Bangalore. His forthcoming book Tribal Question and Assamese Identity: Poetics and Politics of Indigeneity (co-authored with Manoranjan Pegu) frames the social and political life in contemporary Assam by situating the figure of the tribal in conversation with caste Assamese society (and culture), official language politics, and the nature of Assamese nationalism. His current research also

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engages with regimes of citizenship and the figure of the minority citizensubject in South Asia. He is a social critic and writes regularly on culture, politics, and society in contemporary India. Samira Hassan is a writer, researcher, and translator who has worked on issues of migration, race, and mental health across Singapore, Bangladesh, and Seoul. His research experience is deeply connected with her grassroots advocacy and activism for migrant worker communities in Singapore. Pooja Jayan is a Junior Research Officer and Ph.D. student in the Center of Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey University, Palmerston North, Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her current research interests are in health communication, specifically looking at health experiences and inequalities among marginalized communities. Her doctoral thesis looks at the health and well-being of migrant Indian nurses in New Zealand. She received the Society for Research on Women Research Award (SROW). In her research projects in New Zealand and India, she engages with migrants, refugees, women, and minority communities experiencing marginalization. Satveer Kaur-Gill is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Dartmouth College. Her research focuses on minority health disparities. Her research projects broadly include (1) racially discordant patient-provider communication, (2) telehealth inequities, (3) health inequalities facing subaltern migrant workers in South East Asia and South Asia, and (4) health inequalities of people whose self-reported income were in the lowest income bracket in Singapore. She received her Master of Science (M.Sc.) in International Public Policy from University College London in 2011 and her Bachelor of Social Science (B.Sc. with Honors) from the National University of Singapore. She is a 2021 National Communication Association, Health Communication Division’s Early Career Award recipient, 2019–2020 US-ASEAN Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a 2016– 2017 Yale Fox Fellow. Rati Kumar an Assistant Professor at San Diego State University is a critical health communication scholar with a focus on health inequities and culturally situated health interventions. Her work draws on the strand of “health in displacement,” conceptualizing displacement both as spatial

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displacement induced by voluntary and forced migratory processes, as well as a meta-level systemic displacement of disenfranchised communities. Her research focuses on centering the cultural knowledge of marginalized communities within mainstream health spaces as agents of structural and policy change. Her recent scholarship focuses on refugees and migrant workers, and in communities and families affected by mass incarceration. Drawing on her ethos as a former student-athlete and law school graduate, she is passionate about action-oriented, communitybased, and policy-focused research. Indranil Mandal is a Community Researcher with the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) based in West Bengal, India. Devalina Mookerjee works across research, publishing, and translation in India. Qualitative empirical work in health and education are her primary research interests. After a Ph.D. in Communication, from Purdue University, USA, she has over the last two decades participated in research in 14 states in India, investigating subjects such as educational play, behavior, and understandings of health and hygiene among adults and children, and providing research input to help design interface for online education, among others. Her forthcoming book translates stories of fear by the Bengali writer Bibhutibhushan to English from the original Bengali and discusses how narratives of ghost evolve to reflect the culture-specific understandings of a society, looking at itself. Asha Rathina Pandi is an Independent Consultant and Research Associate with the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), NZ. Her research focuses on marginalized populations in Malaysia, specifically, the intersections of poverty, migrant workers’ rights, social justice, and policy advocacy. Yeo Qin-Liang is a Researcher whose academic interests include the comparative political economy of development, welfare states, civil society activism, and migrant health. He is also the co-founder of GiftforGood, a non-profit that facilitates in-kind donations to charities across Singapore. Md. Mahbubur Rahman is a Ph.D. student at the School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing of Massey University, New Zealand. His primary area of health communication research entails the study of refugee health. He also works as a Research Assistant at the Center for

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Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey University where he engages with refugee and new migrant communities of New Zealand utilizing Kaupapa M¯aori theories and Culture-Centered Approach (CCA) methodologies to develop community-led solutions. His primary research interests include health communication, migrant health, refugee health, pharmacy, and medicine. He is also a registered pharmacist of Bangladesh. Srividya Ramasubramanian is an Indian-American immigrant who moved to the USA in 1999 for her Ph.D. at Penn State University. She is a Presidential Impact Fellow and Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University. Her scholarship focuses on community-oriented media, media literacy, race/ethnicity and media, and mindfulness. She is also the co-founder of Media Rise, a non-profit that brings educators, artists, and activists together to promote meaningful media for social good. She is also a musician, visual artist, and poet. Anthony Ramirez (PhD, Texas A&M University) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Downtown. His research focuses on Latinx and U.S.-Mexico border representation in popular culture and media. Shubhabrata Roy set up BIAS because it seemed to him that far too many essential research questions about India were going unanswered across academia and industry. With two decades of experience in qualitative empirical research, he specializes in consumer behavior, entrepreneurship, and design thinking, and continues his effort to put together teams that investigate, and provide nuanced and comprehensive answers to questions in human behavior and decision-making in the Indian context. Rohini Sen is an Assistant Professor at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P Jindal Global University and is pursuing her Ph.D. from the School of Law, University of Warwick as a Chancellor’s Scholar. Her broad research interests are Critical Approaches to International Law (CAIL), critical pedagogy, queer feminist methods and approaches, decolonial and postcolonial theories, and porous intersections of law and social sciences. Her

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current research focuses on (a) critical pedagogy and its dialogical relationship with the pedagogue and formal and (b) informal barriers to the workings of Sexual Harassment Committees in Indian Higher Education Institutes. When not struggling to be an academic, she spends her time curating handloom sarees and looking for ways to contaminate the English language through vernacular praxis.

List of Figures

Fig. 11.1

Fig. 11.2

Poster promoting Hindu-Muslim unity circulated via digital platforms (Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, CARE) Poster voicing the rights of migrant workers and demanding employment guarantee

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CHAPTER 1

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Migrants: An Outbreak of Inequality Satveer Kaur-Gill and Mohan J. Dutta

The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounds the unequal trajectories of infectious diseases globally, coupled with the highly unequal effects of pandemic responses adopted locally, regionally, and nationally (Bojorquez et al., 2021; Elers et al., 2021; Habersaat et al., 2020; Rydland et al., 2022). The patterns of distribution of the burdens of the pandemic both within nation-states and across nation-states drive home the materiality of the vastly unequal terrains of health and well-being that the accelerated expansion of extractive capitalism has caused. These inequalities are constituted by almost five decades of aggressive and relentless pursuit of neoliberal policy-making and are intertwined with inequalities

S. Kaur-Gill (B) The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. J. Dutta Massey University, Palmerson North, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_1

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in the distribution of wealth, income, and opportunity (Dutta, 2016). The pursuit of the free market as a panacea, pushed relentlessly by international financial institutions, has shaped the management of politics, economics, and society globally, albeit in variegated forms (Brenner et al., 2010). The zeitgeist of neoliberalism, based on the singular commitment to promoting the free market, has targeted and re-arranged aspirations, desires, and imaginations across spaces, fundamentally constituting health risks at the margins of global economies (Dutta, 2016). In the process of establishing the free market as the panacea to global problems that have been propelled by the aggressive pursuit of the free market, from hunger and poverty to well-being and climate change, neoliberal reforms have established and perpetuated exploitative labor regimes that thrive on the legitimization of diverse modes of exploitation (Collins & Rothe, 2019; Chomsky, 1998; Dutta, 2017). The twin forces of expelling the poor from their livelihood through continually expanding extractive practices and then incorporating them into the global networks of production, constitute the exploitative infrastructures of neoliberal economies. Migration forms a critical and necessary infrastructure in the neoliberal pursuit of new spaces of extraction, with discardable migrant bodies, without labor rights and pathways of access to citizenship-based protections serving as drivers of accelerated growth. The futuristic registers for smart and sustainable urban organizing are built on the invisibilization and erasure of hyper-precarious migrants. Even as global discourses of profitability have turned toward incorporating and commoditizing sustainability as a rhetorical device, the exploitation of expendable migrants underpins the architecture continually promoted in the sustainability narrative. Through communicative inversions, referring to the turning of materiality on its head via communication processes (Dutta, 2020), the very problems that have resulted from the aggressive pursuit of neoliberal reforms have been configured as the targets of neoliberal policy-making. More neoliberalism and the greater and faster pursuit of the free market have been posed as the necessary transformations to produce sustainable growth, address climate change, and improve population-level health and well-being. The current neoliberal formations incorporate digital technologies as catalysts for resource extraction and labor exploitation (Chakrabarty, 2019; Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018; Grossi & Pianezzi, 2017). These digital platforms, on the one hand, exploit the labor of hyperprecarious migrant workers and are located in architectures built through

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worker exploitation, and on the other hand, form the communicative infrastructures for propagating the neoliberal seductions that expel the poor from the Global South into the neoliberal labor chains. The narrative structures that hold up the exploitation of migrants in global labor chains are circulated via communicative inversions, often narrated and distributed through digital platforms, cultivating images of upward mobility, opportunity, and sustainability attached to smart urban utopias. The futuristic “Smart City” and the dreams it weaves perpetuate the ongoing exploitation of migrants. The production of the futuristic urban digital infrastructure forms the frontiers of neoliberal expansion, branded as sustainability. Images of futuristic urban infrastructures and digitally mediated spaces actively erase the everyday practices of exploitation of migrants and the erasure of migrant rights. The persistence of the neoliberal order has historically depended on its communicative infrastructure, deploying propaganda to uphold the uncritical celebration of the free market. The communicative construction of smart, urban, sustainable futures has been organized to draw in investments, re-organize resources, and deploy accelerated projects of development sold as emancipatory futures (Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Migration is embedded within this neoliberal ideology and incorporated as an instrument for creating and promoting profitable spaces for global capital, forming the very infrastructural basis for the construction of smart cities. As infrastructures, industries, and technologies have been strategically arranged to serve the agendas of transnational capital, they have drawn on the continual supply of cheap and disposable labor. In other words, both extraction and exploitation work hand-in-hand, with migration playing a critical role in the global circuit of capital. The movement of cheap, discardable, and exploitable labor into spaces of accelerated exploitation enables transnational capital to generate the greatest profits, feeding the networks of investors and shareholders. In contrast, migrant workers reap the least from the accelerated growth. The perpetuation of accelerated growth contributes to and draws on deeply exploitative practices targeting migrants employed in precarious conditions without labor rights and the right to raise their voices. By keeping resources to a minimum, such as the cost of migrant wages, practices such as indenture of hiring, poor housing and sanitation, limited access to health resources, and low occupational safety standards are perpetuated in these industries. All to maximally extract profits from the labor of low-wage migrants. During a pandemic, these inequalities are amplified, but also

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are rendered visible, depicting how outbreaks manifest unequally for certain communities and workers at the margins. During the COVID19 pandemic, precarious migrant populations faced uneven outbreak inequalities, coupled with being placed under amplified forms of already existing surveillance and control. The inequalities related to the COVID19 pandemic are reflected in the interpenetrating structures of capitalism, colonialism, and racism. This edited collection foregrounds the everyday precarities negotiated by migrants at the margins of global neoliberal transformation amidst the pandemic. Drawing from multi-method approaches, the collection examines the negotiations of COVID-19 within the context of migration. Offering a corrective to the dominant approach to migration and global health communication that takes a culturally essentialist approach, we turn to migrant experiences at the margins employing a structural analysis. Migration constitutes the context of structural violence in global neoliberal economies, reflected in the disproportionate burdens of health risks borne by migrants at the margins. This book attends to the question, how are migrants experiencing the pandemic amidst the features of extreme (im)mobility introduced by the lockdown policy responses across global spaces? Pandemic related extreme (im)mobility in the context of precarious migrants refers to the structural formations of the infrastructures of migration, policy responses in response to COVID-19, placing migrant workers and migrants at the borders under surveillance, and limiting the movement of migrants in, between, and across spaces. Migration, dependent upon policies that enable mobilities across spaces (Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018), is framed within the contexts of (im)mobility introduced by the lockdown measures and other preventive responses. Traversing across geographically diverse spaces, both within the Global South and in the Global North, the essays weave together the negotiations of migration as the register for making sense of health.

The Relationship Between Outbreak and Communicative Inequalities The COVID-19 pandemic has affected vulnerable populations disproportionately around the globe. Precarious migrants faced unequal health consequences and threats from the pandemic differently from non-mobile citizens. The impact of the pandemic on precarious migrants requires serious attention and interrogation for its disproportionately large effects

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on the health and well-being of migrant workers toiling on global labor chains. The vast inequalities of the pandemic burden are intertwined with communicative inequalities, reflecting the inequalities in the distribution of communication resources, both resources for information and resources for voice (Dutta, 2016, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Communicative inequalities go beyond mapping the distribution patterns of communication technologies (e.g., access issues) and interrogate how the distribution of communicative resources is organized. For example, communicative inequalities ask how preventive health information and messages are constructed and deployed. How did states manage, direct, and relay public health messages to the population during a pandemic? What are the communicative avenues for voice, representation, and participation by those most disenfranchised during the pandemic? These questions center our analysis of communicative inequalities and their relationship to outbreak inequalities. The precarity facing migrant laborers often refers to the condition of being casual and disposable from largely fragile working conditions and is marked by communicative inequality. Precarious migrants, working in the casual, unorganized, and contract-less sectors, are largely unprotected, working in special economic zones or urban hubs marked as the sites of unfettered capitalist expansion and therefore outside the ambits of labor regulations. These spaces, sold as spaces for urban futurism, are the destination hubs for global capitalist investment, particularly investments by the technology and financial sectors (Dutta, 2021a). The ease of flow of capital, projects, investments, and futuristic architectures in specially designated spaces of futurism is enabled through the authoritarian repression of organized labor and criminalization of worker dissent. Migrant workers remain largely erased from the spaces of urban organizing, with limited to no access to communicative infrastructures for structurally-based information, representation, participation, and voice. The structures of neoliberal capitalism shape communicative inequalities and, in turn, are connected with health inequalities experienced by migrants. The jarring health disparities facing precarious migrants have been documented worldwide. Refugees, migrant domestic and construction workers, low-wage migrant laborers, and undocumented migrants are some examples of precarious migrants (Bhopal, 2020; Dutta, 2020, 2021a; Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021; Martuscelli, 2021;

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Mookerjee et al., 2021; Nasol & Francisco-Menchavez, 2021; Sanfelici, 2021; Ye, 2021) that faced significant health disparities when the pandemic unfolded. The precarity of migrants in a pandemic made evident how the health of migrants is situated in a system of exploitative capitalist structures. Cramped and crowded spaces of rest and living, overworked, a lack of access to nutritious food, intermittent or poor wages, and facing digital limitations, precarious migrants are embedded in an ecological system of structural injustices. These structural injustices are coupled with an evolving pandemic where public health messages are arranged via Eurocentric logics on behavior change as individual efforts through health promotion (Dutta, 2005, 2021b), such as masking up, sanitizing, and social distancing. These acts are viewed as behavioral responses to stay safe from infections. Migrant health communication within the hegemonic framework promotes messages, reducing migrants to cultural essences and occupying themselves with the design of effective, culturally sensitive, tailored, and targeted messages. Lopez and Neely (2021), however, remind us that the health of the racialized body must be recognized through the lens of society, where the health or illness of the individual body is very much socially and communicatively configured to the larger (in)justices in society. Therefore, these types of health information messages fail to account for the plight of migrants living in overcrowded spaces, with little material resources to access masks, sanitizers, or soaps, and make it impossible to socially distance themselves. These conditions are all part of the broader structures of precarity that operate in the context of migrant lives. Furthermore, during a pandemic, the difficulty for precarious migrants to access similar material resources to protect themselves from infectious disease outbreaks compared to the rest of the population is uneven and unequal. Thus, individual behavior change that relies on the individual to garner and maintain material resources of health protection fails to address the disproportionate outbreaks among these population groups, leaving the structures intact. Moreover, in minimizing the role of the structure in shaping migrant health at the margins, this body of scholarship contributes to the further hyper-precarization and exploitation of workers. They turn migrant workers into cultural essences constructed within the ambits of the hegemonic ideology, extract cultural characteristics, and then target these cultural characteristics. Simultaneously, migrant bodies and responses are turned into data, directed toward the fine-tuning of effective health messages. Hegemonic health messaging

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is complemented by authoritarian strategies of surveillance and disciplining targeting migrant workers. The individualized culturalist health messaging, alongside the technologies of surveillance and discipline, work together to obfuscate the serious and gross violations of labor and human rights of migrants at the margins. In Singapore, for example, migrant construction workers live in overcrowded dormitories (see Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). These dormitories house approximately 20 workers in a room, making social distancing impossible or an irrelevant health measure in the context of the poor living conditions experienced by migrant workers. Many workers shared bar soaps, water taps, and restrooms, and had no access to sanitizers (Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Therefore, dominant public health messages that focused on the acquisition of masks, sanitizers, and social distancing failed to consider the disparities among populations unable to carry out these behaviors due to the lack of material resources and the inability to locate spaces for effective social distancing. Public health messages were not responsive to how migrant infrastructures embedded in precarity amplify health vulnerabilities in a pandemic (Dutta, 2021c, 2022). This edited volume, interested in questions of communicative inequalities and the interlinkages to health disparities, will broadly outline the role of precarious structural conditions, reproducing communicative inequalities for migrants, bringing attention to a need for structurally responsive health systems for precarious populations. The role of health communication is shifted from one of creating techniques for effective message delivery to health organizing for structural transformation in solidarity with the margins (Dutta et al., 2019). When discussing the role communicative inequalities play in exacerbating precarious conditions for migrants, this overview chapter seeks to theorize communicative inequalities in the context of outbreak inequalities as a critical conceptual anchor. The chapter discusses the global context of migrant health and the structural conditions of (im)mobilities faced by migrants in the margins, tied to how communicative inequalities contribute to outbreak inequalities. Entrenched in systems that organize (im)mobilities of migrants (Adey et al., 2021), we discuss how health messages, health infrastructures, and health systems have been conditioned for exclusion and exploitation. Communicative disparities are set up to reflect how migrants faced outbreak inequalities across the globe during the pandemic. The extreme

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risks and infections faced by migrants, including other structural disparities, will be highlighted in the chapters selected to provide an overview of the various sections that will draw on their voices in research. In the backdrop of their ongoing erasure, migrants enact their agency through their participation in interpretive processes to make sense of the structures, the everyday negotiations of structures, and the organizing to challenge the authoritarian repression and technologies of controlling labor. Worker organizing and worker articulations foreground registers of resistance as the basis for securing worker health. Moreover, in the backdrop of the large-scale deployment of digital platforms to disseminate hate as a strategy for enacting capitalist power and control carried out by the authoritarian state, migrant worker organizing offers opportunities for social change.

Precarities as Ecological Low-skilled migrants worldwide faced significant outbreak inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021; Mookerjee et al., 2021; Pandey et al., 2021). Outbreak inequalities are profoundly connected to how such hyper-precarious work functions in neoliberal societies that disenfranchise migrant health. Migrants are entrenched in precarious structures for the benefit of capital (Dutta, 2020). Limiting workers’ access to health systems and infrastructures allows for greater profit extraction from the bodies of these workers (Dutta, 2017; Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018). Kathiravelu (2021) argues that the role of unequal structures causes far greater vulnerabilities and shocks to migrant populations in a pandemic, describing this as infrastructural (in)justice faced by precarious migrant populations. These injustices are institutionally governed, shaping how institutions distribute resources inequitably during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kathiravelu, 2021). Precarious employment structures of low-wage migrant workers, such as construction workers, day laborers, essential front-line workers, and domestic workers, create conditions in which low-wage migrants are discursively erased, materially minimized, and disengaged, resulting in communicative erasures at multiple categories of health needs. The consequence of absence and access during the COVID-19 pandemic amplifies the many disparities that migrants face during social crises. Therefore, when the pandemic occurred, precarious groups such as

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migrants were most vulnerable, especially as mobile subjects, removed from the conditions of mobility to (im)mobility (Adey et al., 2021). Viswanath et al. (2020) point out that communicative inequalities were intensified when public health communication messages failed to recognize differences in how health information is accessed, retrieved, and processed for vulnerable groups, resulting in more significant structural inequities for marginalized groups. Furthermore, Dutta (2016) notes that these communicative inequalities need to address communicative resources geared toward structural access to health and well-being. For example, in Singapore, the lack of public communication messages that address the structural contexts of migrant work shaped the vast health inequalities experienced by migrant construction workers. Typically erased from mainstream discursive sites, both policy discourses and academic discourses constituted within the infrastructures of state propaganda, migrant construction workers were the primary victims of the COVID-19 outbreak by April 2020, facing disproportionate numbers of infections. Dutta (2021a, 2021b, 2021c) noted the communicative features of structural violence in global migration, drawing attention to the communicative inequalities that constitute migrant health. The organizing of spaces for migrants are riddled in the logic of neoliberalism, with living spaces for migrants being rendered invisible. Structures of citizenship are organized to erase the voices of migrants, with low-wage migrant workers violently cut off from accessing pathways to citizenship. Their bodies, toiling to build the infrastructure of the city, are to be discarded after their use. Drawing on the concept “margins of the margins,” Dutta (2021b) elucidates the complex and intertwined structures of communicative erasure, tied to the disenfranchisement of migrants from pathways of citizenship. Citizenship, therefore, is a key resource in the disenfranchisement of migrant rights, and in the simultaneous incorporation of migrants at the “margins of the margins” as hyper-precarious and discardable labor in extreme neoliberal formations. Team and Anderson (2020) described how the pandemic amplified structural vulnerabilities, identifying structural vulnerabilities as social, geographic, and physical systems that intersect to create conditions that impact the health of those living in vulnerable conditions. For example, labor conditions of precarious migrants were connected to crowded and dilapidated housing, job and food insecurity, and infectious disease transmission, leading to poor health protections (Dutta, 2021a; Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Kaur-Gill, 2020).

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Jamil and Dutta (2021) identified the communicative circulation of otherness of low-wage migrant workers from Bangladesh living in the Middle East, hired to be placed outside mainstream spaces for exclusion in the host country. Through exclusion, communicative, and structural, the migration infrastructures profit from keeping low-wage migrants voiceless, isolated, and exploited. Their exclusion leaves them underserved in various ways, including health outcomes. The documented effects of the structural violence that impact the bodies of workers are deeply entrenched in how the employment structures of such work perpetuate rife inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, Mookerjee et al. (2021) report how internal migrants in India working in construction, as day laborers, or as domestic workers, an essential labor force in the cities, had to return to their villages abruptly. When the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, they were given mere hours to leave, reifying their status as dispensable workers. The exodus of workers from the cities, some by foot over long journeys, caused death, sickness, mounting debt, limited access to health infrastructures, and job insecurity. Workers hailing from rural villages and towns often took on debt to travel to the city for work. Thus, the debt amount ballooned for workers without employment, adding significant stress because of the now compounded debt trap. Upon return to their villages, they were also stigmatized as virus carriers during lockdowns, creating cycles of mental health violence tied to work, community, and social relations. In the United States, Pandey et al. (2021) examined how migrant domestic workers faced further exploitation through expanded labor roles. Workers were found to have greater workloads, with little to no power to ask for better compensation from the stark power dynamics concentrated in the hands of employers. This also placed them at further health precarity with limited health insurance access, despite employers’ heightened dependency on domestic workers while in lockdown (Pandey et al., 2021). The informality and dispensability of conducting such work implicate how domestic workers negotiate communicative resources for better labor and health conditions. Furthermore, accessing and adopting protective gear for health safety were absent, leaving workers between difficult choices to protect themselves or facing intermittent job loss and income. When studying precarious migrants, the environment of hire in which they are situated informs where poor health indicators occur. The connection between labor and health informs health outcomes.

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The connection between the macro narratives of economic and material precarity to the micro levels of how their health inequalities are experienced reflects the ecological cycle of health vulnerabilities for migrants. Similarly, in Malaysia, there are approximately 3.5 million migrants, of which an estimated 1.3 million are irregular migrants. They constitute refugees and asylum seekers, with irregular migrants often conducting domestic, construction, manufacturing, and agricultural work in Malaysia. Somiah (2022) details the ecological precarity of irregular migrants in Sabah, Malaysia. Stigmatized as social threats, their status as irregular migrants constituted their experiences in the host country as subjects for hyper-surveillance, often raided, interrogated, and threatened by state officials and agents. Somiah (2021) posit that the processes through which migrants are documented in Sabah, such as their illegal status, reinforce their threatening presence as unmanageable and, therefore, problematic. During the early onset of the outbreak in 2020, undocumented irregular migrants were subjected intensively to hyper-surveillance. State officials actively raided these communities under the guise of medical surveillance, eventually deporting this population group. Wahab (2020) reported that these very detention centers became active COVID-19 clusters due to the neglected, crowded, cramped, and unhygienic conditions. To add, precarious migrants in Malaysia were confronted with job losses from the irregularity of their work, resulting in issues of hunger and food insecurity. In addition, literacy issues left migrants without the information required on preventative health behaviors and COVID-19-related information. These factors later led to extreme health disparities faced by undocumented migrants in the country (Wahab, 2020). Jamil and Dutta (2021) studied the social media discourses of Bangladeshi migrant workers, identifying how interconnected disparities were experienced by precarious migrant workers during the pandemic. Once again, the precarity of low-skilled migration leaves workers at risk of job insecurity, mental health violence, and mounting debt. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made these insecurities even more complex. The responsibility of performing low-skilled migrant work such as domestic and construction work meant being left unemployed during the pandemic, leaving workers facing job insecurity and causing mental anguish. Workers were also ushered into groups for testing procedures, with workers cramped into living arrangements that made them more prone to outbreaks. Jamil and Dutta’s (2021) study indicated serious

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labor and health violations and abuses of Bangladeshi workers residing in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. This included workers being crammed into rooms or living spaces or rendered homeless during the pandemic. The interconnectedness of the lived experiences of precarious migrants during the pandemic requires a global response that accounts for the migration infrastructures that keep workers in a constant state of marginalization. Migrant infrastructures refer to the interconnected physical, digital, and organizational structures that account for migrant lives, labor, and health, made up of policies, resources, roles, and processes (Leurs, 2019). The absence or erasure from communicative resources, both resources for voice and information resources, are part of how the migrant infrastructures keep migrants in the margins of the host country. Several chapters in this book will discuss these interconnections in the context of COVID-19 infections that resulted in jarring health inequalities for migrants.

Health Information Communicative erasures are marked by how migrant workers are excluded from health infrastructures. Erased from mainstream health organizing, workers are left without resources to organize for themselves and seek out health information they require during the pandemic. Being discursively and socially erased from mainstream society can mean facing minimal consideration from national COVID-19 health policies and procedures. In India, the sweeping lockdowns by the government added to the poor health of precarious migrants in the city (Mookerjee et al., 2021). In Singapore, the rife outbreak inequality of COVID-19 infections felt by migrant construction workers during the pandemic was reinforced by poor living conditions and weak structural mechanisms to protect labor conditions. Within the context of their minimization and elimination, workers were initially absent from COVID-19 response plans (Chan & Kuan, 2020), causing confusion, chaos, and further vulnerabilities for exploited workers. Communicative erasures and exclusions directly impact the health consequences of precarious migrants, who, for example, were suddenly expelled out of cities in India with little consequences for their health rights. When conducting in-depth interviews through various digital tools with migrant construction workers, one of us noted the ways in which the workers shared the lack of response and deliberate ignorance of

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their employers to implement measures to protect workers. During an interview via a Facebook Messenger call, Shabir shared: Yeah, yesterday I so many times I tell him, I don’t want to go tomorrow work because my nearest room, already positive, but they don’t want to listen. They tell me, you okay you stay whatever we take decision, after we inform you. Already I come to work, my room, all people come to work.” Despite the chaos within their dormitory settings regarding the separation of infected workers from noninfected workers, workers were told to continue working at construction sites.

Health information resources and messages were severely lacking for migrant workers causing confusion, fear, and chaos. An activist physician in Singapore who provided translation services for health information to Bangladeshi migrant workers revealed the organic and evolving nature of medical translation work, amid the staggering number of COVID-19 infections that rose among migrant construction workers in April 2020. She shared how misinformation added to the morale of workers. …when the workers are told that they are being quarantined, just quarantined, because they don’t have just nothing, just quarantined, they start crying because they think they’re going to die. That’s the amount of fear in the workers right now. And the amount of misinformation, I would say, which is why [name of translator] would have a kind of a group to create like a COVID fact sheet at a certain point

Being excluded meant being left out of dominant public health communication messages. Public health communication messages did not include tailored messages for migrant workers. Furthermore, public health communication messages in Singapore started to distinguish “two curves,” listing infections among migrant construction workers separately from the local population. These strategies of “othering” workers also meant “othering” them from COVID-19 health communication messages, leaving civil society organizations in the initial stages of the outbreak scrambling to bridge these information gaps (Chan & Kuan, 2020; Yuen et al., 2021). Shared by another migrant worker activist in Singapore regarding strategies for organizing, …when we recognized that COVID would have a serious disproportionate impact on our migrant community…we put out a mailing list… to compile

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a list of the needs of different groups…and initiatives put in place to meet these needs…with this compilation… we were able then able to branch out into organizing some form of a response.

Workers interviewed during the early periods of the outbreak shared how infected workers were sharing resources such as water coolers, toilets, and charging facilities with non-infected workers due to the limited dormitory infrastructures and the cramped conditions of these living sites. Furthermore, the precarization of migrant construction work in Singapore meant having to make difficult decisions between not getting paid for missing work or risking getting infected by continuing work on construction sites. In Singapore, migrant workers revealed fears of wage theft from their employers, and cycles of debt traps that would follow as stressors. The movement restrictions they faced during the pandemic also meant worrying about remitting salaries to their families back home. The extreme neoliberalism at work in authoritarian states, such as Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, and Qatar, in the hiring and managing low-wage workers have grave implications for worker health and mental health. Dutta (2020) defines this phenomenon of extreme neoliberalism “as the ideology of the free market implemented by an authoritarian state through technologies of violence” (p. 2), where the authoritarian state manages workers for exclusion. Through exclusion and repression that pathologizes organizing and resistance across civil society as problematic, the differential management and treatment of workers is legitimized through the hegemonic narrative of “Asian values” as opposed to a human rights framework (Koh et al., 2017). Some dormitory operators isolated infected workers in locked rooms without their phone charges, creating a communicative vacuum and therefore, perpetuating the conditions of extreme (im)mobility. As a result, workers could not access information on the steps being taken, the rapid changes being implemented in the dormitories, and the communicative infrastructures that would point them to the necessary resources for prevention. Civil society groups, activists, and NGOs began translating health information messages to migrant workers when they were spotlighted as “health threats” in Singapore (Ye, 2021). Salient here is the role of academic expertise in the erasure of the violence experienced by low-wage migrant workers, with an architecture of expertise established in such regimes to whitewash oppressive state-capitalist practices in worker exploitation. For instance, the everyday reality of sometimes more

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than 20 workers living in conditions in a room pre-pandemic with “no limits on the maximum number of beds allowed per room” reported by the mainstream media (Phua, 2020, para 17) is communicatively inverted by minimizing structurally-centered discourses, downplaying or keeping absent the precarity of their migration status and structural conditions, employing a cultural deficit analysis to advocate for hygiene specific interventions for migrant workers, and propping up the state for nimble pandemic management without interrogating the socio-political context of precarious migration infrastructures (e.g., O’Lwin, 2022; Yip et al., 2021). State messages reported on mainstream news scold critiques centered on a structural analysis of migrant conditions, challenging reports of discrimination against workers. In one such article, a state spokesperson suggested that free access to vaccinations for migrant workers and the continued payment of their wages during quarantines were acts of benevolence shown by the state, “We also made sure our migrant workers continued to be paid even when the country was under lockdown and they were unable to work. How many countries did this?” (Lim, 2022, para 4). Here we see neoliberal authoritarianism is communicatively perpetuated through expertise, the work of expertise erasing the struggles of precarious migrants while at the same time upholding the rhetoric of smart pandemic management by the state.

Digital Spaces Digital platforms reproduce and magnify communicative inequalities, making up the frontiers of transnational technology capital. On the one hand, these digital platforms are held up by extractive and exploitative processes; on the other hand, they perpetuate these processes to create ever-expanding architectures of profiteering. The placing of bodies of the hyper-precarious classes under surveillance, they are exploited as discardable and enslaved labor, perpetuating ongoing practices of colonization through incorporation of their bodies as data to produce new zones of risk. These risks are disproportionately borne by the hyper-precarious classes, without access to laying claims to justice. Digital platforms perpetuate and reproduce hate that is often directed at migrants at the margins. Over the past decade, digital platforms have been integral to the accelerated circulation of hate narratives, drawing on the virality of the platform architecture that is further exacerbated by the affective arousal created by

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hate. Much of this hate has been directed at Muslims, who form large proportions of the migrant underclasses, expelled from their spaces of livelihood by imperial invasions such as Operation Iraqi Freedom and the US war in Afghanistan. Islamophobic hate across white supremacist and Hindutva ecosystems has been amplified manifold on digital platforms, disproportionately directed toward migrants. The narrative of the migrating Muslim other magnified through digital platforms shaped the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. An entire ecosystem of expertise is mobilized to erase and whitewash the exploitation, unseeing the exploitative systems, and holding up digital platforms as emancipatory resources. In the literature on migration and digital spaces, migrants are depicted as empowered through digital technologies (see., Chib & Aricat, 2017; Lim et al., 2015; O’Lwin, 2022), obfuscating the systemic exploitation that constitutes the migrant experience in the context of the architectures that support digital technologies. For instance, digital technologies are conceptualized as tools for migrants to seek empowerment, with digital platforms narrated as technologies enabling financial mobility through job opportunities. Moreover, digital technologies are constructed uncritically as resources for establishing emotional bonds across spaces. In scholarship on digital technologies and health communication for migrants, technologies are constructed as tools to disseminate top-down health information. The pandemic violently disrupted the carefully crafted narratives that anchor this literature, rendering visible the violence that is scripted into the organizing of migrant work. It rendered visible the practices of extreme exploitation that form the architectures of urban spaces projected as digital hubs, digital architectures, and smart cities where digital platforms are innovated upon, incorporated into exchange logics, and drawn upon to catalyze exchange. The negotiations of health by discardable and hyper-precarious migrant workers amidst the lack of access to fundamental resources of health and well-being are exacerbated by the pandemic, with COVID-19 infections finding their accelerated pathways through the overcrowded dormitory rooms housing low-wage migrant workers (Dutta, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Workers have long expressed these poor housing conditions and the lack of access to decent food as fundamental sources of risks to their health and well-being (Dutta, 2017). These voices have either been historically repressed or overshadowed by state propaganda.

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The pandemic outbreaks are then responded to with state narratives that articulate the inability to foresee and prevent the outbreaks while continuing to place workers under surveillance and disciplinary control. Amidst the surveillance, including surveillance on digital platforms, workers seek resistance strategies, articulating the violence of the infrastructures that house them (Dutta, 2020). Even as their participation on digital platforms is monitored and they are threatened for voicing their everyday struggles, workers seek out strategies for documenting the poor infrastructures and sharing video-based accounts on digital platforms (Kaur-Gill, 2022). Resistance via digital infrastructures is negotiated amidst the structures of surveillance and discipline, often amidst the risks of being deported for voicing their struggles amidst COVID-19. Similarly, the infrastructure of Islamophobic hate mobilized on digital platforms is resisted through organizing at the margins, often connected through digital platforms.

Vaccines As the pandemic continued in the years 2020 and 2021, the development of vaccines became a critical point of change in the management of the pandemic globally. Vaccine development and distribution would impact how countries alter public health, social and travel health policies. However, as vaccines developed, it became apparent that equitable distribution was not a forefront consideration by nations with access. Two concepts would be critical in discussions about vaccine distribution during the pandemic, vaccine inequality (Yamin, 2022), and vaccine apartheid (Harman et al., 2021). Vaccine inequality refers to the lack of vaccination access among different population groups within a society that would impact the health outcomes variedly in a society. This inequality of vaccine distribution is a critical aspect of how migrants, particularly precarious migrants across nation-states, would suffer greater health vulnerabilities with differentiated access to vaccines. Vaccine apartheid refers to vaccination unavailability in many countries in the Global South impacting how resource-poor countries would manage the pandemic, with differing outcomes in pandemic management compared to high-income economies because of vaccine inequalities (Harman et al., 2021). Again, precarious migrants in the Global South would bear some of the most unequal burdens of COVID19 vaccine distribution. Harman et al. (2021) argue that low-income

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countries face stark differences in vaccine access, reflecting how global health systems are “driven by a capitalist, philanthropic model (p. 2)” that operates through the colonial logics of temporary, donor-driven models. The unethical guarding of vaccine technology via the premise of intellectual rights made vaccine development and access for low-income countries dependent on a donor-driven model. This leaves vulnerable populations with even more significant health inequalities undergirded by structural injustices through the inequitable distribution of resources. For example, Rouw et al. (2021) reported that by the first quarter of 2021, high-income countries had enough vaccine resources to vaccinate their populations twice, while low-income countries could only cover a third of their populations. These stark differences in vaccine access have serious implications for those most precarious such as undocumented migrant workers in low-income countries. Various editorials by public health researchers have precisely indicated that at-risk populations include undocumented migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and low-wage migrants in low-income countries where there remains a struggle with adequate vaccinations (Mukumbang, 2020; Teerawattananon et al., 2021; Waterman, 2021). Precarious migrants were burdened with vaccine inequalities from multiple perspectives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, free vaccination rollouts were a double-edged policy for migrants. For example, migrants in Malaysia feared navigating vaccination centers, stemming from previous raids and arrests of undocumented workers when the lockdowns (movement control order) were announced (Steven et al., 2021). Similarly, workers in Singapore who face neglected and poor labor conditions and severe outbreak inequality could access vaccines seamlessly with vaccinations made available to migrant workers. West et al. (2021) embarked on a study to understand vaccine hesitancy among return Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers. The study revealed that vaccine hesitancy was higher among migrant workers that faced immigration vulnerabilities such as undocumented status and perception of the threat of COVID-19 at places of employment. The ecological precarity of the pandemic on migrants shared a relationship with how the political economy of the migration infrastructure of precarious work is managed. Therefore, they must be closely examined when discussing the health effects and outcomes of migrants during the pandemic.

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Health Equity and Precarious Migrants The overarching impact on migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic across global urban infrastructures requires scholarly interrogation that exposes pandemic responses from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The deep inequalities that make up lives and livelihoods are rendered visible by the pandemic brought to the fore of communicative registers. The health of hyper-precarious migrant workers often erased through the propaganda infrastructures of neoliberal capitalism is placed on the public discursive register. In this edited collection, we bring together various theoretical and methodological chapters that unpack the devastating and disproportionate impact the COVID-19 outbreak has had on the lives of migrants around the globe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Liem et al. (2020) called on experts to pay attention to the health of migrants (specifically international migrants) who remain at the margins of health access, infrastructures, and resources due to the absence of planning for them. The thousands of migrants stranded during COVID-19 lockdowns, with limited structural provisions (food, transport, lodging, health services) that caused deaths not from COVID-19 infections, but from policy responses during the COVID-19 pandemic, created devastating consequences for this population throughout the world (Pulla, 2020). The communicative erasures in pandemic response are traced in their impact on migrant bodies through narratives in these chapters. This series brings together chapters that discuss expulsions, displacements, invisibility, erasures, and racist policies that are connected to telling us about health inequalities and disparities for migrants globally. Rati Kumar’s chapter opens with a critical discussion on the role that COVID-19 policies played in constraining the rights of precarious migrants. Through a comparative analysis of the laws of the United States and India, Kumar’s chapter exposes the endangering of the rights of precarious migrants, such as undocumented workers, through the enactment of COVID-19 policies. The precarization of migrants is constituted amidst the global circulation of hate on digital platforms targeting migrants. Gogoi and Sen’s chapter addresses the racist experiences of Muslim migrants in Assam. Portrayed as the “other,” migrants are framed as threats to the purity of the culture. The pandemic witnessed the global rise of Islamophobia, with #CoronoJihaad tropes surfacing, framing precarious Muslim migrants as

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terrorists intentionally deploying COVID-19 for biowarfare. The global rise of Islamophobia further catalyzed populist anti-migrant political climates, complementing the ongoing exploitation of migrants. Hate directed toward migrants was multiplied on digital platforms, converging across far-right spaces globally. Note, for instance, the flows of the #CoronaJihaad narrative from white supremacist spaces to Hindutva spaces on digital platforms. The chapter by Dutta, Mandal, and Baskey centers how local communities in India build spaces for migrant solidarities, with migrant workers organizing to challenge and resist Islamophobia disseminated by Hindutva. Community ownership of communicative infrastructures foregrounds the capitalist processes of exploitation and the messages of hate disseminated by the capitalist-political class. Worker agency crafts working-class solidarity as the basis for challenging the cultural constructions of Hindutva that circulate Islamophobia. Kaur-Gill, Hassan and Yeo’s chapter discusses how the already (im)mobile lives of low-wage migrant workers were made even more precarious from COVID-19 policies that were specifically imposed on migrant workers for an extended period in Singapore. Migrant workers’ experiences of the pandemic were especially marked by extreme (im)mobility from excessive medical surveillance, impacting their mental health and well-being. Mental health narratives point to the structural conditions of labor, differentiated measures of COVID-19, and hyper medical surveillance of the bodies of migrant construction workers as key mental health stressors. Similarly, Pandi’s chapter surfaces intersectional inequalities that impact the health outcomes of Indonesian migrant domestic workers working and residing in Malaysia during the pandemic. Mookerjee, Jayan and Dutta, and Dutta and Rahman’s chapters tackle the complex and nested precarities of subaltern migrants in South Asia during the pandemic; absent from fundamental communicative claims to human and health rights, subaltern migrants and refugees suffer violent pandemic stressors. Analyzing their health violence, adopting a culture-centered lens, Mookerjee and Roy highlight the thrice-marginalizing practices of reverse migration on the subaltern migrants in India during the pandemic. Jayan and Dutta and Dutta and Rahman’s chapters bring into focus how communicative inequalities are deeply rooted in the nested precarities facing refugees and their health during the pandemic. Separately, Yeo, Kaur-Gill, and Hassan outline the use of digital ethnography to collect data with precarious migrants during social crises. The chapter documents the process of collecting data from precarious migrants digitally and the

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digital tools used to facilitate in-depth interviews, memos, and observations. In a concluding chapter, Ramasubramaniam and Ramirez propose arts-activism as a communication intervention, proposing the curation of healing and coping interventions for migrants through arts-focused therapy. Each of these chapters connects health vulnerabilities to communicative inequalities, detailing the ecological nature of precarity and (im)mobility of migrant bodies worldwide, hidden, displaced, expulsed, ignored, and erased from the platforms of communication. These chapters attend to how dominant pandemic communication, leaves out, displaces, or violently inverts communication to mark the migrant body for erasure and invisibility. Health promotion for migrants, therefore, must respond to the structural and ecological precarities that connect to migrant lives to the health vulnerabilities they face.

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Mookerjee, D., Chakravarty, S., Roy, S., Tagat, A., & Mukherjee, S. (2021). A culture-centered approach to experiences of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown among internal migrants in India. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(10), 1426–1444. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211000392 Mukumbang, F. C., Ambe, A. N., & Adebiyi, B. O. (2020). Unspoken inequality: How COVID-19 has exacerbated existing vulnerabilities of asylumseekers, refugees, and undocumented migrants in South Africa. International Journal for Equity in Health, 19(1), 1–7. Nasol, K., & Francisco-Menchavez, V. (2021). Filipino home care workers: Invisible frontline workers in the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(10), 1365–1383. https://doi.org/10.1177/000276 42211000410 Pandey, K., Parreñas, R. S., & Sabio, G. S. (2021). Essential and expendable: Migrant domestic workers and the COVID-19 pandemic. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(10), 1287–1301. Phua, R. (2020, June 1). COVID-19: Singapore to build new dormitories with improved living standards for migrant workers. ChannelNewsAsia. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/covid-19-singap ore-new-dormitories-foreign-workers-conditions-643771 Pulla, P. (2020). Covid-19: India imposes lockdown for 21 days and cases rise. Rouw, A., Wexler, A., Kates, J., & Michaud, J. (2021). Global COVID19 vaccine access: A snapshot of inequality. KFF portal, available online at: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/global-covid-19-vaccine-accesssnapshot-ofinequality/. Accessed on 13 April 2021. Rydland, H. T., Friedman, J., Stringhini, S., Link, B. G., & Eikemo, T. A. (2022). The radically unequal distribution of Covid-19 vaccinations: A predictable yet avoidable symptom of the fundamental causes of inequality. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1–6. Sanfelici, M. (2021). The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on marginal migrant populations in Italy. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(10), 1323–1341. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211000413 Somiah, V. (2021). An Ecology of Irregularity. In Irregular Migrants and the Sea at the Borders of Sabah, (pp. 1–30). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Somiah, V. (2022). Irregular Migrants and the Sea at the Borders of Sabah, Pelagic Alliance. Palgrave Macmillan. Steven, M. C., Ibrahim, M. Y. H., Karim, H. A., Dhanaraj, P., & Mansin, K. A. (2021). Barriers and Drivers towards the Use of Childhood Vaccination Services by Undocumented Migrant Caregivers in Sabah, Malaysia: A Qualitative Analysis. International Journal of Nursing and Health Sciences, 15(8), 247–256. Teerawattananon, Y., Teo, Y. Y., Lim, J. F. Y., Hsu, L. Y., & Dabak, S. (2021). Vaccinating undocumented migrants against covid-19. bmj, 373.

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CHAPTER 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 Rati Kumar

Over the past half century, the confluence of neoliberal state structures and global movements of labor have progressively worsened the health precarities experienced by low-wage migrant workers. The extent of these health inequities was put on stark display during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the denial of basic health capacities for migrant workers during a global health emergency. In this chapter, I examine the progression of anti-labor executive, legislative and judicial actions leading up to,

R. Kumar (B) School of Communication, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_2

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and emerging from the pandemic, in the neoliberal nation-states of India and the United States and their contribution to the curated invisibility of migrant workers. Specifically, I analyze the intersection of socio-politically entrenched discriminations of caste, class and citizenship suffered by inter-state migrant workers in India and undocumented workers in the United States, and the communicative inversions deployed by state structures to erode migrant labor rights. Legislation such as the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 in India is revealed to be an ineffectual protection for low-wage contract labor, with concurrent labor law consolidation exploiting the pandemic lens to eliminate basic health and human rights protections. In the United States, restrictions on undocumented migrant labor organizing, emerging from cases such as Hoffman Plastics vs. NLRB Compound and Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 are exposed as systemic precursors to human rights abuses of workers during the pandemic; denying them safe working conditions, COVID-19 testing and the ability to quarantine if infected. Thus, under the guise of economic recovery from the pandemic, in both countries, the essential worker designation is a structurally fabricated communicative inversion, directed against low-wage migrant workers for accelerating deregulation and sustaining the neoliberal project. Labor rights and collective action over the last half century have been systematically targeted by globalized capitalism, with neoliberal nationstates strategically mutating capitalist accumulation with existing class, race and caste disparities. Founded upon an extractive logic, these nationstates maximize the exploitation of labor and erase the voices of low-wage workers at the socioeconomic margins. In the context of migrant labor, this erasure is supported through executive, legislative and legal actions, communicatively and materially erasing the rights of those considered second-class or non-citizens, while accelerating their incorporation as cheap, transient labor in the marketplace. This curated invisibility of migrant bodies renders workers visible in the marketplace of labor, but invisible for systemic health and human rights protections. This a la carte extraction from communities of migrant laborers was overtly manifest during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to highlight the health inequities wrought by the systemic silencing of communities at the foundation of the neoliberal project.

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The pandemic exposed the strategic rhetoric and legislation behind the designation of certain labor as essential, with corporations and governments using this as justification for further endangering the bodies of low-wage workers on the frontlines of supply chains. Significant attention has been paid to the health inequities suffered by migrant labor, domestic and international, ranging from the psychosocial, physical and economic (Adhikary et al., 2011; Castaldo et al., 2012; Hargreaves et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2012) to their health experiences amid precarities induced by neoliberal governmentality (Dutta & Jamil, 2013; Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018). Drawing on this scholarship, I examine the erasure of health and human rights of inter-state migrant workers in India and undocumented immigrant workers in the United States through a government policy lens. More specifically, through landmark executive, legislative and judicial actions leading up to, and emerging from the first wave of the pandemic, I analyze the consistent erosion of these rights in both countries alongside the rise of nationalistic neoliberalism. For example, in India, the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (1979), designed to protect the nearly 40 million inter-state migrants across India, falls woefully short of protecting informal workers, often at the sociopolitical margins as Dalits, Adivasis or religious minorities. While the letter of the law offers occupational health and safety protections, this Act fails in terms of any substantive health protections for transient workers. This in combination with the newly consolidated labor codes by the legislature and deregulation of labor laws during the pandemic have created untenable hardships for transient workers. In the United States, COVID-19 highlights the inhumane health inequities suffered by undocumented foreign immigrant labor, serving in numerous frontline industries including manufacturing, farm work, construction, healthcare, food processing and service, among others. Theoretically, US federal and state laws have provisions for the protection of undocumented immigrants, but chilling Supreme Court judgments such as Hoffman Plastics Compound v. National Labor Relations Board (2002), general anti-labor judgments in cases involving Ernst & Young LLP, Epic Systems Corporation and Murphy Oil USA, Inc. (2018) and the Immigration Reform & Control Act (1986) have created barriers to labor unionizing and visibility of undocumented immigrants (UI) for legal protections. On the whole, neither country substantively expanded access to basic health capacities for its migrant/immigrant laborers, resulting in consequent lack of healthcare access during the pandemic in the form of unemployment

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benefits, cash subsidies, health insurance coverage for COVID-19 testing, or paid sick leave. All of these systemic blockades embody the strategies of neoliberal governments and industry to keep workers invisible for any safety-net health protections while ensuring their visibility as a marker of business-friendliness and market stability.

Caste Inequities and the Informal Labor Market in India In India, this invisibility of migrant labor during the pandemic intersects with the existing social inequities in terms of caste discrimination and Hindu majoritarianism. Epitomized by a lack of “employment security, work security and social security” (National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector, 2008), there are nearly 139 million migrant workers in India (Sharma, 2017). While labor migration can be across castes, Dalits (Untouchables or Scheduled Caste), Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes) or religious minorities tend to be subject to the worst working conditions, as low-wage and contract-based inter-state migrant workers (Breman, 1996; Guérin, 2013; Jain & Sharma, 2019; Srivastava & Jha, 2016). Despite being large contributors to the economy, their voice “as a legitimate constituency has been largely absent from the public policy space” (Rao et al., 2020, sp. 1640), due to their inability to vote in their migrated states, and their erasure from policy discourse as socially discriminated groups (Deshingkar & Akter, 2009). Characterized by low levels of education and no financial assets, these transient, daily-wage networks are occupied by construction, domestic, maintenance and sanitation workers, rag-pickers, rickshaw pullers, beedi makers, brick kiln laborers, farm workers and textile industry laborers often from underdeveloped states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities in India historically have poorer health outcomes compared to upper-caste Hindus. These effects may be so entrenched that even class mobility does not necessarily shift health outcomes on the scale that it does for upper-caste Hindus (Uddin et al., 2020). Pre-pandemic it was amply demonstrated how low-wage migrants’ poor health outcomes were tied to “socially and culturally indenturing forces” (Chatterjee, 2006), at the minoritized intersection of low-caste and rural-urban migrants. As Adivasis or Dalits, traditionally barred from infrastructural access to basic health capacities (Dutta, 2008) such as food, shelter, health services

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and medical supplies in rigid rural hierarchies they often migrate to rural centers with higher risk for various diseases, coupled with the associated health risks of low-wage migration more broadly. Malnutrition, one of the contributing baseline factors for overall poor health, is strongly associated with migration to urban centers (Choudhary & Parathasarathy, 2009). Migrant workers suffer from mental health issues, addiction and risky health behaviors (Rao et al., 2013; Saggurti et al., 2011) and fare poorly due to the cumulative stressors of chronic deprivation of basic health capacities, lack of economic security and social support, poor access to healthcare facilities, comorbidities associated with unsafe working conditions, and the absence of any substantive labor protections (Choudhari, 2020; Firdaus, 2017; Virupaksha et al., 2014), compounded by lack of access to affordable healthcare (Babu, 2010). During the pandemic, Choudhari (2020) notes inter-state migrant workers’ increased susceptibility to communicable diseases, lack of support, depression, stress, social exclusion, economic stressors from loss of work, ability to ensure personal safety and peritraumatic psychological distress. This lack of financial support and in access to basic health capacities wrought by the government’s discriminatory actions against Dalit, Adivasi and other minority communities was already witnessed during natural crises such as the Gujarat Earthquake of 2001 and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. According to Human Rights Watch (2005), during tsunami relief efforts, Dalits were prohibited from “staying in common camps, from taking shelter in community halls or temples, from using the drinking water tanks provided by UNICEF, and from accessing food provided by relief organizations or the local community,” in addition to being the last to have electricity and water supplies restored. Similarly, after the Gujarat earthquake, food, shelter, water, electricity and other supplies were made available to upper-caste communities, without ensuring similar support to Dalit communities (Dalit Solidarity NetworkUK & Voices of Dalits International, 2001; Human Rights Watch, 2001). Clear evidence then exists of discriminatory treatment in the face of humanitarian crises, which maps onto the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, unique to this health crisis is that the very bodies of laborers considered essential to the rebuilding effort during the onslaught of COVID-19 were simultaneously made dispensable through various executive, legislative and legal actions denying them the most basic pandemic protections and health capacities.

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Migrant Workers’ Health Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic Within the web of 29 Central and State labor laws in India the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (1979), the Bonded Labour Act (1976) and the Minimum Wage Act (1948), were designed to serve as key structural safeguards to protect the nearly 40 million inter-state migrants across India. The Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (1979), the key legislative safeguard for migrant workers lays out the wages, welfare and other facilities provided to migrant workers with a minimum wage in compliance with the Minimum Wages Act of 1948, requiring regular, non-discriminatory pay, accommodation and medical facilities by the contractor. However, these informal low-wage laborers exist far outside formal structures such as manufacturing and are legally invisible as “workmen” as defined by the ISMWA. Their lived experience is exemplified by industries such as brick production and sugarcane harvesting, where cash advance payments are commonly utilized to ensnare marginalized farmers as bonded laborers (Guérin, 2013). Other methods prevalent across the informal sector include wage theft through the official registration of, and payment to only the head of the household (usually male), while engaging the labor of the entire family, including children. These examples demonstrate again a curated invisibility at the whims of the employer or states reinterpreting federal laws with regard to informal workers’ rights. Additional legislation in the form of the Social Security Bill (2019) provides social security to wage workers and by extension to migrant labor, but leaves the enforcement of the Bill to the discretion of state governments, which often bypass enforcement in a bid to attract capital investment (Warrier & Mathew, 2020). In practice, lax state enforcement translates to circumvention of legal registration requirements, making the workers vulnerable to employer exploitation, threats of replaceability, a denial of fair wage and basic health and safety protections (Jain & Sharma, 2019; Mishra, 2020) Already falling woefully short of protecting informal and unorganized workers who form a substantial segment of the workforce, these protections were all but suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the pandemic was used as an opportunity by the legislative and legal structures of the neoliberal nation-state to engage in communicative inversions erasing existing protections. On the one hand, the government used “linguistic trickery” in public speeches, on social media and in media reports (Nagar, 2021), to marginalize the two minority groups of Muslims

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and migrant workers, outside the fold of upper-caste Hinduism. While using the language of nation-building, the government was reinforcing the social cleavages deepened during the Modi regime. These rhetorical moves were accompanied by a lack of material support during the start of the pandemic, followed by legislative manipulations for a neoliberal Hindu agenda. On March 24 during the first wave of the pandemic, with no notice of a lockdown, no access to food shelter or transportation, hemmed in by government transport protocols, and violent policing of migrant bodies, the Central government blatantly disregarded the health and human rights of migrant laborers (Biswas, 2020). The lockdown made it abundantly clear that the status of inter-state migrant workers was secondary to the mainstream populace—comparatively of higher class and/or caste, and consequently with higher visibility and political voice. The vulnerabilities of legislative action and the invisibility of migrant workers for any pandemic-related protections were highlighted on numerous fronts. As the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act made informal workers invisible as “workmen” entitled to legal protections, employers were not mandated to protect the rights of informal laborers, including the provision of safe shelter, basic necessities such as food or water, or assist in the transport of workers back home, during the lockdown. For a period of nearly a month, this made workers ineligible for any government subsidies, cash allowances and travel permits, precipitating the life-threatening exodus of workers back to their villages. Their visibility as sources of labor became necessary for the pandemic relief effort and national morale, but they were discounted for basic health resources such as the right to food through the National Food Security Act (2013), which required geography-bound ration cards. Many scholars, media outlets and international aid agencies called for a more humane response of the Indian government toward migrant labor during the initial lockdown phase of COVID-19 in early 2020. However, instead of enacting policy discussions about the need for extending migrant health protections or providing safety-net support, this was inverted into an opportunity to deregulate industry, exacerbating labor exploitation. Given the federal structure of governance, many states became free to reinterpret labor laws using the foil of the pandemic induced labor crisis. As early as May 2020, states such as Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, with moderate to low scores on the Inter-State Migrant Policy Index (measuring indicators for internal migrant welfare),

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and strong nativist politics (Verma, 2011) opportunistically began deregulating state industries employing large numbers of migrant workers. Maharashtra exempted industries from provisions of the Factories Act 1948 (Ram, 2020) including requirements for capping work hours at eight per day and allowing workers to work in two 12 hours shifts, during a 24-hour workday. The Center of Indian Trade Unions opposed this move, with Dr. Karad, the Vice President noting that “There is ample workforce available and instead of giving them work, the government is ensuring that businesses profit by enabling them to employ less labour.” The U.P. government enacted the Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance as a broad suspension of most labor laws in the state for a period of almost three years (Ram, 2020), and Madhya Pradesh suspended provisions from the Madhya Pradesh Industrial Relations Act and Industrial Disputes Act, the Factories Act and Contract Labour Act, removing legal protections for workers from unlawful termination, a cap on work hours and allowing nonlicensed contractors to supply labor. The state of Gujarat, a stronghold of Hindu majoritarianism and the home state of the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, provided exemptions from daily and weekly work hour limits, and rest intervals, under the Factories Act 1948 (Bhat, 2020; Ram, 2020). Occupational safety and health standards, fair wage and overtime pay were discarded as workers suffered through cramped, dangerous work conditions justified through the need for essential industries. The aforementioned states, a handful among many others, took it upon themselves to amend laws like the Factories Act, effectively rolling back hard-fought workers’ rights while in the background the Central government continued unabated its 2019 reworking of the spectrum of labor laws to improve “to generate employment and to facilitate ease of doing business” (Government of India, Ministry of Labor and Employment, 2021). The newly adopted set of legislation, including the Code on Industrial Relations, 2020, the Code on Wages, 2019, the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, 2020 (OSH Code), continue to receive pushback from labor unions and activists due to their continued invisibility of migrant labor, and further weakening the provisions of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act. Through these tectonic erasures of migrant labor rights, the leading legal body, the Supreme Court was either slow to respond or refused to intervene to protect labor rights. An initial public interest litigation

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filed in March 2020 seeking the Center provide food and shelter to migrant workers was instead turned into a move against press freedom, where the Supreme Court held that the migration had been triggered by “fake news” (Tulsiani & Banerjee, 2020). This was based on the Central Government’s submitted response to the Court, and the Court instead of tending to the crisis at hand, engaged not only further erasure of migrant voice and material difficulties, but broadened the scope of its gag order to now require that print, electronic and social media, publish the government version of developments as opposed to “fake news” (The Wire, March 2020). More than two months after the lockdown, on May 15, the Court still refused to entertain a plea seeking a legal directive to the Central Government to mandate that district magistrates identify migrant workers in their jurisdiction, provide food, shelter and free transportation home. After a scathing public letter by senior lawyers stating that the “Supreme Court’s failure to protect the rights of the hapless millions of migrant workers in March and its failure to scrutinize carefully the executive’s actions…severely and excessively impaired the fundamental rights of the poorest sections of our citizens,” the Court finally issued notices to the Central and state governments, and Union Territories, seeking accountability of steps to “redeem the miseries of migrant labourers” (The Wire, May 2020). However, this came much too late for migrants already having borne the brunt of the initial lockdown, by being forcibly retained in cities during the lockdown period, in cramped quarters at high risk of contracting the disease, and without access to basic health needs such as food and water, without cash subsidies, and struggling with the inability to pay rent or travel home. When the workers resumed working through the pandemic after the initial lockdown, the labor landscape had already begun shifting for the worse, with the apex court siding with deregulation in states such as Uttar Pradesh upon the premise of the need to resurrect a pandemic-stricken economy. These erasures of migrant labor voice occurred in plain sight of the mainstream Hindu citizenry engaged in the nationalist performativity of plate-clanging and tokens of appreciation for essential workers—all the while discounting the real health needs of poor, rural migrants, while elevating upper-class medical practitioners in the national imagination. The Government utilized this opportunity to continue toward its professed goal of achieving a higher ranking on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index by widening access to cheap exploited labor, and reworking labor laws to systemically ensure the complete erasure of the health rights of low-wage migrant

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labor. These maneuvers perfectly demonstrate the curation of invisibility of migrant labor, with an absolute discarding of health rights of Dalits, Adivasis and other religious minorities, while simultaneously highlighting them as the ideal source of cheap labor for resurrecting a pandemic hit economy. Underpinned by a neoliberal Hindutva agenda seeping through the country, the three branches of government in India continue to reflect an increasingly dangerous global trend toward right-wing xenophobia and the subsequent commodification and policing of migrant bodies.

Undocumented Labor in the United States In the United States, approximately 7 million undocumented immigrants (UI) are engaged in frontline sectors of the workforce, with 5 million serving as farmworkers, construction laborers, custodial staff, home health or personal care aides (Montecinos, 2020; Svajlenka, 2020), yet are legally invisible for any systemic protections. Undocumented workers (as of 2018) also account for nearly 280,000 of the American workforce of nursing assistants, home health aides, personal care aides, medical assistants and registered nurses among others (New American Economy Research Fund, 2020) and nearly 4.2 million undocumented workers are engaged in professions designated as essential to the COVID-19 recovery effort (Fwd.us). Immigrants are usually more likely to be employed in 3-D (Dangerous, Dirty, Degrading) occupations such as those related to service, construction, maintenance, agriculture, natural resources, production, transportation, material-movement, healthcare, food preparation, restaurants and hospitality (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016), all industries that traditionally report much higher rates of injury compared to other industries. Within the category of immigrant workers undocumented workers are most likely to experience negative health outcomes due to wage violations, erasure of voice from safety processes, threat of deportation and ineligibility for services such as medical coverage and other government subsidies (Moyce & Schenker, 2018). FernándezEsquer et al. (2017) notes that for Latino workers in the United States, living without papers “extends far beyond legal status, being a condition of ever-present instability, insecurity, and hypervigilance that affects the social, work, health, and living conditions.” Working behind the scenes at low-wage jobs, UI contribute taxes but are ineligible for social security or health benefits and are systemically subject to exploitative wages and barred from health insurance

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coverage. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (2019) “45% of undocumented immigrants were uninsured compared to about one in four (23%) lawfully present immigrants and less than one in ten citizens (8%) as of 2017,” with researchers and policymakers highlighting the need for undocumented immigrants to be brought into healthcare reform (policy Rahman, 2021; Zimmerman, 2011). This is a particularly acute issue given the 3-D (Dirty, Dangerous, Demeaning) jobs undertaken by UI and the consequent prevalence of occupational and migration-related illnesses among them. Specific health outcomes, for instance, include farm workers who face increased risk from accidents, pesticide-related illnesses, musculoskeletal and soft-tissue disorders, dermatitis, noninfectious respiratory conditions, reproductive health problems, health problems of children of farm workers, climate-caused illnesses, communicable diseases, bladder and kidney disorders, and eye and ear problems (Mobed et al., 1992), an issue compounded for undocumented workers who were more likely to be uninsured (Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey, 2021). Historically, these workers were hidden in plain sight, strategically subject to intimidation and wage theft by employers to keep business costs down. Health inequities for low-wage migrant workers in the United States were pronounced long before the COVID-19 outbreak with the neoliberal practices of deregulation, capitalism and lack of social security eviscerating any substantive avenues for engaging in collective action. In this backdrop, undocumented migrant labor faces a particular precarity at the intersection of poor health outcomes, immigration policing and the exploitative hiring and labor practices prevalent across low-wage industries Manuel Villanueva of Restaurant Opportunities Center United observes that the restaurant industry tends to recruit from “vulnerable sectors of the population” including seniors, women, people of color and the undocumented, and that they “often exploit them, commit wage theft, and let them know psychologically that they’re replaceable” (Tseng, 2020, para 11). Vulnerable workers are especially attractive as curated invisible employees, as they are present for labor but unlikely to seek restitution or draw attention to illegal practices at their restaurant (Jimbo, 2020). Poor health outcomes in undocumented migrant labor in the United States are inextricably tied to their migratory lived experience, including the simultaneous hypervisibility for immigration policing, and invisibility for health or human rights protections. The direct relationship between anti-immigrant policies and access to health services (Martinez

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et al., 2015) has been well-documented by scholars, with most undocumented immigrants being uninsured and relying on the meager safety-net health system for their healthcare (Beck et al., 2019). Laboring below or near minimum wage, the uninsured find healthcare costs prohibitive due to a combination of lack of coverage and lost wages from time off a precarious job. Their hypervisibility with regard to immigration policing adds to the structural oppressions against seeking even basic health capacities (Straut-Eppsteiner, 2020). Systemic Barriers to Undocumented Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic During the pandemic, the curated invisibility of undocumented labor was harnessed in the service of the economic health of the country, while continuously rendering them invisible for any COVID-19-related health coverage or government subsidies. This systemic invisibility manifested at the intersection of executive and legislative actions, missing legal protections and COVID-19-related risk-factors. Communities of color, including Latinx communities with higher percentages of UI, found themselves especially vulnerable to contracting and spreading the disease, with disproportionate rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths compared to white communities (CDC, 2022; Gold et al., 2020). The commonly accepted lack of systemic protections for undocumented workers, including crowded, unsafe working conditions, an inability to unionize, immigration policing and recruitment into the supply chain of the country, bore lethal consequences in these communities during the pandemic. Counties and states across the United States, producing, harvesting and packaging the highest percentage of food, such as farmworkers, were also the hardest hit as the wave of infections progressed, and were an “essential but extremely vulnerable workforce” that was ignored (Evich et al., 2020). It is no coincidence then that a majority of the communities experiencing some of the highest rates of COVID19 were from the aforementioned groups designated as essential and primarily from low-wage migrant communities. Undocumented healthsupport workers on the frontlines of the pandemic also grappled with a lack of personal protective equipment, fear of the current administration’s immigration policies and the overloaded health system, while working alongside American citizens in hospitals across the country as designated essential workers.

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Pre-COVID-19, US legal protections for undocumented labor were already sparse, employing the rhetoric of business-friendliness, simultaneously erasing workers’ rights. While the National Labor Relations Act covers undocumented workers under the definition of employees and legally confers the right to unionize and seek redressal Supreme Court decisions, such as Hoffman Plastics Compound, Inc. v. the National Labor Relations Board, rendered this a toothless defense, by disabling undocumented workers from claiming back pay (back pay here is payment of wages that the worker would have earned if not for the unlawful termination or other discrimination, distinct from back pay which is payment for work already done), or job reinstatement due to their immigration status (National Immigration Law Center, 2002). The Supreme Court declared both the key remedies sought by the workers as being in contradiction to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and outside the authority of the National Labor Relations Board to enforce (U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, 2008). The Hoffman Plastic Compounds case also had a chilling effect on undocumented workers’ rights to collective action, as the SC ruled that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) lacked authority to order back pay to an undocumented worker who was laid off from his job because of union activities. The Court opined that undocumented workers were not entitled to back pay protections under US labor law due to their unauthorized worker status and that granting such a remedy conflicted with US Immigration laws, specifically noting the changed legal landscape since Congress’ enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). The Congressional IRCA action significantly affects undocumented workers ability for reinstatement and back pay, as before passing of this legislation in cases such as Sure-Tan, Inc. v. N.L.R.B, the Supreme Court upheld the NLRB’s definition of “employee” to include undocumented workers, as it did not clash with immigration legislation. Such rulings also served as deterrents against undocumented workers making themselves visible for legal proceedings, due to the specter of retaliatory action from agencies such as the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the increasing anti-immigration legislation such as the IRCA and the anti-immigration rhetoric within the larger national discourse. Following this judgment, the Department of Labor stated that it will continue to enforce the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the FLSA, the Migrant and Seasonal Worker Protection Act (AWPA) and

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the Mine Safety and Health Act irrespective of the employee immigration status as documented or undocumented. However, this statement markedly left out the Department of Labor’s stance on whether there were would be protections against retaliation by employees upon such enforcement. And indeed, in cases such as Singh v. Jutla (2002) the employer reported a former employee to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) just one day after agreeing to settle the plaintiff’s claim for unpaid wages, an issue increasingly advocates warned about. While in more recent cases such the Cinelease Inc. and Studio Transportation Drivers Local 399 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (2017) in California, the National Labor Relations Board pushed back against the unlawful threat of an immigration audit by Cinelease Inc., Supreme Court decisions such as in Epic Systems v. Lewis consolidated with Ernst & Young v. Morris and NLRB v. Murphy Oil (2018), dealt a severe blow to workers’ rights to unionize, holding the Federal Arbitration Act (1925) over the National Labor Relations Act’s (1935) intent protecting labor by allowing collective action by labor. In a strongly divided 5–4 judgment, the Court demonstrated a strong conservative bent, further eroding workers’ rights in an already unfriendly legal landscape for workers as whole. Additionally, during the Trump administration, any legal and health protections at the state levels came up against congressional and executive actions narrowing access and creating panic among communities of UI by weaponizing legislation like the Public Charge Rule during the beginning phases of the pandemic. Such actions are problematic both from a human rights and public health perspective by reducing access to basic healthcare, much-needed government subsidies, as well as the ability to contact-trace within communities wary of immigration policing. In addition, the Trump administration’s state-sanctioned erasure of UI in seeking the repeal of the DACA program, detention of migrants and their children in camps, aggressive immigration policing in neighborhoods and at businesses, further emboldens employers to threaten workers with deportation. The resulting wariness of any structural support leads to a stripping of communicative agency for appealing unsafe conditions at work, including seeking safety equipment or adherence to COVID-19 protocols including social distancing, at work. The daily precarity of working without adequate rest, protection or nutrition combined with the stressors of potential punitive action silences migrant communities

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from speaking out for their basic health needs while continuing to work in areas considered essential, during the pandemic. Legislatively, UI are ineligible for federal public health insurance programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program (Llano, 2011) and continue to be ineligible even under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act due to their inability to meet the “qualified individuals” categorization even if they use their own money to pay for coverage (Affordable Care Act, 2010; Jost, 2010). With the exception of emergency medical care, they usually have to rely on safety-net providers such as public and non-profit hospitals, migrant health centers and community health centers. Technically, all undocumented immigrants can avail of emergency Medicaid, but many states did not include COVID-19 testing as part of this emergency provision. Executive actions such as signing the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES Act) provided paid sick leave for those affected by COVID-19 as extended unemployment benefits for 13 weeks beyond current benefits— none of which undocumented workers were eligible for (The National Law Review, 2020). Large swathes of workers in industries such as the restaurant industry with nearly 10% of its workers being UI were erased from support structures such as unemployment benefits or government subsidies during the pandemic, when restaurants closed (Pew Research Center). Scant exceptions to this invisibility came in the form of isolated state mandates such as the one in California, where workers were eligible for compensation if they contracted COVID-19, irrespective of their immigration status. These were the exception and certainly far from the norm when it comes to statutory protections (Center for Health Journalism). In addition, bureaucratic hurdles to mandating safety measures proved rife for the spread of COVID-19 through cities and camps housing migrant workers. Examples of this included delayed safety recommendations issued by the CDC, to employers hiring farmworkers, for grouping healthy cohorts to minimize spread and to ensure social distancing when on the job. In addition, agencies such as OSHA from August 2020 to October 2021 refused to mandate employer safety protocols in industries such as manufacturing, meatpacking, grocery and retail, only providing optional guidance to these employers (Scheiber, 2021). Compounding this was the emerging narrative of business-friendly policies and calls for reopening the economy further legitimizing the dehumanization of the

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migrant body, through an erasure of any discourse surrounding their compromised health, and instead shadowed by the need to keep businesses open, and supply chains unbroken. Executive actions, such as the refashioning of the public charge rule and ICE raids in communities of UI, created panic and served as a deterrent to migrant communities from utilizing the meagre protections available to them. This accelerated COVID-19 infection rates within the particularly vulnerable communities of color in the United States, where longstanding minority health inequities resulted in runaway rates of infections, hospitalization and mortality. Specifically, in low socioeconomic status communities with large numbers of low-wage workers, contending with a hand to mouth existence, there was no choice but to continue working in person through the worst stages of the pandemic. Discussion Even pre-pandemic, the migrant/immigrant worker health experience was rife with systemic inequities, which were exacerbated to a lethal degree during the COVID-19 pandemic. The application of neoliberal principles and processes, such as deregulation, state intervention in support of capital accumulation and legal precedents bound by legislative action over the past half century, have consistently eroded worker rights. It was in this weakened state of collective labor action that migrant workers were globally thrust into the health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of overburdened healthcare systems and supply chain disruptions, the term essential worker became a moral signifier amidst nationalist fanfare. Essential workers overtly came to represent the frontlines of the fight against the pandemic, with rampant expressions of public appreciation. However, none of these nationalist tokens of the fight against the pandemic permeated to the deep social inequities experienced by second-class or non-citizens within neoliberal nation-states like India and the United States. Low-wage migrant labor at the intersection of pre-existing social discrimination and lack of citizenship rights continue to be acutely affected by these communicative and material disparities. Critical scholarship emerging from this pandemic must maintain a focus on the continuing trends which have emerged, including the influence of rightwing governments on the apex courts of the land, as well as the social marginalization of migrant labor based on a rhetoric of ethno-nationalism.

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While much attention has been given, rightly so, to the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on migrant/immigrant labor rights, this essay calls for reflection on the continuing trends of neoliberal statehood evident in the three branches of government, and the blurring of the checks and balances system. In India, the disregard for the plight of interstate migrants clearly demonstrates the permeation of executive authority over the legislature and the lack of independence of the judiciary. The Prime Minister’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) continues to make legislation supportive of the Hindutva-neoliberalism nexus, extracting labor at the health cost of low-wage communities with absent political voice. The deregulation rampant across individual states has used the pandemicrelated economic crisis as a catalyst for the legislative overreach into labor laws. Especially problematic is the alliance of the Supreme Court of India with the government, a turn away from the separation required between the executive legislature and judiciary. Examples of this include the induction of the former Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, into the Upper House of Parliament, after siding with Hindu litigants in the Supreme Court verdict on the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque by a rightwing Hindu mob, the refusal of a bail petition by the SC for Anand Teltumbde, a leading Dalit activist and scholar, and the public declarations by Justices Shah and Misra, of Modi as a “vibrant and visionary leader,” as well as an “internationally acclaimed visionary.” It is no surprise then that the SC refused to entertain any challenges to the government’s handling of the migrant crisis during the first wave of the pandemic and refuses to intervene in the legislative overhaul of labor laws which permit contractors to engage laborers in consecutive 12-h shifts, over a 24-h period. These migrant workers continue to be silent as voting blocs due to their inability to travel back to vote in their home constituencies, and are invisible as collective actors, due to their transience preventing union participation. This silence translates to the unimpeded legislative march against any substantive labor laws, including the suspension of all labor laws in some Indian states for a period of nearly three years. The basic human rights and health capacities then get subsumed under the neoliberal logic of business-friendliness, supply chains and economic growth, in the wake of COVID-19, as opposed to raising discussions about improvements of the social safety net. In the United States, the COVID-19 crisis comes at an extraordinarily divisive time in American politics. Contemporary treatment of undocumented immigrants at the socioeconomic and political levels operates

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at the intersection of immigration as the third rail of American politics, immigration policing, the rise of white ethno-nationalism, the hegemonic acceptance of healthcare as a privilege versus a human right, and an increasingly conservative Supreme Court already leaning right on issues of labor and health. While activists, intellectuals and civil society organizations continue to push for reforms of undocumented workers health and labor rights, judgments, such as the Epic Systems v. Lewis (2018) case, severely undermine the ability of labor to arbitrate collaboratively against unfair practice and undermine the National Labor Relations Act (1935), one of the few protections for undocumented workers. Concurrently, the Democratic executive branch has much ground to cover in terms of fulfilling its promises to the undocumented community. Undocumented immigrants already in the country are now protected from immigration arrests at healthcare facilities and COVID-19 vaccination locations, social service locations, religious institutions and spaces where children gather, all allowed under the previous administration. However, the current administration continues to pathologize migrant bodies by embracing the previous administration’s use of Title 42, to summarily round up and expel undocumented immigrants at the US border, citing COVID19 concerns—a move roundly criticized by health experts as ineffective and likely contributing to further spread in detention centers. A deeper look at current legislations also uncovers the prohibitive cost and exploitative nature of authorized temporary worker programs for unskilled labor, such as the H-2A and H-2B, which are offered as the legal solution, but in practice prevent workers from changing jobs, negotiating wages or staying in the country for an extended period of time. Conversely, as discussed earlier, the underbelly industries requiring low-paid, unskilled labor continues to run unabated due to the governmental deference for capital accumulation and seamless labor markets which thrive on cheap labor. In summary, the key lesson from this examination of the larger policy machinations of neoliberal nation-states during the pandemic is that the inhumane treatment of the health needs of migrant labor is not borne of an unprecedented health crisis, but a reflection of the entrenched and encroaching inequities within legitimate state structures. The pandemic is yet another tree in the forest of systemic inequities, which endanger the lives of those designated as second-class or non-citizens, founded upon a logic of capital accumulation and ethos of nationalism. The façade of state structures as democratic, representative institutions, and of judicial

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guardians as protectors of the disenfranchised, needs continuing critical scrutiny in times of rampant xenophobic rhetoric against migrant and immigrant bodies traversing boundaries.

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CHAPTER 3

The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Health of Rohingya Refugees Md. Mahbubur Rahman and Mohan J. Dutta

The flows of COVID-19 across global terrains work unequally, impacting disproportionately the margins of global spaces. Refugees constitute the “margins of the margins” of globalization, constituted in spaces without access to rights and pathways of citizenship, and living through the effects of violence targeted at them (Dutta & Zoller, 2009, Dutta, 2021; Dutta et al., 2020). Systematically erased from the infrastructures of claiming the “rights to have rights,” refugees negotiate the challenges of health and well-being amidst crowded living arrangements, lack of adequate sanitation, and lack of access to healthcare, often living lives that bear the burdens of traumas inflicted by violence and yet disconnected from structures for addressing the effects of violence (Elers et al., 2021). This essay draws on the culture-centered approach (CCA) to theorize the negotiations of health among Rohingya refugees in Aotearoa New

Md. M. Rahman · M. J. Dutta (B) Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey University, Palmerson North, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_3

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Zealand, depicting the interplays of communicative inequality and structural inequalities of health. We note that Rohingya refugees constitute the extremes of marginalization in the contemporary context of global organizing, having been subject to over six decades of violence organized by the infrastructures of hate, and violently erased from the infrastructures of recognition in modern democracies. The communicative inequalities experienced by Rohingya refugees across the globe are tied to the structural and health inequalities experienced by Rohingya people and Rohingya communities. COVID-19 works to further deepen this interpenetrating relationship between communicative and structural inequalities, expressed in the accelerated threats to human health and well-being and the everyday negotiations of the structural challenges to health. The forms of structural inaccess and silencing that make up the everyday experiences of erasure in Rohingya communities are multiplied manifold by the top-down decision-making processes imposed as pandemic responses. This is particularly salient in Aotearoa New Zealand where the overarching hegemonic narrative of kindness, immersed in whiteness, fails to account for the lived experiences at the “margins of the margins.” How did these top-down decisions, albeit positioned as scientifically based and clearly communicated, impact the everyday lived experiences of health and well-being among Rohingya communities? Particularly salient in this chapter is the juxtaposition of the New Zealand model of COVID-19 response that has been celebrated as a model for pandemic response in the backdrop of the health challenges and communicative gaps negotiated by Rohingya refugees.

COVID-19 and Refugee Health Aotearoa New Zealand has a long history of settling refugees, beginning in the 1940s (Marlowe, 2021a). Since then, more than 35,000 refugees have been resettled in New Zealand (INZ, 2021a). The country established a formal annual quota for the resettlement of refugees in 1987 and from July 2020. Aotearoa New Zealand increased its annual quota of refugees to 1500 from 1000. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee intake by New Zealand has been put on hold for almost a year from March 2020 to January 2021, but resumed the resettlement process in February 2021 (Walls, 2021). The family members of refugees may also come to New Zealand through the refugee family support category. Every year, the country allows 300 places for eligible refugees residents

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to sponsor family members to join them (INZ, 2021b). Besides that, Aotearoa New Zealand approves asylum seekers who apply for refugee status from within its borders due to fears of persecution if they were to return home. For the last 10 years, Aotearoa New Zealand approved an average of 106 asylum seekers a year to gain refugee status from 375 applicants (Marlowe, 2021b). Through the United Nations third country settlement process, refugees coming from different countries to New Zealand are at first accommodated temporarily for 6 weeks at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre (MRRC) of Auckland for orientation programs to prepare them for life in a new country. Alongside a range of other support, a Refugee Health Screening Service (RHSS) to identify and treat personal health conditions that may adversely affect a refugee’s resettlement process. Refugees generally suffer from various physical, psychological, and social experiences as they flee conflict and persecution. Therefore, specific focus on their health challenges is very much a crucial process to resettling in a new country. Refugee families also need additional support and guidance as the health system of the resettled country is often very different compared to their homeland and previous experiences in refugee camps or home countries. Refugees can access free general healthcare and pay a subsidized cost to visit a doctor (General Practitioner-GP) or get prescriptions from a pharmacy in Aotearoa New Zealand. But COVID-19, especially during the lockdown, placed refugees at greater risk of getting appropriate healthcare services because of communicative and structural barriers (Elers et al., 2021; Jayan & Dutta, in press). The COVID-19 pandemic created a double emergency for refugees—difficulties in avoiding contracting the virus, on the one hand, and problems in accessing basic needs and livelihoods, on the other due to lockdown measures (Kirisci & Yavcan, 2020). Many refugees in Aotearoa New Zealand often depend on low paying and contractual jobs or depend on benefits/allowances they get from the state. However, because of COVID-19 pandemic many of them were laid off temporarily or permanently (Mortensen, 2020) but their benefits were not increased. During the lockdown, refugees were not able to access masks and hand sanitizers as well because shops were closed, the lack of supplies, and from the high costs of health safety products such as sanitizers and masks. Furthermore, approximately 16% of New Zealanders do not have access to the internet, with the a refugee populations over-represented

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in this group (StatsNZ, 2020). During the lockdown, general physicians (GPs) and other health workers provided their services mainly through online platforms. Refugee participants could not communicate with them because of difficulties with using mobile phones, not having internet facilities, and experiencing language barriers. Refugees also experienced long waiting times as a structural issue throughout the processes of receiving healthcare during the COVID-19 lockdowns. They faced problems during their medical consultations over phones as the GPs were not always available, from the lack of availability of interpreters, and having to wait for a longer period during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The refugees also experienced more restricted access to routine but critical healthcare services, including visits for primary care-responsive conditions like asthma, hypertension, heart failure, diabetes, cancer screening, and maternal and childcare visits (San Lau et al., 2020).

Rohingya Health Rohingyas are the world’s largest stateless population from enduring state-sponsored discrimination, persecution, violence, and genocide in their homeland Myanmar (Burma) for decades. Since the 1970s, when the army took control of power in Myanmar, the Rohingyas fled persecution and violence to various neighboring countries including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Thailand, and to other Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. As a result, over 3.5 million Rohingya Muslims are now distributed throughout the world (Albert & Maizland, 2020) and the largest number of Rohingyas, more than 1.1 million, are now living in various makeshift camps of Bangladesh (Rahman et al., 2021). In the 2000s, the refugees of Myanmar commonly known as Burmese refugees (including some Rohingya refugees), living in various countries of the world, had opportunities to resettle to Aotearoa New Zealand. Initially from 2005, Rohingya refugees started to settle in Aotearoa New Zealand as Burmese refugees mainly from Thailand (UNHCR, 2007) and then between 2006 and 2010 some Rohingya families from Bangladesh had the opportunity of third country settlement including in Aotearoa New Zealand (Azad & Jasmin, 2013). But from 2010 Bangladesh has stopped the third country settlement for Rohingyas out of fear that it may promote other Rohingyas still living in Myanmar to come to Bangladesh (Rahman et al., 2021). From 2014–2015 the

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Rohingya refugees of Myanmar living either in Malaysia or Thailand too started to resettle in Aotearoa New Zealand (INZ, 2019). Now, there are an estimated 1,500 Rohingyas living in Aotearoa New Zealand coming under the UNHCR-initiated third country settlement process. Under the third country resettlement process, all refugees including Rohingya people received New Zealand Permanent Residence (PR) visas and can, therefore, access the same publicly funded health and disability services as all citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand. However, during COVID-19 pandemic, Rohingya refugees faced unmet health challenges, especially when they were bound to stay at home during the lockdowns. Aotearoa New Zealand had reported its first case of the virus on 28 February 2020 and went into lockdown on 25 March 2020. The lockdown lasted two months and was lifted on 13 May 2020. Then again, the emergence of the Delta variant of the virus, Aotearoa New Zealand went into lockdown from 18 August 2021, lasting another two months. Most of the Rohingya refugees living in New Zealand had been struggling to survive on benefits and allowances of Work and Income, New Zealand (WINZ), as they did not find any suitable jobs as new resettled people in the country.

Culture-Centered Approach The culture-centered approach (CCA) situates health amidst the interplay of culture, structure, and agency (Dutta, 2004, 2021; Dutta et al., 2020; Kim & Dutta, 2009). Culture refers to the contextually situated values, narratives, and norms that guide communication. Structure refers to the forms of organizing, the rules and roles that shape and constrain access to resources of health and well-being. Agency refers to the capacity of individuals, families, and collectives to make sense of health, negotiate structures, and seek to change them. Through the voicing of meanings of health, communities at the margins co-create theories of health and well-being, in dialogue with theories of communication (Dutta & Zoller, 2009). For instance, culture-centered interventions co-created with precarious migrant workers at the “margins of the margins” builds communicative infrastructures owned by the workers, and these infrastructures emerge as spaces where solutions to health and well-being are foregrounded (Dutta & Jamil, 2013). By foregrounding the struggle amidst migration structures, the migrant worker voices dismantle the

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whiteness of health communication that encloses health into preventive behaviors defined within the ambits of parochial US-centrism. This ongoing dismantling of what forms health is a key element of the CCA, situating the definitions and scope of what is health communication in the hands of communities at the “margins of the margins.” Therefore, we ask, what are the meanings of health constructed by Rohingya refugees in Aotearoa New Zealand amidst COVID-19?

Method This chapter reports on participant observations, in-depth interviews, and systematic analysis of the literature (both published and gray). One of us has been working with Rohingya refugees in camps in Malaysia and India since 2018, seeking to develop a culture-centered framework for advocacy. The other has been working with Rohingya refugee crisis as a journalist since 2017 Rohingya genocide. He still works with Rohingya people while working with CARE (Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation) at Massey University and was involved with conducting in-depth interviews of Rohingya refugees living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on the CCA, a total of 20 in-depth interviews with Rohingya refugees were conducted between November 2020 and February 2021. Each of the in-depth interviews lasted between 40 and 70 min and was undertaken with the help of a community researcher, who is also a part of the Rohingya refugee community of Aotearoa New Zealand. All the interviews were conducted in the Rohingya language, and then translated and transcribed. The interviews were then examined microscopically through line-by-line open coding to identify concepts before forming relationships between the concepts, and then providing theoretical integration.

Findings The initial lockdown in 2020 in Aotearoa New Zealand exacerbated the challenges experienced by Rohingya refugees, especially those who entered New Zealand just before the lockdown. After entering a new country, they were stuck without access to resources. When the lockdown was declared in 2020 and 2021, amidst the uncertainty of how long the lockdown would last, shortage of goods, including healthcare items, had resulted in panic buying (Hall et al., 2021). Rohingya refugees struggled

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with finding the required items like masks, hand sanitizers, etc. to buy. They noted that if the items were available, the cost was too high. During the lockdown as the prices of daily commodities and health items were raised, Rohingya refugees faced difficulty in purchasing these items. Rohingya refugees articulated that during the lockdown of 2020, Ramadan (the fasting month of Muslims) was observed and on certain days, they could not find anything to from the shortage of money and closed shops. They had to continue fasting without consuming food at night, when needing to break their fast. Rohingya refugees also faced difficulties using debit and credit cards during lockdown as they were used to purchasing food with cash. During the lockdown, the participants noted that no cash could be used in shops, and one needed to purchase food only by using digital transactions. This created challenges for Rohingya refugees as they did not have debit or credit cards and did not know how to use them. These struggles were constituted amidst the struggles in accessing healthcare, with long waiting times, technologically mediated telephone conversations, and communication gaps that were exacerbated by the lockdown.

Struggles with Food Across participant narratives, we hear the struggles with securing adequate, decent, and culturally anchored food. The everyday struggles with food experienced by Rohingya refugees were exacerbated by the structures of the COVID-19 lockdown, with the contacts into the community disrupted and participants largely experiencing information vacuums. For the first few days of the lockdown, participants experienced anxiety and confusion, not knowing how to arrange access to food. Participants note that when the lockdown was announced, they struggled to secure access to food because they were disconnected from the services that served as nodes of connection into resources. When we got the news that the City Council will supply us food, we phoned the City Council and informed them that we wanted halal Food. Then they sent us the Halal food. But sometimes some food also came which was not halal. Then we only kept the halal food and other foods were given to our neighbor. Just after one year of coming to New Zealand the lockdown started and so we faced a lot of problems like shopping and buying food etc.

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Some Rohingya participants came just some months before the COVID19 lockdown started. They did not know the system, rules, regulations, shopping places, and environment of the new country. But, when the lockdown started they could not go outside whenever they needed to, which hampered a lot of their daily living. We were new at that time of lockdown. We did not know what to do. We were scared a lot by the COVID-19. We could not go to school (ETC). We did not understand what to do. We faced the problem of collecting or purchasing food as maximum shops were closed. We all were in trouble in COVID-19lockdown.

Articulation of another Rohingya male participant: As we are Asian, we cannot lead life like kiwis. But during the lockdown the Asian shops could not supply food as per our requirements and so we faced problems. We could not purchase food according to our wish or according to our kids’ needs.

Notes another Rohingya participant, “during the lockdown the prices of commodities were higher.”

Struggles Accessing Masks and Hand Sanitizers The initial COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown caused a surge in demand for face masks, alcohol-based hand rubs (hand sanitizers), medical gloves, etc. that created shortage of these items during the lockdown period. Rohingya refugees faced problems getting face masks and hand sanitizers. One Rohingya participant mentioned finding no masks when he went outside. He then used an old mask he had from Malaysia. He mentioned: I had a mask I had taken from Malaysia and that mask I used to wear to go to the market. I always had to wear masks in my job in Malaysia and during my journey to this country I took 2-3 masks from that country and those masks helped me in New Zealand also. During lock down no family members went outside, I only went outside wearing Malaysian masks.

Without access to masks, sometimes Rohingya refugees went outside without wearing masks. Sometimes, they mentioned wearing clothes as masks when they wish to enter into markets.

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... I did not find face masks to purchase. So, without masks sometimes I had to go to the shop and at that time I used a separate cloth as mask as I did not find any masks to buy, or anyone did not provide me the masks. Some people asked me why I use clothes as masks. Then I replied that I could not find masks from any sources or even could not buy them. Then they told me to keep my distance from them while I was in the shop.

Scarcity of Rohingya Interpreters for Communication The Rohingya refugees could speak only in their mother tongue, Rohingya language. So, whenever they make an appointment with a GP, a Rohingya interpreter is needed to facilitate the interaction. The participants note there is a scarcity of Rohingya interpreters in New Zealand and so sometimes, the GPs try to take help from the interpreters based in Australia. This creates a problem to get the GPs’ service in time. During the lockdown, with a number of GP services closed or only offering phone consultations, this problem was exacerbated. Getting healthcare consultation through phones was difficult for the Rohingya refugees as most of them could not speak English and there were no alternative sources for accessing healthcare during the lockdown period. One Rohingya refugee who came from Malaysia and now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand mentions that when he lived in Malaysia, he did not need to get any appointment. However, in New Zealand, without any appointment, he could not visit a doctor. Again, after queueing for a long period, he secured an appointment, but then faced problems with the lack of Rohingya interpreters. In Auckland, in Australia, there are enough Rohingya interpreters, but in Palmerston North, there is scarcity of Rohingya interpreters. And during the lockdown we even did not find any Rohingya interpreter to help us. We face several problems here in New Zealand. To get a hospital appointment, we have to wait for two to three days. But in Malaysia, it was good. No need to make an appointment in a hospital in Malaysia. Here we do not find an interpreter and again we have to wait a long time for an appointment. We are facing many problems here.

Participants noted that after reaching New Zealand, Rohingya refugees received help through the Red Cross. A caseworker is appointed for every refugee family for their resettlement needs in the new country.

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Besides, Red Cross volunteers also work on the resettlement process of the refugees. The caseworker and volunteers work through reducing the communication gap between the refugees and Govt. agencies. During COVID-19 lockdown, the accessibility to the caseworker and volunteers was also restricted as they too had to stay home, which in turn hampered the resettlement process for the newly arrived Rohingya families. One Rohingya woman articulated that she had to wait in a lift of a hospital for more than 30 min as she did not know how to use the lift at that time. As she was pregnant, the Rohingya woman had to visit a doctor and she went to the hospital with the help of a Red Cross volunteer, but the volunteer only helped her to reach the hospital. After reaching the hospital, the Rohingya woman had to visit the doctor by herself. The pregnant Rohingya woman could enter the lift, but she did not know how she could get out of the lift. As a result, she was stuck in the lift for more than 30 min and at last with the help of an Asian provider, she could get out of the lift. She mentioned: During lockdown, I was pregnant. I faced difficulties finding a volunteer to help me. At that time, I did not find any midwives either. Diabetes was also observed during my pregnancy and so I had to visit the hospital at a regular interval. But during the lockdown I faced difficulty finding a volunteer. At that time, I did not know how to use the lift. One day a volunteer just took me to the hospital and left me alone there. I had to go to the 2nd floor and so I got myself in the lift, but I did not know where or on which floor I should get off. On that day I was in the lift for more than 30 minutes as I did not understand how I could get off from the lift. I could not also ask anyone as I do not know English. At last an Indian Nurse/Doctor asked me in Hindi why I was in the lift for more than 30 minutes. She helped me to get off the lift. That was a terrible scenario for me.

The same Rohingya woman described that she could not convey her message clearly to the gynecologist about the delivery date of her last child born in New Zealand. As a result, the child was born 10 days before the maturity date. The Rohingya woman felt sorry for her struggles with expressing her health needs in English, which in turn resulted in her child’s early delivery. She observes: The last child of mine was born in New Zealand. But my last child was born 10 days before the maturity of my child, I think. As I could not speak

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English properly and I could not communicate clearly with the doctor, my child was born ten days before the delivery time. The doctor prescribed medicine and mentioned that as I have diabetes, they made the delivery of my child 10 days before the actual delivery time. That happened against my wish and I did not feel good and still I feel sorry thinking why the doctor had to deliver my child before 10 days of actual delivery time. And during lockdown I had to wait 5-6 hours in the hospital which was difficult as I was carrying (pregnant) at that time.

An elderly Rohingya woman observed that during the COVID-19 lockdown she experienced fever and cough, symptoms of COVID-19. Her neighbor and friends advised her to take the COVID-19 test. Then her family members communicated with the GP and she tested negative for COVID-19. Due to her inability to speak English, she herself could not communicate with the GP. She was not advised by her provider about quarantining despite her symptoms mimicking that of COVID-19 symptoms. She mentioned: During lockdown, I felt sick, got a fever and coughing. Then my family members and the ETC (English Teaching College) teachers also asked to check the COVID-19 test. Then my family members talked to the GP and after getting the paper from the GP I went to take the COVID-19 test. I could not drive the car and then my daughter helped to take me to the testing centre for COVID-19 test. The testing centre people took samples from my nose and gave the result after two days. During these two days or after feeling sick, I did not maintain quarantine in my house and the GP did not also instruct me to do any isolation. That time was scary as I was asked to take the COVID-19 test. After two days, I got the test result and the result was COVID-19 negative. Then the GP advised and prescribed fever and coughing medicines that were bought by family members from the Palmerston North Pharmacy.

Long Waiting Time Long waiting times to receive health care services were one of the most significant issues pertaining to health challenges of Rohingya refugees in Aotearoa New Zealand. Rohingya people have to wait for hours in the hospital to get the required services and sometimes some people have to return back as they were unable to wait for a longer period of time due to their health conditions. Not only in the hospital, Rohingya refugees faced

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long waiting times to see the GP. Various factors such as the inability of Rohingyas to speak in English, unavailability of GPs, etc. exacerbated the situation. Some Rohingyas observed that they had to wait days or even weeks to get an appointment with a GP. A Rohingya participant mentioned that a key challenge faced was getting a GP’s appointment. He observed that the long waiting times in the hospital created further barriers to accessing health services. He observes: When people are sick, they really need to see the doctor. But the doctors said, you need to make an appointment, maybe tomorrow or day after tomorrow or even after that. Maybe after 2-3 days and sometimes after two weeks. Sometimes you need to see a doctor now, but you could not do it without getting an appointment. During lockdown even you were not able to take Doctors’ appointments. I should tell you a thing about my life here though that had not happened during lockdown but before that. One day my daughter has been suffering from vomiting. Finding no other way, I went to the hospital and tried to admit my daughter. But after waiting for seven hours (5pm-11:45pm) I was unable to get admitted to my daughter in the hospital. Then I came back with my daughter and talked to my community and also thinking about anti vomiting tablets. Then I found some anti-vomiting tablets and those tablets helped my daughter’s vomiting stop but failed to admit my daughter in the hospital. So, I think health service problems or getting an appointment with a doctor is the main problem here.

Not only in the hospitals, but purchasing food during the COVID-19 lockdown was also met with long waiting times. Rohingya participants mentioned that they had to wait one to two hours outside shops to enter. Again, queues to pay after shopping also ensued. Yes, I faced various difficulties. Like I had to spend too much time purchasing foods. What we did was that I kept myself with my kids in the car and my wife used to buy food items. But a lot of time was required because she had to stay in the queue for about 1 hour and then get a chance to go inside the market.

Another description of the experience by another Rohingya participant: … At the time of lockdown too much time was needed for shopping. I had to put myself in a queue for about 1-2 hours to enter the market.

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After a long time waiting, when I was able to enter, sometimes, I could not find the item that I needed. Again, the price of the essential items was higher at the lockdown period.

Long waiting times to purchase groceries and at the pharmacies were also voiced as health barriers by participants. They mentioned needing to wait hours in the queue to enter shops or pharmacies and often required items that were not available or had higher price tags attached to them. Again, because the instructions on the items were written in English, they did not understand which item was halal (appropriate for Muslims), and they could not discuss with others as social distancing had to be followed during the COVID-19 period. Long waiting time to receive healthcare was already a challenge by the Rohingya refugees before the lockdown, which was exacerbated further during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discussion The narratives voiced by participants note the role of limited or dissappearing structures in exacerbating the experiences of marginalization negotiated by Rohingya refugees in Aotearoa New Zealand amidst the COVID-19 lockdown. The dominant reading of the lockdown in New Zealand as model health communication response is disrupted in the narrative accounts offered by Rohingya refugees. The participants note the challenges to the everyday negotiations of health and well-being amidst the lockdown, foregrounding the disappearing migration resources that are essential to the negotiations of health. The implementation of the lockdown was experienced in the form of the sudden disappearance of the health providers, navigators, volunteers, caseworkers, and refugee organizations in the community. Participants experienced ruptures in their everyday negotiations of health, shaped by the communicative vacuum introduced by the lockdown. The communicative vacuum is shaped by the whiteness of the structures of health and migration, configured in a bureaucratic top-down model that approaches refugees as passive recipients of services. This chapter renders visible the cracks in a health communication response that is put forth as an example of good communication grounded in science and clarity. The hegemonic construction of what is clear health communication is marked by the erasure of the “margins of the margins.” Amidst the neoliberal transformations in Aotearoa, refugees negotiate the financial struggles with accessing resources of

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health and well-being (Elers et al., 2021), which are further exacerbated by the lockdown. The lockdown and the accompanying panic buying, constituted amidst the exponentially higher prices of certain food and other grocery items, shaped the everyday experiences of Rohingya refugees with food insecurity amidst the lockdown. The lack of cultural considerations in the selection of the food that was delivered through assistance programs often failed to meet the everyday health needs of community voices. The structural challenges with health were also experienced in the context of the everyday challenges with securing access to preventive resources such as hand sanitizers and face masks. The increased demand on these supplies, the limits on accessibility to the stores, the lack of access to caseworkers, and the costs of the supplies resulted in refugees often struggling to practice the recommended preventative behaviors. The voices of Rohingya refugees dialoguing with us document the lack of clarity, the absence of guidelines, and the absence of the consideration of their fundamental needs when the lockdowns were implemented. This translated into increased anxiety and inability to seek healthcare, with participants often noting that with the caseworker disappearing from their everyday negotiations of health, they felt lost, not knowing where to go to and whom to speak with. Everyday negotiations of health amidst the lockdown were shaped by the inability to understand interactions, further exacerbated by the technologically mediated distance-based solutions that were put into place rapidly without the participation of community voice. The absence of refugees from the communication structures to lay claims for their health rights translated into their everyday erasure from spaces of participation and decision-making about their health and wellbeing (Dutta, 2021). The whiteness of the health and migration systems built on the ideology of altruism fails to take into account the fundamental human right to voice of refugee communities. The erasure of the human rights to voice is the fundamental challenge that shapes the vast gaps in health communication negotiated by refugees. This calls for health communication work with refugees as health activism that seeks to transform the structures of health organizing. In sum, the lockdown exacerbated the communicative gaps experienced by the Rohingya refugees in accessing health resources and services, depicting the limits of the health communication model adopted in Aotearoa New Zealand. This chapter contributes to the existing scholarship on the CCA by foregrounding the role of communicative vacuum in the context of the refugee experience. Without the right to have rights, refugees are erased on an ongoing

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basis from the structures of health decision-making. These erasures are catalyzed exponentially amidst a crisis, marked by a health communication infrastructure that is largely absent in the lives of refugees amidst COVID-19. The experiences of erasures and communicative loss voiced by the refugees challenge the narrative of excellent health communication guided by clarity and kindness that is being deployed to depict the COVID-19 response of Aotearoa New Zealand (Dutta & Elers, 2020).

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Hall, C. M., Fieger, P., Prayag, G., & Dyason, D. (2021). Panic buying and consumption displacement during COVID-19: Evidence from New Zealand. Economies, 9(2), 46. INZ—Immigration New Zealand. (2019). Myanmar Refugee quota factsheet. https://www.nelsontasmankindergartens.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/144 26744/myanmar-quota-refugee-factsheet__1_.pdf INZ. (2021a). New Zealand refugee quota programme. Immigration New Zealand. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/about-us/what-we-do/our-str ategies-and-projects/supporting-refugees-and-asylum-seekers/refugee-andprotection-unit/new-zealand-refugee-quota-programme INZ. (2021b). Refugee and protection. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/ about-us/what-we-do/our-strategies-and-projects/supporting-refugees-andasylum-seekers/refugee-and-protection-unit Kim, I., & Dutta, M. J. (2009). Studying crisis communication from the subaltern studies framework: Grassroots activism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Public Relations Research, 21(2), 142–164. Kirisci, K., & Yavcan, B. (2020, June 11). As COVID-19 worsens precarity for refugees, Turkey and the EU must work together. Brookings Instihttps://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/06/11/ tute. as-covid-19-worsens-precarity-for-refugees-turkey-and-the-eu-must-work-tog ether/ Marlowe, J. (2021a). A fair go for refugees: settlement in Aotearoa and global trends. Royal Society Te Ap¯arangi. https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/ A-fair-go-for-refugees-Jay-Marlowe.pdf Marlowe, J. (2021b). New Zealand has one of the lowest numbers of refugees per capita in the world—there is room for many more. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-has-one-of-the-lowest-numbersof-refugees-per-capita-in-the-world-there-is-room-for-many-more-162663 Mortensen, A. (2020). RASNZ COVID-19 Response study: Remote psychosocial service provision to former refugee and asylum seeker communities in Auckland during lockdown- Summary Report. Auckland: RASNZ. https://rasnz.co.nz/ wp-content/uploads/2020/08/rasnz-covid-19-response-study-5.pdf Rahman, M. Md., Mohajan, H. K., & Bose, T. K. (2021). Future of Rohingyas: Dignified return to Myanmar or restoring Their rights or both. IKAT: The Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 4(2), 145–170. San Lau, L., Samari, G., Moresky, R. T., Casey, S. E., Kachur, S. P., Roberts, L. F., & Zard, M. (2020). COVID-19 in humanitarian settings and lessons learned from past epidemics. Nature Medicine, 26(5), 647–648. StatsNZ. (2020). 2018 Census ethnic groups dataset. StatsNZ: Wellington. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/2018-census-ethnic-groupsdataset

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UNHCR. (2007). Thailand: More than 20,000 Myanmar refugees resettled in third countries. https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2007/12/475e6c df2/thailand-20000-myanmar-refugees-resettled-third-countries.html Walls, J. (2021, February 5). Govt restarts its refugee resettlement programme after Covid-19 shutdown. Nzherald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/govtrestarts-its-refugee-resettlement-programme-after-covid-19-shutdown/YJ5 W5WTHNFLF26ES33PRRMB3FA/

CHAPTER 4

Listening for Erasures as Method in Making Sense of Health Disparities: Culture-Centered Constructions of Health Among Refugees Pooja Jayan and Mohan J. Dutta

Migration constitutes the context within which the disproportionate burdens of COVID-19 play out. The burden of risks as well as the adverse health effects of policy responses are often borne by migrants (Dutta, 2018). Refugees negotiate health at the margins of migration, often without the “right to have rights” (Hathaway, 1991; Limbu, 2009). The experiences of refugee health are shaped by erasures, with hegemonic policies and health communication interventions largely approaching refugee

P. Jayan (B) · M. J. Dutta School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University, Palmerson North, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] M. J. Dutta e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_4

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communities from top-down frameworks of interventions designed by experts (Kumar, 2021). The expertise of health communication, shaped by experts, incorporates various forms of multicultural engagement strategies, packaged as cultural sensitivity, while fundamentally erasing the voices of refugees. When culture is taken into consideration, it emerges as a static concept guiding pre-configured solutions adopting a biomedical framework, conceptualized as a monolithic category to guide the development and dissemination of effective solutions targeted at refugees (Dutta, 2007). In this chapter, we argue that the local, national, and global responses to COVID-19 further exacerbated the erasure of refugees, often reproducing the status quo health communication framework rooted in dominant logics of whiteness. The culture-centered method of listening for the voices of the erased “margins of the margins” offers a discursive register for interrogating the hegemonic formations of mainstream health communication. The experiences of migrants amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the policy responses to it capture the violence of the neoliberal order. This violence fundamentally threatens human health and well-being, reproducing the economic logics of capital through ongoing and systematic disenfranchisement. The hegemonic health communication discourse puts forth a framework of pandemic communication centered on the message, while simultaneously erasing the structural contexts of health. Listening for erasures foregrounds these invisibilized and erased structural contexts. Listening as method in the CCA, therefore, serves as the basis for transformation. The refugee experiences narrated in this chapter are systematically erased from the dominant constructions of the COVID-19 policy response and its communication in Aotearoa New Zealand.

COVID-19 and Refugees at the Margins Aotearoa New Zealand’s refugee resettlement program started officially in 1944. However, the country was very careful about allowing refugees who were ethnically distinctive to P¯akeh¯a New Zealanders (Spoonley & Bedford, 2012). Aotearoa New Zealand’s attitude to refugees in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries was centered on an unfair immigration policy which preferred immigrants who were of British or Irish origin (Bedford et al., 2000). From the early 1990s, the focus shifted

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to individual protection needs, as identified by the UNHCR. The Government launched a formal annual Quota for the resettlement of refugees in 1987. Aotearoa New Zealand’s refugee resettlement policy envisions refugees to be “participating fully and integrated socially and economically as soon as possible so that they are living independently, undertaking the same responsibilities and exercising the same rights as other New Zealanders and have a strong sense of belonging to their own community and to New Zealand” (Marlowe et al., 2014). However, the degree of challenges faced by refugees are immense, combined with intersections of geography, language, race, politics, economics, and culture (Schultz, 2020). The everyday challenges refugee communities encounter are connected to and intersect with experiences of structures of inequalities (Kale et al., 2020). It is noted that the healthcare outcomes are often unfavorable for the refugee population (Blakely, 1996; Baird et al., 2017). Furthermore, numerous scholars have criticized the lack of action taken by the New Zealand Government and pointed out that the assistance continues to be underfunded and stretched (Woodley & Williams, 2012). Within Aotearoa New Zealand, inequitable participation is mirrored in public services, which further excludes the refugee communities at the margins (Mortensen, 2008). Unfortunately, various studies indicate that refugee health often remains marginal in broader discussions and is a frequently forgotten demographic in health strategies (Murray, 2016; Spiegel & Qassim, 2003). Refugees undergo health challenges due to inadequate resources and tremendous issues they underwent during their refugee journey (Swe & Ross, 2010). They continue to suffer from intricate physical, mental, and social health problems post-resettlement (Maier & Straub, 2011; Varkey et al., 2007). Not knowing the dominant culture’s language is a participation barrier for many refugees and migrant members in Aotearoa New Zealand society generally (Altinkaya & Omundsen, 1999). Regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic, refugees experience high distress and are less probable to seek out help compared to the general population (Sieffien et al., 2022). The arrival of COVID-19 has forced us into a rapid adjustment mode and COVID-19 responses have ignored the refugee population at the margins. In the midst of several accounts of marginalization experienced by refugees in Aotearoa New Zealand we ask, what are their experiences negotiating COVID-19?

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Culture Centered Approach Drawing upon the key tenets of Subaltern Studies that conceptualize the erasure of the raced, classed, and gendered subaltern from the structures of knowledge production and circulation, the CCA attends to the communicative processes that constitute erasure (Dutta, 2004a, 2004b). It theorizes the violence of erasure as intertwined with the structural marginalization felt by individuals, households, and communities (Dutta, 2007, 2018). The erasure from discursive spaces shapes the everyday struggles with accessing the resources of health and well-being (Falnikar & Dutta, 2021). In this backdrop, the CCA draws upon health meanings co-constructed with communities at the margins to build registers for bringing about change in the everyday conditions of health and well-being. The tracing together of erasure through the process of co-construction serves as the basis for articulation of community-led interventions. The hegemonic formations that are systematically erased in individuallyoriented health communication are rendered visible through the presence of the voices of the subaltern margins. These health meanings are situated at the intersections of culture, structure, and agency. Culture, referring to shared values, meanings, norms, and stories, is situated in context, the empirically specific situation of everyday living. Culture is both dynamic and transformative, carried intergenerationally through stories and conversations. Structure refers to the rules, roles, and norms that determine the distribution of and access to resources. Rooted in the materiality of economic power and control, structures shape the experiences of health by both enabling and limiting access to a wide array of health resources from prevention to healthcare. Agency depicts the individual, relational, and community capacity to make sense of structures, to negotiate these structures through everyday actions, and to participate in processes of change directed at changing these structures. Agency, therefore, is both responsive to the structures to craft the everyday solutions as well as transformative in the form of organizing to challenge and change structures. Listening as method foregrounds subaltern agency as the basis for theorizing erasures and the everyday negotiations of erasures at the margins.

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Method In May 2020, a CCA project commenced in the Palmerston North region of Aotearoa New Zealand. A central tenet of the CCA is the centering of community voices, those who are on the margins of the margins (Dutta, 2018). The “margins of the margins” refer to the individuals, households, and communities experiencing extreme forms of erasure, often violently displaced from the discursive spaces and discursive sites. The concept guides the culture-centered method toward continually asking, “Who is not present in this discursive space?” “Which voices are missing from this discursive space?” Hence, for the project, community researchers, who are community members, assisted to identify the participants who are largely erased, guided by the overarching questions related to erasure. The initial engagement with the refugees involved semi-structured interviews with thirty residents. Refugee participants identified their country of origin as Nepal, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Bhutan. Due to the varying restrictions of the lockdown, we used a mixture of inperson (21/30) and remote interviews (9/30) undertaken through telephone, lasting between 30 and 90 minutes. The participants completed informed consent practices and demographic forms before the interviews. Through open-ended questions, health and well-being meanings of refugees during COVID-19 were articulated. Refugee participants, who are the targets of policies and interventions, began to articulate meanings of health and well-being during COVID-19. These narratives point to the processes of erasure, attending to the articulations that were erased in mainstream discourse. The excerpts drawn together in this paper are translations of what the community members have articulated in the language they are most comfortable with. These interviews are part of a larger culture-centered engagement carried out by the Center for Culturecentered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in Aotearoa New Zealand, directed by an advisory group of refugee participants shaping the research design and the sense-making process. This refugee-based culturecentered process is nested within an umbrella COVID-19 communication infrastructure, rooted in the voices of communities at the “margins of the margins” (Elers et al., 2021). Given that aim of this culture-centered project is to record local articulations of health, we used the constructivist grounded theory approach to data analysis (Charmaz, 2006) as it permits the researchers to study the meanings that everyday actions have for people in a particular social

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context (Creswell & Tashakkori, 2007). From the analysis, we identified three overarching themes: communicative gaps, structural inequalities, and community agency.

Results In this chapter, drawing on the question of method as erasure, we attend to the interplays of communicative gaps and structural inaccess, which form the backdrop amidst which refugees negotiate their everyday health and well-being.

Communicative Gaps Voices of refugee community members point out that they experienced communication gaps, with community articulations and solutions removed from the dominant spaces of delivery of services, prevention resources, and healthcare in the early response to the pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand. The narratives indicate that refugees are left out, with no to less communication about support services and welfare sources, with these experiences of being left out multiplied many times amidst the pandemic. Refugee participants noted that they do not know where to go or where to call for support. In spite of the public relations messaging by the state suggesting the tailoring of resources to refugees, the everyday experiences of the participants note the sense of communicative vacuum, cut off by the lockdown in the context of their access to communicative resources. In the articulation of a refugee woman, “Doesn’t have any support. One volunteer came before the lockdown.” Similarly, another participant observed, “Didn’t get any information about COVID -19. Wasn’t happy.” The voices portray that various organizations working for communities adopt an approach to engagement that is tokenistic and often episodic. The communicative gaps are often perpetuated by service sector organizations that are removed from the everyday lived experiences of communities. As a refugee participant notes, “Not aware of city council support. We were not able to read or write.” Another participant articulates, “Not happy with the community’s condition. We are not able to speak English. If they could organise some arrangement for things like gloves, sanitisers or putting in a mailbox that would have been good.”

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The articulations convey that most of the communication strategies adopt a persuasive message-based approach without focusing on the socio-cultural and structural factors. The stories of refugees show that groups of experts functioning independently from communities are not capable of meeting the requirements of the community. For example, a participant mentioned “Lots of challenges. We cannot go to the next house. In our culture, we visit people. Even next door, we are not able to communicate.” The isolation that was experienced amidst the lockdown shaped everyday access to a wide array of health resources, fundamentally disrupting the communicative patterns that are often shared in refugee communities, drawing upon community networks of support. The sudden loss of connection with these everyday community networks resulted in the articulations of being disconnected, which were reiterated as central to the negotiations of health amidst the pandemic. Multiple participants pointed to continuous cycles of silencing in the community, where the community is aggressively excluded from decisionmaking spaces and held back from leading conversations on COVID-19 prevention. This vicious circle of physical and social invisibility and silencing aggravates the pain of refugee communities at the margins, felt in the form of everyday challenges to health and well-being. The lockdown as a policy response, alongside the various public relations strategies that communicated its effectiveness and positioned it as a response in kindness, was felt as communicative gaps by the refugee participants. These communicative gaps were experienced as violence in the context of health, disrupting the tenuous threads of connection and community that refugees often rely upon to navigate health and well-being.

Structural Inequalities Refugee households and communities negotiate structural barriers that are reproduced by the state and non-governmental organizations, which prevents them from accessing resources and adequate services. These structural barriers include inaccessible communication (e.g., lack of readily translated information), inaccessible preventive resources, and health facilities that are difficult to access because they are online, etc. Structural contexts of resource distribution patterns embedded within societies are intertwined with the patterns of distribution of communication resources. For example, a participant noted how her organization forcefully took her sick leave, without any consultation, “My daughter

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was tested, and … I’m not allowed to go to work at that time. They deduct from my sick leave.” Another participant cited how she wasn’t offered any support for years, “Full payment for house. I have been living in New Zealand for five years and rent is 110 dollars. Haven’t asked for any support, I don’t understand English. Son takes me. I can’t drive or speak English.” Note here the interplays between the challenges with material resources and the gaps in communication, embedded in the level of fluency in English. Refugee voices indicated that structural challenges such as transportation, language, and inaccessibility of assistance programs were evident and often multiplied during COVID-19 lockdown. Although some online and telephone-based services are available, refugees found these resources hard to access and often found the process prohibitive. Structural inequality is played out in the burdens borne in accessing the processes that have been put in place for accessing resources. Furthermore, online providers were not able to offer inclusive or culturally responsive care. Participants explained how they faced critical language barriers throughout the lockdown. The GP line is quite long. Okay. To make an appointment and ask them. Recently also, I have a problem with them and ask them like, you have two problems. Yeah. And they kept the price that time for like 20 minutes for a person. Yeah. For example, I got my family doctor, and if I ring them and make an appointment, they said, the doctor is not available. You will get with someone else, practitioner or someone, okay. And you can raise only one problem at a time now. You have to make different appointments for different things.

The COVID-19 prevention framework was centered on individualization and asked refugees to take actions to protect themselves by accessing services such as health, counseling, and so on. However, structural barriers prevented refugee community members from accessing the resources. For instance, a participant who relied on farmers’ markets over the weekends explains how he struggled to get food for his large family. Like, because we were a big family, so we couldn’t get like it because the foods were limited to like just two items per person. Yeah. So that was one of the challenges. We also face these challenges because we are a vegetarian family. Culture, we don’t eat meat and because of that, we so we couldn’t

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really eat tonight. We just had to eat vegetables and stuff. But once before lockdown, we got like we went to Saturday market before the quarantine and we had like all the food, fresh fruits, and veggies and stuff.

Refugee communities are often considered as not belonging to the wider community. They are often forced to the peripheries, exposed to a wide array of marginalizing processes, with their voices often being erased by structures. Due to the enormous barriers they face, refugees find it hard to access, occupy, and use places and spaces.

Communicative Agency Most of the refugee participants demonstrated dependence upon and an affinity for the support of their friends and community members rather than approaching NGOs and other formal organizations for seeking solutions. Communicative agency, the ownership and enactment of communication, is rooted in community networks and community ties. These ties become the threads to resources when the NGO support disappears, or when the mediating professionals who deliver services into the communities disappear. This role of the community as a resource amidst disappearing resources was evident in refugee experiences amidst the lockdown. Even as refugees struggle to get access to resources and services because of cultural and linguistic barriers, they turn to other refugees with knowledge and expertise that are rooted in community contexts. As a plan to navigate the lockdown, many participants found different ways to help one another within their communities, and in doing so, performed agency established on cultural norms of togetherness and collective well-being. Many participants defined acts of care carried out by community members, referring to the relational ties that hold up the collective well-being of the community. These ties play out both within familial relationships, as well as within community-based relationships. For instance, a participant mentioned how he took care of his family when schools were closed, “Looked after grandchildren as parents were essential workers.” Another participant mentioned how their neighbors stepped in to support as they were struggling with resources. The narratives depict that communities had key roles to play in creating and implementing prevention efforts, often amidst the various structural barriers they experienced, which were further exacerbated by the lockdown. Community leaders and young children offered support, took

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actions, and made decisions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, through their participation in decision-making processes and through their mobilization of support. For instance, a participant noted, “My brother works as a community volunteer, and he knows about it. So, he called me, and he said that if you need some support, send a message, and I will send you the link.” Youth members of the community took it on to themselves to educate other community members about COVID-19 protocols. The articulations portray the agency in educating community members, depicting the role of intergenerational support in negotiating the challenges experienced amidst COVID-19. This intergenerational support drew upon community cultural norms of intergenerational care while simultaneously engaging with health information, health resources, and health services. A participant explained how her daughter helped her in navigating the challenges due to COVID-19, “Community has a group. The city council just sent the form to all Afghani. My daughter is able to read, then we just fill the form.” Note here the role of youth within households as key resources in navigating health amidst COVID-19. Another participant stated “We have a group. Someone sent the form and my son filled the form and got food.”

Discussion Refugees form the “margins of the margins” of migration contexts, with their lived experiences and struggles being erased from the hegemonic spaces of health communication. The CCA foregrounds listening as the basis for disrupting the erasures that are reproduced by hegemonic structures of health communication (Dutta, 2014). Listening for erasures attends to the ruptures, disjunctures, and fissures in the dominant narratives of health and communication. The dominant narrative of the pandemic response in Aotearoa New Zealand depicts effective, clear communication, guided by science, and rooted in kindness. Listening for erasures as method puts forth the voices of refugees who interrogate and resist this narrative through accounts of their everyday negotiations of health amidst the pandemic and the lockdown. The overarching publicity about care put forth by the state is challenged by the experiences of communicative gaps, isolation, and structural disenfranchisement that are voiced by the refugees (see Dutta & Elers,

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2020 for an exemplar of this narrative of care). The pandemic exacerbated the everyday experiences of marginalization that are negotiated by refugees, with the lockdown measures magnifying the disconnection, isolation, erasure, and lack of access to communication experienced by the refugees. The communicative gap experienced by the participants foregrounded their reliance on a top-down mediated structure of delivery of services that forms the framework of refugee resettlement in Aotearoa. In this framework, refugee communities are largely erased, with decisions made by experts who are largely out of touch with the everyday needs, rhythms, and challenges of community life. The limited infrastructure for health and well-being that is accessible to refugees disappeared largely, with multiple participants discussing experiences of being cut off from the usual networks of communication. The lockdown policy that required individuals to stay within the bubbles of their households translated into multiple refugee households experiencing extreme forms of erasure and communicative inaccess. The whiteness of the dominant approaches to health communication plays out in the circulation of the taken-for-granted assumptions about communication as messaging directed at communities (see for instance Dutta, 2007). The goal of communication is outlined as one of educating and/or persuading communities that are marginalized. The language of “hard to reach” populations deployed by the hegemonic structure frames communities at the margins in deficit, pushing individualized preventive solutions and turning to creating culturally sensitive messaging strategies for targeted communities (Schiavo, 2013; Wilkin et al., 2011). Listening for erasures as method attends to the violence that is carried out in the dominant framework through the erasures of voices of migrants at the margins. Tokenistic responses engage the professional-managerial class, including professional middle-class migrants while simultaneously continuing to perpetuate the erasure of migrant voices at the margins. Moreover, policy responses such as lockdown that are broadly understood as effective responses are played out through communicative gaps and absences among migrants at the margins. Refugees struggle with making sense of processes and pathways to access a wide array of services, and this is felt as communicative gap, expressed as not knowing where to go to and whom to speak with. The lockdown measures that dictate households stay within their bubbles initially translated into the disappearance of the communicative resources of support for refugee households. These disappearing

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communicative resources were intertwined with the structural barriers in accessing fundamental health resources. This chapter on refugee health sought to co-create an overarching infrastructure for listening to refugee voices. Listening for erasures complicates, disrupts, and resists the hegemonic narratives that form the zeitgeist of pandemic communication. Refugee voices draw out the multiple intersecting gaps that play out in a top-down model of delivery of services, mediated through civil society and state. Our findings shared here intersect with the culture-centered dialogue with Rohingya refugees presented in Chapter 5, which is also hosted at CARE and is specifically developed within the framework of Rohingya health. Across both these chapters what emerges as a key concept in examining migrant health is inequality. Migration is constituted by multiple intersecting layers of inequalities, with refugees often placed at the extreme margins of migration, and with multiple layers of inequalities that are reproduced within refugee communities. The communicative gaps presented here are aligned with the communicative gaps experienced by Rohingya refugees. The overarching condition of being a refugee in Aotearoa New Zealand is experienced in the form of the mediating role of civil society, without adequate infrastructures for community voice, and directed by the professional-managerial class. The refugee experiences amidst the pandemic are reflective of the top-down, expert-driven non-governmental organization-state service sectors, devoid of the presence of refugees in meaningful ways are participants in the decision-making process. The lockdown, communicated as an effective measure, is marked by the health inequalities it produced, shaped by the absence of voice infrastructures for refugees. This communicative erasure and the corresponding communicative gaps are negotiated through communicative agency. Through their familial and community networks, refugees enact communicative agency. They find ways of locating structures, of locating relevant pieces of information, and of mobilizing support through communication. For culture-centered studies, the communicative enactment of agency needs to be explored in depth in future scholarship, mapping the ways in which everyday practices of communication amidst challenging structures emerge as spaces for bringing about social change.

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Spoonley, P., & Bedford, R. (2012). Welcome to our world? Immigration and the reshaping of New Zealand. Dunmore Pub. Swe, H., & Ross, M. (2010). Refugees from Myanmar and their health care needs in the US: A qualitative study at a refugee resettlement agency. International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, 6(1), 15–25. Varkey, P., Jerath, A. U., Bagniewski, S., & Lesnick, T. (2007). Intestinal parasitic infection among new refugees to Minnesota, 1996–2001. Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, 5(4), 223–229. Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quin, K., Montgomery, S. A., & Hunt, K. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213. Woodley, A., & Williams, L. (2012). Funded services to migrants and refugees in Auckland. Auckland Council.

CHAPTER 5

The Implications of Being Thrice-Marginalized: Work Migrants in India During the Coronavirus Lockdown Devalina Mookerjee and Shubhabrata Roy

Internal migrants in India comprise “the most vulnerable section of the working poor” (Srivastava, 2020, p. 3). As Dandekar and Ghai (2020) have pointed out, the movement of workers from rural to urban areas is largely “distress migration” (p. 29), for survival. A study by the International Institute of Population Sciences Mumbai (Roy et al., 2021) in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh (UP), and Bihar saw that 57% of the households surveyed had experience with some kind of migration, and that this migration was due to factors of economic push. The study lists “poverty, compulsion (to migrate), unemployment, landlessness, and lack of sufficient food to eat” (p. xvii). In Bengal, Sarkar and Mishra (2020)

D. Mookerjee (B) Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India e-mail: [email protected] S. Roy BIAS, Delhi, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_5

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point out that while migration for work has become common among the rural men of Bengal, this is “not necessarily of their own choice. It is more out of a mere compulsion to earn and survive” (p. 12). Sarkar and Rajan (2020) show that remittances to the poorer areas of home allow families in villages to budget money for health and education, which may not have been possible without support from migrant members. It would be safe to say that migration in these contexts is more a movement away from the harsh economic conditions of their homes, and the inability to find work in those areas, than toward greater opportunity (Kumar & Choudhury, 2021). For the migrant working poor, the first marker of marginalization is the act of migration itself. It points to a lack of resources at home, from which people must migrate away in order to earn and support their families who remain behind. They typically come from the villages and small towns of India. The second marker of marginalization is located in the destinations of migration. In the urban centers to which internal migrants move for work, conditions of living are crowded and unsanitary, and work frequently unsafe and fraught with occupational hazard (Nirmala & Prasad, 2019). Internal migrants to urban India work largely in the construction, manufacturing, and service sectors of the informal economy, where they are exploited by employers or middlemen, and frequently denied basic rights such as adequate wages, nutrition, housing, sanitation, and healthcare (Chatterjee, 2006). The third marker of marginalization is situational. It is the pandemic lockdown, which made conditions of living and work even more burdensome to navigate for these marginalized people. The lockdown meant that migrant workers had to reverse-migrate in an emergency situation, finding themselves back at the low-resource places from which they came. This third marker of migration has two dimensions. First, that the neoliberal cities of India have no place for the bodies of laborers which are not at continuous work, fueling the growth of the city. When the lockdown started and workplaces closed, these bodies were, within days, expelled from urban spaces (Pandey, 2020). Second, the suddenness of onset of the pandemic and the largely inadequate response from administrative and health systems made the lockdown a difficult time across the socioeconomic spectrum in India. Those with resources coped, to varying degrees. Those with comparatively low resources, such as migrants, with informal sector employment, doing day-by-day or piecemeal work, suffered the most (Jesline et al., 2021).

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In experience, the effect of the three markers of marginalization is cumulative. The marginalized workers whose voices form the basis of this chapter are from low socioeconomic areas, and had managed to move to a larger town, or a city, for work in the informal sector. This is not a straightforward process. In India, it is routed through either personal contacts in the city, or exploitative middlemen (John et al., 2020). These workers were subject to difficult, polluted, and frequently unsafe conditions in the city. But they stayed, because economic contingencies override any other concern. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown became the proverbial straw to the camel’s back of their difficult lives, ripping away whatever little financial and locational security these migrant workers had managed to build around themselves. This chapter draws on qualitative data from a larger study of migrant workers in India during the pandemic. It aims to understand the experienced implications of living through a situation of being so thricemarginalized, in the lives of COVID-19 reverse-migrant workers during the pandemic lockdown.

The Health Consequences of Distress Migration Migrants in India experience multiple barriers to healthcare access. Bhagat et al. (2020) point out that circling between home and city means that migrants find themselves excluded from enabling structures such as government camps for healthcare, and nutrition/ration entitlements, both in the city, and at home. Since their location is unfixed, they find it difficult to access any programs for healthcare or other entitlements under local schemes in either place. Neoliberal policies for urban development in India rarely take into account the many people who help build and run the city, but have homes elsewhere. In terms of health, Virupaksha et al. (2014) point out that migrants in India suffer from lifestyle and self-esteem issues. Bhardwaj et al. (2012) saw anxieties about social support, relationship problems, worries about health, and stressful emotional reactions, and a lack of satisfaction with living conditions. In a review of the literature on health and health care of internal migrants, Kusuma and Babu (2018) found that they suffer widely from non-communicable conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, as well as communicable ones such as HIV. Migrants are frequent sufferers of malaria.

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Stresses of the Pandemic In terms of the long-term consequences of the pandemic lockdown on the health of migrants, Andrade (2020) says that the risks of mental illness such as depression or other psychosomatic stress disorders may last an unspecified length of time, because the difficult experiences of the pandemic may imprint vulnerability into people’s neuronal circuits. Choudhari (2020) lists the vulnerabilities of internal migrant workers at this time: susceptibility to communicable diseases, absence of support, depression, stress, social exclusion, economic constraints due to loss of work, issues with following the rules and regulations of personal safety, and peritraumatic psychological distress during the pandemic. Andrade’s (2020) and Choudhari’s (2020) assessments point to the possibility of a public health crisis in the near future. In terms of structural support, which might have somewhat alleviated the suffering of migrants, the central government had announced limited financial support (Mishra, 2020), systems for quarantine, testing and treatment, and food provisions packages (Bhagat et al., 2020). But time constraints and the scale of the migration meant that these measures were planned in an emergency top–down manner, and implemented in haste (Mohan, 2020). The consequences of this were clear as early as April 2020, when The Hindu Data Team cited a study by the Stranded Workers Action Network claiming that 96% migrant workers did not get rations from the government at this time, and 90% did not receive wages during the lockdown.

The Culture-Centered Approach (CCA) The choice of a lens is important in such a space of inequality. For a researcher working in the developing world, this choice is fraught. Populations are large, and many different, acrimonious, and contradictory perspectives manifest in any space. With growing religious, political, and social polarization in India, the truth-value of some of these perspectives has been subject to debate (Vishwanath, 2021). As a researcher, positioning oneself within this cacophony demands a clear understanding of where both the researcher-self, and the person-self stands in relation to it.

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Power Dimensions A second reason is that socioeconomic inequality ensures that some voices are significantly louder than others. The nature of the inequality means that those who are more powerful have a louder voice. In India, power is defined by several parameters. Some of these are similar to other parts of the world—class, wealth, and political power. Others are specific to India—caste group power, and the kind of focused ideological power that derives from religion, in a religion-prone environment (Jaffrelot, 2010). All of these kinds of power playing out in a country precariously poised on the brink of modernity in social terms, but also both profoundly globalized, with all its attendant problems, is a conflicted space. Given the fissures that are yawing to wide gaps in the Indian socioeconomic and political space at this time, the choice of a theoretical and methodological perspective in empirical research assumes an urgency that must guide research choices. The CCA is predicated on four ideas. The first is that inequality is an integral part of the world. The role of the researcher is to investigate the shape of the inequality (Dutta, 2011). As a researcher in the developing world, this makes perfect sense. Inequality manifests itself everywhere and all the time in India. Almost every communicative or material experience in the public space, and those in many private spaces, are connected with forms of inequality. It is important that a research perspective holds this front and center, and treats inequality with the formative attention it deserves. The second idea is that inequality plays out in two significant loci in the lives of people who live within it—structure and agency (Dutta, 2011). Structures are the institutions and systems that surround us, that both constrain, and enable, our being in the world. In the context of this research, the most visible structure is the healthcare system, with bureaucratic, financial, and educational systems and institutions also being causes of anxiety in the lives of migrant workers. But the idea of structures that govern our lives is wider than the processes of bureaucracy to which we are subject. Family, community, work, and its counterpart, leisure, are also important parts of structural frameworks in most people’s lives. Structures are spaces in which inequalities are made very clear. So, for example, a person who ends up as a migrant worker usually comes from a place of rural or semi-rural poverty. Health, employment, transportation, and education systems, which are enabling if they work properly, are weak

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in these places. This means that not only are people coming from here likely be of poorer health, compelled to do strenuous, low-paying work for long periods without breaks, they will also find it more difficult to access healthcare due to structural constraints, such as low literacy, low mobility, and less-developed understandings of how formal systems work. Poorer people are more dependent on systems and institutions, and when these systems and institutions fail, they have few safety-nets. While systems and institutions can fail to address the needs of poorer people, these people cannot afford to stop accessing the systems and institutions that loom in their lives. That is why, to a researcher in the developing world, the CCA’s understanding of agency is invaluable. Agency in the CCA marks how poorer people—those who have low agency in the neoliberal structures of the brave new world—nevertheless continue to navigate its treacherous paths, to try and live as best as they can. The third idea is the preponderance of culture (Dutta, 2008). Both structures, and the forms of expression of agency, take place in the constitutive environment of culture. Structures—institutions and systems—have cultures which are usually consonant with the larger cultures in which they are nested. Forms of agency too may be rooted in cultural ideas of going against the grain. In terms of healthcare during the pandemic, this was most visible in the huge black market in medicines (Menon & Jayakumar, 2021). It demonstrated, on a massive, media-accessible scale, that when systems and institutions fail, the individuals who comprise the cultural space that is India, will reach for other ways to do the things that they need to do. The CCA also points to the fact that all of these elements, structure, culture, and forms of agency, change over time. This is particularly relevant in pandemic, when entrenched structural and cultural forms are experiencing an event that is new to them. In such circumstances, agency, too, would be likely to find updated roles in the lives of people living through this time. In India, the navigation of structure is a national art, underlined by chaos, somewhat as Umberto Eco (1994) describes it in Italy. A researcher trying to make sense of the chaos in India is greatly aided by a lens grounded in an understanding of this whirling combination of structure, culture, and agency, in constant process. As a researcher, using such a lens serves as a constant reminder of the vibrancy of voices located in subaltern spaces. If these voices can be included in discourse about

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structure, it is the discourse on structure that will find itself enriched. To that end, the purpose of the CCA—to excavate the invisible, and make it visible, is perfectly aligned with the aims of this research (Dutta, 2008).

Method The primary source of data for this research is semi-structured, in-depth interviews with internal migrants in India, who have reverse-migrated to their hometowns and villages in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh (UP), and West Bengal (WB). These states are significant sources for internal outmigration in the country (Bhagat et al., 2020). Interviews were conducted about 3 months into the lockdown, when the national lockdown made interpersonal interactions impossible. The consequent lack of visual data is the first limitation of this study. Voices of Distressed Migrants The chapter focuses on the stories of 54 migrants, with 18 participants from each state, making a total of 54. Sampling took into account religion, education, and the latest period as outmigrant. Religion was included because India is currently seeing severe marginalization of its about 15% Muslim minority (Subramanian, 2020). With no available religious data on internal migrants, the sample had 36 Hindus and 18 Muslims, roughly reflecting this disparity in population. Education was included because it is an important factor in access to work across urban and rural India. While education does not guarantee income, lower education restricts opportunities to the informal sector (Kumar & Sahu, 2013). Because we wanted to see if differences in education and therefore access to work, could show differences in lockdown experiences, the sample included 21 workers with education below the 10th grade, 21 workers with education between the 10th and 12th grades, and 12 graduates. Period as outmigrant included different patterns of migration. The range of work migration in India runs the range from relatively stable contracts, to seasonal agriculture daily wage labor (Srivastava, 2012). The National Sample Survey uses more or less than six months to differentiate between circular patterns of work and home. Accordingly, the sample for this study included 21 participants who had been migrants for less than 6 months, and 33 participants who had been migrants for over 6 months.

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Recruitment Participants were recruited purposively from within communities during the lockdown, with local recruiters introducing the study to prospective participants. The research protocol received approval from the Monk Prayogshala Institutional Review Board, a IRB granting agency for social science in India. Informed consent in line with APA ethical guidelines was sought from all participants. Unfortunately, the sample does not include any women. This second limitation of the study is because recruitment did not find women willing and able to take the time to talk to researchers on the phone. Data Gathering The semi-structured interview guide asked participants about the impacts of pandemic lockdown on their lives. Drawing on Choudhari’s (2020) list of migrant vulnerabilities at this time, it included open-ended questions in the areas of work and earning (Have you had income through the lockdown? Have your earnings been enough for your family expenses?); social relationships (What effect has the corona lockdown had on your relationships with family? Neighbors? Others in the community?); infection (Did anyone you know get infected?), and safety measures (What do you do to try and keep safe at this time?). Interviews were conducted on the phone by researchers from Delhi. That participation was voluntary was emphasized at the beginning of interviews, and participants were reminded that they could exit anytime. Interviews were conducted in Hindi or Bengali according to the comfort of the participant, and lasted 30–40 minutes each. They were recorded on in-phone apps, translated, and transcribed by the researchers conducting the interviews. Researcher observations and understandings of interviews were also included in the data. Identity information and interviews were stored securely, with only the researchers in the study allowed access. Names have been changed to protect the anonymity of participants. Analysis The analysis of the data followed open, focused, and axial coding as described in Charmaz (2006). The data were open-coded by the first author to identify emerging themes. This process began after the first

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interview in each state was conducted, and continued in a process of constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). A total of 62 codes were evolved through the process of open coding. Lack of earning, mounting debt, unsafeness of city life, the feeling of home, and worries about infection were among the codes strong enough that they were also selectively coded. The core categories so evolved included home, city, money, and infection. From the 62 open codes yielded 19 focused codes, including making a living; coronavirus fears; home; city as migrant; safety in pandemic; coping understandings; and coping behavior. In the next process of axial coding, codes and their clusters were examined for their relationships with other codes and clusters.

Findings The findings from this study reflect the stress experienced by male internal reverse-migrant workers during pandemic lockdown. The focus in this chapter is on the health concerns of these reverse-migrants around (i) stress about lack of earning and growing debt; and (ii) stress related to fear of infection, and stigma in home communities. When Income Stops and Loans Run Out Economic stress for reverse-migrants included the loss of income and mounting debt, anxieties about finding work at home, and the uncertainties surrounding future income. Loss of income and growing debt has led to serious economic stress for these migrants. As Anwar (36, WB) said, “If I don’t earn, who will feed my family? My wife does not keep well, who will pay for her treatment?”. Stress due to loss of income featured in all 54 interviews conducted for this study. Om Prakash’s (40, Bihar) anxiety was clear over the phone I had savings that lasted the first two months, I thought that would be enough. But now it’s been three months. We are somehow going on. When I came back (from the city) I thought, after all, how long could lockdown go on? Everybody thought we would be back at work by JuneJuly. But this is just going on [ … ] I had to borrow from my brother-inlaw, he has some work even now. But how much can I borrow from him? He has a family to run too.

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The parallel stress of running out of savings also showed up repeatedly in the interviews. Participants said that they had been borrowing from family, wealthier community members, or local moneylenders at unspecified rates of interest. Given the nature of debt traps for the poor in India, many of these households will be trying to repay loans for a long time (Karlan et al., 2019). Loans taken from family or community come with another kind of unease. Participants said that unpaid loans had strained relationships, with some reporting the desperation and embarrassment of having to take a second loan without the funds to repay the first. Anish (40, Bihar) worried, I borrowed 3,000 Rs. from my cousin, but that ran out. Still, I could not find work, so I borrowed again, from a local businessman who was my friend. Now I will need to borrow again, but I don’t know who to ask, I don’t know anyone else who can lend money. No one has extra money now [ … ] I know they are annoyed that I did not pay back.

Stress about mounting debt was a recurrent theme in the interviews, along with fears of community disapproval toward repeat borrowers. Rajnish (39, UP) fretted, “I don’t know when I can go back to work there (in the city), how will I pay back?” Bibek (30, WB) explained his biggest source of stress: I was gone for only 4 months (as a migrant), it was good money, but only 4 months. I had very little savings when I came back, but my family is here, so it was all right in the beginning. But my child fell ill, so I took a loan for the medicines, a small one. When that money finished and I took another one, a little bigger one. [ … ] I worry all the time about it, it is a constant tension in my mind.

The stress of this kind of constant anxiety holds the risk of numerous nervous and immunity system complications (Kemeny, 2003). Participants knew that “tension” is bad for health, but those trying to keep a measure of agency through finding work were met with other structural constraints. While opportunities to earn were available in hometowns and villages, these were restricted to agriculture and construction, were contracted daily, and for lower pay than comparable work in cities. Shahnawaz (36, UP) painted a picture of this process:

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I go and wait in one place in the village, and the truck comes and picks us up to take us to the work-spot. We work the whole day, they pay very little for a day. Sometimes there will be work for 5 days, or a week, but that’s all. [ … ] Not everyone who waits gets work for the day. I go every day to wait at that place where they pick up.

Shahnawaz and other migrants said that there is less work available at home than in the city. So, while some migrants experienced at manual labor occasionally found work, most did not, and those overqualified for available work remained without income. Anil (31, Bihar), who has a BA degree, sorrowed that his education had become an obstacle: Here there is only building work, or work on the field [agricultural], my BA is of no use here. I have never done laborer work like this. In the city I do work that needs reading and writing, here there is no work like that. I cannot earn until I go back to the city. [ … ] But how will I feed my family till then?

This inversion of the value of education in the pandemic was echoed by others overqualified for available work. “What’s the point of my education?” said Sonjoy (WB, 27) with bitterness, “if it is not of use to feed my family?” Structural support from the state in terms of access to food and other basics could be enablers in the context, but this research found such support inconsistent. Some participants in WB reported receiving partial support of grain and other foodstuff from the state. Those from Bihar who had received grain said that it had worms, was rotten or very stale. No participant in UP had received food or any other kind of support from the state through this time. Among these reverse-migrants, a future return to normal is marked by a return to work in the city. In a post-pandemic normal world, work and earning would be possible again, migrants could return safely to the city and work, and send money back home. Vijay (43, UP) said, I work to feed my family, give my children here [at home] a future. I thought I would also earn enough this year [as a migrant] to repair the house. Now I am sitting at home and waiting for months, nothing to do, no work. Only when I can go back to work, send money home, will I feel that corona is over.

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They feel that the responsibility for family survival is theirs, and is a pressing need. As Bilal (30, UP) put it, “This person says cure, that person says vaccine, but who will feed us?”. The CCA points out that the structural constraints within which people live have both material and psychosocial effects on their health (Dutta, 2017). With incomes at a halt over the pandemic lockdown, no accessible formal systems for loans or food security, and no end to the pandemic lockdown in sight, the precarious experiences of existing within the multiple disenabling structures (Kaur-Gill & Dutta, 2020) that surround reverse-migrants, have become sources of serious stress, and obstacles to their health.

Home Is Health, and the Stigma of the Infected City Even while stress plagues the experience of return-migrants, they feel that being home is associated with positive health experiences. Unfortunately, however, their return from the infected zones of the city expose them to stigma in their comparatively protected hometowns. Healthier at Home These workers feel that food, open air, care, and time are needed to maintain health during the pandemic. Nadeem (31, Bihar) had a formula to stay well—“if you have good food, go out and walk for a while quietly in the morning or evening in the open air, that’s all you need to stay healthy.” Bijoy (40, WB) echoed this idea, “I put on my mask and walk for a while every day, there is plenty of space […] I have time to do that. The food is good, home-cooked, I eat well. Everything tastes better here.” When home food is made personally by a loved one, it is “good food.” Manohar (32, UP) explained this idea, (M)y mother cooks for everyone with her own hands, she has decided that we should eat more vegetables, dal, healthy food for COVID. So we eat lots of good food, she cooks different things, we sit, she sits with us, and we eat.

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“Good food,” which is also good for health, has several elements—care, variety, and the time to sit and eat. These are missing all in the city. Eating in the city is a hurried, unsatisfactory experience, with little regard for taste or care. Mukhtarul (38, WB) said, There are eight of us living in a room, we have different times of work, always coming and going. One person cooks, and everyone eats whenever they can. Most days I eat cold food, or the person has cooked in a hurry and left to work, there’s no taste.

Just as the city lacks healthy food, it is also fails to provide for another need of a healthy life, which is open space to breathe clean air. Jeet (29, Bihar) described this difference: There (city) there is no place to breathe, it is hard to breathe. You can see a thick layer of dirt on everything. You can’t get away from the dirt and the pollution in the air. But here, I go for a walk, and there are trees, the air feels clean, I can breathe [ … ] My friend said there is more oxygen here, I don’t know all that, but here it’s no problem to even run with my mask on.

In the cities, multiple factors combine to create bad health—pollution, bad food, difficult living, and work conditions. At home, however, health is easily accessible, with home-cooked food, open areas and time for exercise and relaxation, and the comfort of being surrounded by those who care. Another aspect of open space makes home safer than the city. Participants said that social distance was difficult to maintain in the living and working conditions of migration. Satendar (36, UP) commented, This six feet distance, it is not possible in the city. All day, someone or the other is so close that you can touch. Sometimes they push when they pass by, they pass so fast you can’t even tell them to stay away. Even vehicles, motorcycles, cars, they come so close.

Village or small town spaces are less populated, and open. “I don’t usually meet even one person when I go to the fields in the morning,” said Ravidas, (30, Bihar) “so there’s no need to wear a mask all the time during that walk.” The feeling that home is a bastion of safety is reflected in the finding that masks were reportedly not worn at home across states, nor

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hands washed regularly when home. This is because family, and home, are thought of as zero-risk zones. Shahid (34, UP) reasoned: I go out only when needed. At home there’s my parents, younger brother, my wife and two children. Sometimes my brother will go to the nearby market, but he bathes with soap when he comes back, everything is washed (…) My parents are aged and stay at home, my wife stays at home too, and the children have been at home for two months now.

Participants said that it was not possible to get infected from family, because no other member of the family left the house during the lockdown, or because any family member going out only went to known spaces, and followed safety rules (mask, hand cleanliness, social distance, etc.). These migrants felt that being close to home and loved ones was essential to good health during the pandemic. Care, time, open air, and good food are all important to this process, and these are only available at home. Although these migrants needed to resume earning, they were not looking forward to being back in the city. Hamid (42, Bihar) said that if there was a choice, he would stay home: Who wants to go back there? I would say here if there was work. Then I would relax with my family, eat like this every day! I will stay as long as I can […] But I will have to go back there, we all know that.

Others, too, said that they would try to extend their stay at home. But these voices are united in their understanding that they will eventually have to return to work in the city. In the larger context of a neoliberal state which has no place for workers unless they are continuously at work, and expels them from the city when work stops, staying home is an subversive act, one of profound agency. The return home, and the refusal to leave until structural factors dictate the time to start earning again, is agency as it is defined in the CCA (Dutta, 2008). This is a small space for health, embedded in the triplemarginalization of pandemic lockdown. But migrants are very aware of the gift of this time at home, despite all the encircling troubles. Dutta and Jamil (2013) saw that among Bangladeshi immigrants, “The personal ownership of health is interconnected with the relational, familial, and collective ownership of health” (p. 175). Here too, family

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care, and community resources such as open land are identified by migrants as sources of health, with agency being the means to access this well-being. Home to Stigma Hometowns are a refuge at this time. But the return during pandemic has marginalized reverse-migrants within this refuge, by marking them as carriers of infection. Mangal (33, WB) explained this marginalization: We came all this way, back home. But we couldn’t go straight to our family, we had to stay in the school building [quarantine] for 14 days. Then we went home. […] This is a village, everyone knows who is coming back. It’s not like a city, where no one knows anyone. People here say that those who have come back from the city must be infected.

Both return-migrants and their communities at home are afraid of infection. Migrants feared that they may be carriers, bringing infection into the home. “After all, I came from the city. Maybe it was on me. Anyone can pass it on […] They were safe here before we came,” said Rajnish (39, Bihar). Going through quarantine helped, but it also marked migrants as entering the safe, uninfected community from spaces of infection. Participants reported that families were relieved, and pleased, to have them back. But members of larger communities are very concerned about infection being carried in from outside. Sajid (45, UP) explained, Everyone knows that corona is worst in the city. Here it is safe, very few cases and not close at all. So they think that people from the city should not be allowed to return. All it takes is one or two people, and the infection will come. That will be very bad, they say.

Participants reported a hardening of local community borders by conservative elements in these spaces. Thankfully, the negative sentiments within communities were not strong enough to keep migrants out. But the fact that such opinions existed was stressful to these migrants. One of the consequences of pandemic reverse-migrant stigma is a disruption of relationships within the community. “The neighbors on one side stopped talking to my family […] we had always had a friendship with them before I came back,” said Roshan (30, UP). Iftekar (43, Bihar) who

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returned with a seasonal cough and cold, sounded distraught, “Everyone (in his locality) said, he has corona, we will get it, but I did not have corona, I had no illness. They did not believe me.” The stigma faced by reverse-migrants during the pandemic is an inversion of the usual status of the migrant on his home-ground. Migrants are important to their home communities in Indian towns and villages. This is due both to the earnings and financial remittances which directly and indirectly support family and community back home (Castaldo et al., 2012), and also because for people in small towns, migrants represent a kind of exposure to the wider world (Bhaskaran, 2011). The pandemic has challenged this traditionally positive image, by turning even a rumor of infection into social stigma. This kind of marginalization was reported by participants as deeply upsetting and stressful.

Being Triple-Marginalized The triple-marginalization of pandemic lockdown has held multiple stressors for reverse-migrants. When examining situations of inequality, Dutta (2008) urges researchers to look at the interplay between culture and structure. Here, a culture of taking loans from family or friends becomes a barrier to relationships, even as structures, like banks or government loans, remain unavailable to these marginalized people. The local moneylender fills the gap, but with unspecified rates of interest. The moneylender is located in the cultural landscape of home, but it is also part of a larger economic structure that causes fear for the future. Like Dutta and Jamil (2013), this study found ideas of health to be both individual and collective—food cooked by loved ones, time to breathe clean air and walk freely, and space to protect against infection, lead to good health. Here, meanings of health are co-constructed between people, and also, extending Dutta and Jamil (2013), between people and the environment. The individual exerts agency, and family and community provide positive cultural reasons to stay home. In the city, the dust and lack of trees and open air and the cold, tasteless food structurally function to constrain health, just as the agentic act to stay home enables well-being. The lens of the CCA turns focus away from dominant discourses and toward the voices of those silenced by that louder discourse (Dutta, 2008, 2017; Dutta and Kaur-Gill, 2018; Kaur-Gill & Dutta, 2020). If dominant discourse during the pandemic has focused on low productivity, then

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the task of work using the CCA is to turn the searchlight into the dark areas overshadowed by dominant discourse. The implications of being thrice-marginalized during the pandemic have played out in the lives of subaltern migrant workers in this shadowed space. Unable to stay home, expelled from the city, and subject to stressful economic fears and social stigma during the pandemic, the processes of thrice-marginalization have pushed these voices further into silence, even while they push the bodies of workers into the rural margins of the country. The aim of excavating these voices is to amplify their volume in the public sphere, where their presence is necessary to a balanced discourse. Using the CCA as an analytical lens provides a clear understanding of how the pandemic lockdown exerted so much stress on the lives of reverse-migrants that some fairly entrenched cultural and structural constants in their lives were inverted, or turned upside-down. An inversion is a situation that is usually assumed to run one way— pandemic lockdown is a disenabler of health; education is an enabler to work; the returned migrant is a welcome figure in the home community—but actually runs in the opposite direction. The lockdown is found to aid health; those overqualified for work in the village have no income through the lockdown; and migrants are unwelcome in the home community, perceived as carriers of the infectious coronavirus. These inversions point to the huge chaos and stress the pandemic lockdown has brought to the lives of reverse-migrants, and to the multiple obstacles they have had to navigate daily, to survive these experiences with some agency. The CCA regards actions that promote health through structural constraints, as acts of agency (Dutta et al., 2017). The thrice-marginalized migrant worker leaving the city to return home, his good-health practices of walking in the open air and eating food with family, and his voiced desire to stay home as long as possible are all acts of agency. In the constrained, difficult lives of the thrice-marginalized, this is no small moment of freedom.

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CHAPTER 6

Extreme (Im)mobility and Mental Health Inequalities: Migrant Construction Workers in Singapore During the COVID-19 Pandemic Satveer Kaur-Gill, Samira Hassan, and Yeo Qin-Liang

The pandemic made evident the jarring health inequalities facing migrant construction workers in Singapore. Although the state’s pandemic management sought to address uneven outbreaks, these reactionary measures contributed to marginalizing migrant construction workers through the differentiated health surveillance policies. Intensive and extensive health surveillance measures led to their exclusion and expulsion

S. Kaur-Gill (B) The Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, United States e-mail: [email protected] S. Hassan · Y. Qin-Liang Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_6

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within the city-state. Migrant workers highlighted hyper-medical surveillance as a central aspect of the stressors and anxiety experienced during the pandemic. Their meanings of mental health were cognized by how their bodies were marked for expulsion in the host country. Their health inequalities were connected to the communicative inequalities faced materially. The vast power dynamics exacerbate conditions of marginalization. The structural conditions of hire trickle down to how they live and experience structural systems such as interactions with structural actors such as agents, employers dorm operators, and local community members. I want to die, this is too much for me to bear.

His voice trembled on the phone. Saiful, a 36-year-old migrant construction worker from Bangladesh had been quarantined in a single room on a cruise ship for nine weeks when one of us interviewed him. A luxury prison, he called it. He shared his experience of being confined to an approximate 150 square feet room that received little sunlight throughout the day. Meals were delivered to the door thrice a day like clockwork. Spotty signals on ships meant Saiful was unable to connect seamlessly with his family or friends during quarantine. Saiful’s mental health rapidly deteriorated after being cut off from social connections. He believed that there might not have been an end in sight. He was one of the hundreds of migrant construction workers quarantined across the island in dormitories, hotels, and cruise ships (Lin & Yeoh, 2020). By April 2020, the city-state had gone from being profiled by various international media outlets as a shining example of its quick and adept response to the COVID-19 outbreak to a city-state with stark outbreak inequalities faced by migrants residing in margins of the margins of Singapore society (Kaur-Gill, 2020). The margins of the margins are theorized as spaces of deprivation from health and well-being from being dislocated from the center (Spivak, 1988). Migrant workers in Singapore face a myriad of intersecting structural factors that create conditions of health marginalization. To list a few, workers cannot make labor rights claims, unionize, or participate in civil society advocacy (Bal, 2015; Hamid & Tutt, 2019). Yea and Chok (2018) define the work conditions of migrant construction workers as unfree, with multiple oppressive factors shaping their exploitation (Yea & Chok, 2018). During the pandemic, their marginalized status manifested in how unequally migrant construction workers were infected by the COVID-19

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outbreak compared to the rest of the population (Dutta, 2020b). The explosion of cases in dormitories, where migrant workers reside, brought to the fore the significant systemic issues plaguing low-wage migrant workers in the country. Poor quality food and housing (Bernhard & Ellemunt, 2022; Dutta, 2021b), low occupational safety standards (Dutta, 2021a, 2021b), precarious structures of hire and deportability (Bal, 2017, 2022), and limited avenues for redress of their grievances from poor employment conditions are some of the examples of the broader social, health, and environmental concerns facing migrant construction workers in Singapore. Reports of up to 12–20 men sleeping in a single room, crammed dormitories created the perfect petri-dish for spreading the virus (TWC2, 2020). Despite past experiences of infectious disease outbreaks in dormitories such as Rubella and Chickenpox (Sadarangani et al., 2017), the principles of cost-effectiveness (Bernhard & Ellemunt, 2022; Dutta, 2020a) embedded in the logics of neocapitalist extraction took precedence over worker welfare, allowing dormitory conditions continued to perpetuate. The state of workers’ living conditions remained unchanged despite continued advocacy by civil society groups on the precarity facing workers living in these dormitory conditions. Yuen et al.’s (2021) study on the health inequalities of migrant workers in Hong Kong and Singapore argued that the “long-term marginalization of civil society groups also accounted for the failure to detect such risks” (p. 8), referring to outbreak inequalities during the pandemic facing migrant workers. It was, therefore, no surprise that the virus spread manifested extensively and quickly among migrant construction workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, at its peak in June 2020, 93% of infections were related to dormitories in Singapore (Sharma & Scarr, 2020). At the start of the pandemic, workers were experiencing an infectious disease pandemic without access to tailored health information or resources to protect themselves within their dormitory environments. Public health messages were bulleted for the broader population, failing to address migrant workers’ structural conditions that limited their ability to enact individual behavioral change to protect themselves against infectious diseases. With diverse lingua franca, media and social media consumption patterns, social networks, and literacy needs, dominant health messages did not reach migrant workers like the rest of the population (Dutta, 2020a, b, c; Tan et al., 2021).

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Furthermore, while public health messages highlighted masking behaviors, sanitizing, and isolation, workers in communal living facilities, such as dormitories, had no resources for antibacterial soap, sanitizers, and masks when the outbreak started (Dutta, 2021). Workers, therefore, were structurally disempowered to comply with these health messages. Once again, individual behavior change that governs public health messages failed to respond to populations that already suffer material and structural disadvantages. Similar findings were reported of precarious migrants globally. Lockdowns intensified outbreaks among migrant population groups. Across the globe, migrants living in the margins of host coutries did not have the material and informational resources to protect themselves from virus spread. For example, Ahmad and Hillman (2021) reported how the pandemic unequally affected South Asian migrant workers in Qatar, highlighting the lack of customized health communication messages. Qatar, like Singapore, hires migrant workers from similar countries in the Global South using exploitative migration infrastructures as models of hire. Migration infrastructures are the “physical and organizational architectures” that produce migrant mobilities. These mobilities can refer to how people, entities, and the digital are in motion (Lin et al., 2017). In the context of migrant construction work in Qatar and Singapore, migration infrastructures produce (im)mobility through exploitative hiring systems. Systems of indenture, low wages, poor access to health resources, limited rest days, and poor work and living conditions are all factors that make up the migration infrastructures of low-wage migrant construction workers. These types of migrant infrastructures created conditions that fueled outbreak inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pandemic Measures for Migrant Construction Workers Measures to contain the outbreak for migrant construction workers included prolonged isolation of the migrant construction worker community from the rest of the population, limiting their mobilities even further. Lin and Yeoh (2020) argue that certain mobile bodies in pandemics are marked in othering ways as threatening and monitored for surveillance in social crises. These bodies are marked as the dangerous “other” (KaurGill, 2020) that need to be rendered (im)mobile during the pandemic, “pathologizing certain mobilities (but not others) becomes, then, a method by which that organization is achieved, through availing a system

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to render risk visible, calculable, and hence manageable” (Lin & Yeoh, 2020, pp. 98–99). An example of managing the risk of what is perceived as the “threatening migrant” (Kaur-Gill, 2020) included extending isolation measures to exclude their bodies from mainstream spaces and places. Public health strategies involved keeping migrants in quarantine facilities and then within dormitory settings for a prolonged period. Amid the isolation came fears and threats of deportation. Low-wage jobs with little to no labor protections engendered incredibly precarious conditions for migrant construction workers. Stuck in quarantine, workers were uncertain whether or not they would still have a job by the time they got out. Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a local migrant rights organization, estimated that around 14,000 workers were repatriated in the second half of 2020 (TWC2, 2022). Faced with the predicaments and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, mental health vulnerabilities among workers became a growing health concern (Dutta, 2020a, b, c, 2021; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021; Saw et al., 2021). Mobility restrictions were associated with increased depression, while those fearful about their health or job reported higher depression, anxiety, and stress levels (Saw et al., 2021). The brunt of the pandemic had been borne by migrant bodies, unsurprisingly. Migrant communities typically suffer poorer health outcomes due to marginalization and discrimination. For example, many low-wage migrant workers could not access basic health care needs such as social distancing and sanitation during the early onset of the pandemic due to the precarity of their living conditions (Dutta, 2020a, b, c). Dutta’s (2021) culture-centered research positions how exploitative migration infrastructures, adopting the principles of extractive neoliberal migration policies, exploit the labor of low-wage migrant workers such as construction workers in racist and xenophobic ways. This type of hiring infrastructure of migrants implicates migrant fears, uncertainty, and anxiety and contributes to their health vulnerabilities. Furthermore, communication barriers, job stress, and violence in workplace setting exacerbated mental stressors during the pandemic (Dutta, 2021). These factors contribute to systemic precarity workers face as migrants hired in precarious migrant infrastructures (Baey & Yeoh, 2022).

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Communicative Inequality and the Culture-Centered Approach In the context of communication, outbreak inequality is evinced through the unequal distribution of resources such as access and availability to health information, communication resources to organize for healthier outcomes, and constrained opportunities to voice out and advocate for better living and working conditions. This chapter adopts a culturecentered approach (CCA) (Dutta, 2015) to analyze how quarantined workers identified structural injustices that shaped their mental health meanings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through digital ethnography commencing in April 2020, we sought to understand how migrant construction workers described mental health meanings while in extended quarantines in Singapore. By looking at the intersections of structural and cultural factors, this approach situates the mental health vulnerabilities of low-wage migrant workers within the broader structural inequalities of their labor precarity. The study of the health of migrant workers in Singapore cannot be disconnected from an analysis of the migration infrastructures assembled to exclude workers from access to health information and health resources. Their labor is organized for communicative and structural exclusion. The way workers described their experiences formed the basis for structural and cultural analysis of their mental health narratives. In a system that routinely silences and marginalizes workers, a CCA serves as a critical intervention to re-center the voices of low-wage migrant workers by actively co-creating interventions with communities and building “theories from below” (Dutta, 2008). Communities create their meanings of health within local, structural, and culturally specific spaces. Thus, acknowledging systemic critiques that engender these conditions in the first place acknowledges a starting point for where these health inequalities occur. Adopting voice as a key method, we recognize and foreground migrant workers as agentic cultural participants, shaping their meanings of mental health during the pandemic. Centering their voices in the research process was especially salient amid the more extensive erasure of their voice, representation, and lived experiences in Singapore society (Dutta, 2020a, b, c, 2021; Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018). As elucidated by Dutta and Basu (2008), approaching the research process by centering voices constrained to the margins, “health becomes

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articulated as a context-rich phenomenon, embedded in the shared meanings and life experiences of the participants and constituted through the dialectical tensions between structures that constrain health, and human agency that seeks to transform these structures (Giddens, 1984, 1990). Organic meaning-making becomes central to this discourse (p. 561).” The purpose of approaching research using voice methodologies is to propose interventional health communication strategies that consider how migrant workers define, explain, share, and relate their mental health meanings while performing precarious labor. Designing mental health interventions for migrant workers without addressing the prolonged movement restrictions placed on vaccinated workers cannot respond to the actual mental health needs of workers. Health communication interventions must account for the poor labor and health conditions and inadequate culturally tailored health resources as a symptom of ecological precarities stemming from a migration system that perpetuates othering and exclusion. The restrictions placed on the mobility of migrant workers exclusively are rooted in policymaking, communicatively circulating public health and safety as justification to keep workers (im)mobile, inverting the xenophobic exclusion imbricated in the very hiring of migrant workers from the Global South to perform dirty, dangerous, and difficult labor (3D). Communicative inversions refer to the process of communication that are the “reversals of materiality through symbolic productions, and strategic communicative erasures” (Dutta, 2020a, b, c, p. 2). A structurally engaged analysis that acknowledges the ecological nature of precarity of the mental health experiences of migrants facing intersecting oppressions can therefore result in health interventions that consider the challenges faced in the context of constrained opportunities to engage in preventative health behaviors. On the other hand, a purely biomedical approach to mental health sees it as an illness to be diagnosed and treated through seemingly “value-free traditions and naturalistic methods of science and medicine” (Esposito & Perez, 2014). The health of the body and the mind is engaged in how economic systems are organized (Neely & Lopez, 2022). In fleshing out the narratives of migrant workers on their mental health challenges, marginalized communities whose voices have been historically erased and disenfranchised are moved to the center (DuttaBergman, 2005; Dutta & Jamil, 2013; Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Jamil &

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Kumar, 2021, & Sastry, 2016). The intrinsic relationship between migration status, labor, and health precarity as connected to mental health and wellbeing cannot be ignored. Race, class, nationality, caste, and occupational status constitute the lived experiences of migrants that intersect, where individual psychology is nested within these oppressive categories (Fanon, 2007) in the host country. Migrant narratives cement the intrinsic ties between the socio-political conditions of low-wage migrant workers and their mental health, pushing us toward critiques of the neoliberal political economy coupled with precarious migrant infrastructures responsible for mental health stressors among vulnerable populations. At the same time, the experiences of migrant workers navigating these mental health disparities, both individually and collectively, disrupt a unidirectional and hegemonic understanding of state power. In the face of such glaring health communication inequalities engendered by the state, these narratives can illuminate how workers have found their own culturally and politically poignant solutions to the community’s health problems (Dutta, 2008).

Extreme (Im)mobility Precarious migrants already face (im)mobility in host countries through fraught and precarious hiring practices. During the pandemic, they were further targeted through exclusion by institutionalizing COVID-19 rules and policies that govern only migrant workers. Extreme (im)mobility during the pandemic conceptually identifies the entrapment of migrant workers during the pandemic as nested oppressions at multiple levels, such as digital (Cabalquinto, 2021), social (Yeoh et al., 2017), and communicative (Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018) (im)mobility, perpetuated through excessive and intensive health surveillance. Marked bodies experience these constraints as a condition of the othering from mainstream experiences of lockdowns. Extreme (im)mobility builds on Dutta’s (2021) critique of extreme neoliberalism and migrant work in authoritarian smart cities, referring to the “techniques of labor repression while selling itself as a ‘labor destination (p. 1303)’”, where the state profits from exploitative migrant labor, in turn, accelerates the host country project of smart cosmopolis that is imagined as futuristic and digitally connected. The communicative trope of “containing the virus” was used to communicatively invert outbreak inequality stemming from exploitative labor and

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living conditions to justify, techniques and tactics of segregation, exclusion, and othering. Keeing workers in extreme (im)mobility for extensive periods. Extreme (im)mobility has severe implications for the mental health of migrant workers. During the pandemic, workers were isolated for prolonged periods of time. First, workers were quarantined and isolated for weeks during the outbreak and then quarantined for extended periods on ships, hotels, and quarantine facilities (Dutta, 2021). Later, as the virus subsided and lockdowns lifted for the rest of the population, their mobility remained restricted primarily to dormitories and worksites. These restrictions were enforced despite most of the population receiving vaccinations in the later stages of the pandemic. Policies on mobility restrictions were carved out precisely for migrant construction workers and not for the rest of the population (Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics, 2022). The extended social isolation for workers had a critical impact on their mental health. Yee et al.’s (2021) qualitative study with migrant construction workers who tested COVID-19 positive in Singapore and were residing in a mass quarantine facility yielded insight on how the socio-ecological context of conducting migrant construction work, such as labor and living environments, shaped mental health meanings. Migrant construction workers reported entrapment, loneliness, anxiety, and exhaustion from mobility restrictions (Chan & Kuan, 2020). Rafi, who we interviewed, revealed that “you know [our] situation at the moment … many more suicide cases happening…in our dormitories… [they] will not tell you this….[it is]… becoming a big case.” The marginalization of migrant voices led to the failure to highlight the endemic slate of suicides and attempted suicides. These incidents were addressed by reports from international media or migrant workers sharing these narratives on TikTok (Geddie & Aravindan, 2020; Kaur-Gill, 2022). Reports of suicides and suicide attempts such as self-harm were differently framed by various media outlets. The international media highlighted cases of suicide and suicide attempts by workers (Geddie & Aravindan, 2020), while the local media quoted the Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, as suggesting no variation in the suicide rates were found among migrant workers (Phua & Smalley, 2020). Other reports found that growing disorientation caused by prolonged isolation and windowless environments were factors impacting the mental health of migrant construction workers (Chua & Wong, 2020).

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Chua and Wong (2020) identify the costs of enforced isolation for migrant construction workers as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they were isolating workers to keep the larger community safe from the spread of COVID-19. On the other, prolonged confinement caused a mental health crisis through the very tactics isolation and segregation. Chan and Kuan’s study (2020) similarly discussed the extent of mental health stressors occurring when workers were kept in isolation on top of inadequate mental health support services and resources for workers. These challenges were amplified due to language and cultural barriers. Migrant construction workers were viewed as subjects for contagion peripheralizing them further. The intersecting lens of structural peripherality and othering were described as amplifying stressors, anxiety, and fear. These intersections of labor precarity and mental health were consistently described during interviews with migrant workers.

Mental Health Interventions Despite the health and mental health vulnerabilities faced by migrant workers, mental health aid for workers stopped short of any real redressal of systemic issues. Instead, the onus of recovery was placed on the individual. While the pandemic raged on, predominantly affecting migrant construction workers, NGOs played a key role in bridging services to migrant workers, including prioritizing mental health vulnerabilities. Chan and Kuan (2020) documented how an ecological and psychosocial approach to mental health vulnerabilities for migrant workers were recommendations made to key stakeholders. These recommendations were strategically positioned by NGOs due to the systemic erasures and exclusions of migrant workers from national pandemic preparation and crisis plans. Workers were encouraged to seek help for mental distress through hotlines and remote counseling services provided by local NGOs (Yee et al., 2021). In addition, a new task force was set up to “enhance mental healthcare support for migrant workers” through awareness campaigns, surveillancing for mental and emotional distress, and provision of counseling services and intervention support (Ministry of Manpower, 2022). Responses were neutered of a socio-political critique that addressed the structural conditions of hire that engendered the crisis in the first place. To illustrate, workers shared how dormitory operators, the recommended first line of support for help-seeking proposed by NGOs and the state

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(Chan & Kuan, 2020; Ministry of Manpower, 2022), were often the same actors perpetuating health violations against them. Examples included illegally confining workers, limiting their mobility, and threatening workers from voicing out against poor work and employment conditions. Workers complained that dormitory operators refused to provide information resources to workers about quarantine procedures. A worker shared that he was brought to a facility in the east: Without any information, being informed about what is going on. I wasn’t able to pack properly, just got 2 shirts, lungi (cloth wrap), and phone charger. Some didn’t even get a chance to take their phone charger…I had to request security to pass more things I need, especially when I went over to [anonymized facility].

Culturally centered interventions call our attention to the larger, violent structures that contribute to the multiple health vulnerabilities of migrant construction workers. Weak labor laws contribute to the occupational hazards of performing migrant construction work, and precarious migration infrastructures impact the living conditions of workers. These factors are interconnected to the mental health narratives shared by migrants. Broader structural issues have a corresponding impact on the poor mental health outcomes of migrant workers. Scholars (e.g., Harrigan et al., 2017; Parreñas et al., 2021; Parreñas & Silvey, 2021; Yeoh et al., 2017) across disciplines have repeatedly highlighted the structures of precarity responsible for mental health inequalities facing migrant worker communities in Singapore. For instance, Ang (2018) indicated the relationship between the nature of migrant construction work, such as the high level of debts they owe to agents who broker their jobs through agency fees, and the constant financial insecurity they face contributing to the mental health stressors experienced by workers. Harrigan et al. (2017) mixed-methods study concluded the “migration status places workers who come into workplace conflict with their employers at heightened risk of mental illness because migration status can be used as a tool by employers in workplace negotiations” (p. 512). Poor living conditions, food quality, and sanitation were also in serious violation of health rights during the early phases of the pandemic, contributing to the anxiety and fear of the infectious disease pandemic (Dutta, 2021). One of our interviewees, Ariff, shared the arbitrary conditions of confinement conducted by dormitory operators when the outbreaks grew among the worker community,

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Nineteen people just shifting other room. Same 19 people, one room … one room, no separate, separate, two men one room, two men another room … no, like this. Same 19 people just put one room. Just room changing, finished. But room inside no, the charging point. Only three fans and that’s all, room inside service, that all finish. Room inside service is three fans and maybe five/eight, lights, finish.

Both the fear and the frustration of reporting these conditions to the relevant authorities contributed to their stressors. Ariff adds, No, no, no, before somebody tell me, he give feedback, if anyone know … then if my boss, dormitory operator, if anyone know if I give feedback, I complain other people, then something problem need to face. That’s why, everyone scared to feedback but you all coming here, other MOM (institutional actor), anyone coming, if one man he go and start to give feedback, then everyone coming.

Here, Ariff identified how, on the one hand, the dire circumstances meant reporting these conditions despite the consequences, while on the other, fearing the consequences of providing feedback if anonymity was breached. We see how the broader structures that govern precarious migrants reproduce the cycle of fear, threats, and intimidation that contribute to communicatively marginalizing migrant workers. This is coupled with the already limited communicative resources to speak up against poor conditions due to the vast power dynamics between migrants, agents, and employers (Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2020). On 6 November 2020, the Ministry of Manpower announced the establishment of a new task force to enhance mental healthcare support for migrant construction workers titled Project Dawn, consisting of representatives from the state and local NGOs (Ministry of Manpower, 2022). On the one hand, prolonged isolation measures contributed to the stressors faced by migrant workers. On the other hand, the establishment of mental healthcare services by the state for migrant workers, typically left out of welfare services, was much needed. The task force proposal targeted mental health interventions that centered on mental health services for migrants along with mental health information resources distributed to the migrant worker community. But these interventions were not responsive to the broader structural systems that created these vast inequalities in the first place. Safe rest days were one example. Safe rest days refer to rest days of migrant workers that were regulated

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for the purposes of health surveillance (Ministry of Manpower, 2022). When measures started to ease as COVID-19 infections began declining, migrant workers were subjected to highly regulated and controlled off days. Migrant workers were limited to visiting recreation centers (RC) “and excursions with managed itineraries to places like parks with our community partners” (Ministry of Manpower, 2022, para 3). Additionally, these mobility orders were not granted to the entire population of migrant workers, but regulated to limited numbers. These centers were designed to keep migrant workers within specific fringe areas of the city-state aimed at regulating but also segregating migrant workers (Bernhard & Ellemunt, 2022). Once again, these mental health interventions stop short of any real redressal of systemic treatment but perpetuated worker (im)mobility through techniques of hyper-surveillance and segregation. Furthermore, the first line of support for mental health aid for at-risk workers included “frontline officers, dormitory operators, employers, and NGOs with the necessary knowledge and skills to better detect at-risk workers early and refer them to appropriate care” (Ministry of Manpower, 2022, para. 4), instead of tapping on social support and networks from within migrant workers communities. Dormitory operators and employers are examples of the very structural actors described by migrant workers that contributed to the threatening power dynamics between workers and the system. Interviews with multiple workers suggested that operators and employers had little incentive to participate in better health outcomes for migrant workers. These are precisely the same actors identified by migrant workers as threatening, centering their stressful experiences. This type of migration industrial complex set up to keep workers contained, repressed, and silenced at the expense of profiteering benefits from erasing worker voices, keeping in the margins their mental health and health precarities from any redressal of exploitative conditions. The task force also identified mental health interventions that target the individual migrant worker through what was described as culturally adapted mental health promotion material. The materials prescribed preventative health resources to induce knowledge and behavioral change from a risk reduction perspective. The mental health support strategies, such as first aid officers, were reactionary solutions to the mental health crisis during the pandemic. Studies such as Rajaraman et al. (2020) broadly critiqued worker exclusion from universal healthcare financing in Singapore, keeping workers’ vulnerable to health exploitation. With employers

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acting as gatekeepers for their access to health care, cultural differences and hesitance to seek care for conditions beyond occupational hazards contribute to their health marginalization as well. Living Conditions A key part of the mental health narratives shared by the workers included the lack of immediate and coordinated responses to the crowded living environments, the illegal confinement by dormitory operators, and the poor food quality. The workers described the challenges they faced in seeking help and responses from various key stakeholders such as dormitory operators, site managers, employers, and health authorities. This was despite contacting and reaching out to various authorities. Across dormitories, dormitory operators applied different tactics. Some workers described being isolated completely for “four to five days” without any help and health-seeking resources. Some workers described being illegally confined when they showed symptoms. During confinement, they did not have access to mobile phones, some workers shared their phones being confiscated by operators, while others did not have phone charging facilities to keep their cellphones working. Participants also discussed having to share unsanitary facilities. While workers consistently highlighted the conditions of their dormitories as an obvious site of virus transmission, responses by stakeholders impeded their rights further. The food quality provided to workers confined in rooms to manage spread were described as “undercooked”, “sour”, “rotten type of food everyday”, and “vegetables, can’t eat”. Food quality was centered in all interviews with participants, profoundly affecting their mental health in quarantine. Family and Precarity Mental health for migrant communities is located at the intersection of “physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing; familial caregiving and responsibility; and material deprivation” (Kumar & Jamil, 2020). For migrant workers like Polash, this was very much the case, My room is in the corner [of the ship]. All day, it is dark…tell [me]..is it possible for someone to survive like this? The internet situation is bad…I cannot talk on WhatsApp. I am here and feeling depressed….I cannot even talk to my family so that they can [provide me] comfort.

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For many workers, constant communication with their family members was critical during these volatile periods of unknowns. However, there were several reasons why communication with their social support networks were discussed as inconsistent. First, many workers had run out of money to call their families and had to rely on initiatives by NGOs like Healthserve and TWC2 to top up their phones. Nearly $1 million was spent helping 90,000 migrant workers who would otherwise have had to rely on data cards or dormitory WiFi to contact their families, many of whom have neither smartphones nor good internet connectivity in remote villages to be contacted in that way (TWC2, 2020). Secondly, for men like Saiful and Polash—phone connections varied greatly across different quarantine locations. For certain rooms in the cruise ships where they were quarantined, internet connectivity was dismal (TWC2, 2020). While family had served as an important source of support for some migrant workers during social isolation, others had experienced strained ties due to the uncertainty of their jobs. Roni, a 29-year-old Bangladeshi worker, had shared with one of us during the interviews his challenges as the sole breadwinner of his family, I cannot sleep without talking to my family. They keep calling me…[my] phone…but I cannot pick up [because] what am I supposed to say to them? I cannot send them money this month…I don’t know if I can send them money next month also.

Not being able to support their family upended their roles as caretakers in the family, adding to mental distress. Roni had described having difficulty falling asleep and a greater sense of anxiety about the state of his future. For male migrant workers, one of the key tenants of their migrant identity is based on their economic success as a migrant. The ability to fulfill the roles of the sole breadwinner, filial son, and reliable husband (Ye, 2014). With low-wage jobs that offer little to no labor protections, losing their means of livelihood would have devastating consequences for migrant workers and their families, who often spend years paying off debts that they had accumulated in order to get a job as a migrant worker in Singapore (Platt et al., 2016). In narratives like Roni’s, we can start to see how the mental health experiences of migrant workers had been heavily impacted by their perilous, material conditions that had been at risk of only worsening during the pandemic.

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In studies by Martinez (2017) and Dutta (2008), family and interpersonal networks are key to addressing mental health and wellbeing, such as depression among migrant communities. For these communities, mental health treatment, such as counseling and medication, are biomedical and psychosocial strategies that are better coupled with the cultural dimensions of mental health and wellbeing. Family and kin considerably influence whether or not those seeking help for depression consider these biomedical options (Dutta, 2008). However, the task force did not consider the role of interpersonal and social support networks, such as migrant construction workers, as key agents as the first line of support for mental health. Besides the lack of cultural sensitivity that these biomedical solutions tend to miss out on, the premise of the biomedical model in itself distracts us from the structural dimensions of migrant health, where a health disparity lens considers structural and material interventions from a broader ecological perspective. These individualized behavior change models of health intervention circumvent addressing the material repercussions of structural inequalities that lead to these mental health disparities (Dutta, 2020c). In this way, health is perceived as purely biomedical and therefore “immune from social, cultural and political critique” (Dutta, 2008). These measures only included medical experts, completely leaving absent participation from migrant workers themselves. This partly perpetuates health disparities (Dutta, 2021), when migrants cannot advocate for themselves. As a result, migrants cannot get equal access to health resources and are also entirely erased from the communication platforms where policies are discussed and implemented (Dutta, 2008). Migrant workers are relegated to passivity in these public health programs, being molded for an acquiescent labor force in service of the wider extractive, neoliberal economy (Dutta, 2020a, b, c, 2021). Ultimately, cursory mental health solutions reinforce the position of these workers as fashioned for “temporariness” and, therefore, the unwillingness to invest in long-term, community-centered solutions for workers’ mental health. Low-wage migrant workers are transient and migrant and, by that definition, not applicable to any state benefits or investments (Yeoh et al., 2017). These responses are part of broader structures that suppress wages due to their ability to “subdue labor’s power and cut costs” (Kumar & Jamil, 2020). Public health responses continued to miss

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the structural and ecological nature of how these very conditions had engendered this crisis in the first place.

Agentic Community Building When COVID-19 cases had started ballooning in dormitories, dominant pandemic communication strategies had been inconsistent for many migrant workers. They were receiving varying accounts and instructions on what to do. Workers shared that information regarding quarantine procedures were not provided. Instructions from the Ministry of Health were initially only rolled out in English. Many migrant workers had difficulty understanding these instructions and organized among themselves to translate and communicate updates to each other via WhatsApp chats. The Facebook groups anonymized in this chapter with more than 20,000 members had become critical centers of community-led translations and support systems. Four workers one of us had spoken to during the height of the pandemic had shared receiving health information from these Facebook groups. The search for health information, social communication, political participation, and transnational parenting through technology are widely adopted by migrant workers in Singapore (Aricat, 2015; Lin et al., 2017; Thompson, 2009). Thus, socially constructing technological platforms to seek and activate resources became a means to organize health resources for themselves. One of the authors in this chapter studied how migrant construction workers documented health violations on TikTok during the pandemic, using the smartphone for digital record keeping and then building stories through produsage (Bruns, 2006) on the social media platform to show the health violations they faced (Kaur-Gill, 2022). Digital storytelling via short-form videos on TikTok documented the mental health precarities of extended quarantines for migrant workers, including the sharing and discussion of short-form videos on suicide attempts by several workers. The pandemic had only reinforced the vitality of these informal online networks that became critical sites of information gathering and community building for workers. Digital spaces had also emerged as sites through which migrant workers could circumvent communication barriers. Mainstream media outlets had framed stories of migrant workers in the pandemic in particular ways. These frames highlighted workers who were grateful for the quarantine accommodations and provision of medical supplies such as face masks, devoid of critique and responsibility

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relating of the structural conditions workers were subjected to during the pandemic (Kaur-Gill, 2020). However, without adequate mainstream documentation of such mental health crises, platforms like TikTok had become a channel for migrants to highlight their lived experiences during the pandemic lockdowns. In response, NGOs too started a 24-hour crisis helpline for migrant workers. By 2021, Healthserve, an NGO that focuses on the health and wellbeing of migrant construction workers, reported that 1900 migrant workers were served via their helpline (Healthserve, 2022). In addition, local NGOs reached out to migrant construction workers through the application’s short-form video to provide health information and help-seeking resources for mental health.

Ecological Precarities as Health Violence In summary, precarious migrant health and mental health vulnerabilities are shaped and defined by the economic-social-political nexus that produce migration infrastructures for exclusion. This includes how living and labor conditions for migrant workers are organized in the host country. These health vulnerabilities are constituted by nested oppressions embedded in a system of exploitation. Structural conditions, in turn, shape the realities of migrant health precarities. How migrants shape their mental health narratives is deeply connected to the extreme (im)mobility created by policies to curb infectious disease spread. The ecological nature of structural violence fundamentally shapes poor health outcomes through migration architectures organized for exploitation. Finally, dominant health communication scholarship addressing migrant health must account for how COVID-19 health policies are mired in racist and discriminatory practices of exclusion and segregation of precarious migrants. As of 5 June 2022, migrant construction workers in Singapore, fully vaccinated and free of COVID-19 infections, remain in extreme (im)mobility, with continued restrictions on their movement. All while the rest of the population travels for business and pleasure with travel restrictions lifted. One of the authors discusses her positionality as a researcher, writing this chapter while traveling for work, and presenting her papers on the health of migrant workers at international conferences. All while migrant workers remain confined to their dormitories and worksites, unable to advocate against the health vulnerabilities. The jarring realities of mobility and (im)mobility are well pronounced by the immense

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power dynamics in writing and presenting this chapter to the very material realities of workers unable to exercise their daily agency from artificial cartographies of othering in the name of health surveillance.

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Sharma, M., & Scarr, S. (2020, May 22). Anatomy of Singapore’s outbreak: How the virus spread through migrant worker dormitories. Reuters. Retrieved from https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/ SINGAPORECLUSTERS/bdwpkdgngvm/ Spivak, G. C. (1988). In Nelson, C., amp; Grossberg, L. (eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Macmillan. Tan, E. Y., Albarazi, D., Saw, Y. E., Buvanaswari, P., Doshi, K., & Liu, J. C. (2021). Confidence in government and rumors amongst migrant worker men involved in dormitory outbreaks of COVID-19: A cross-sectional survey. Journal of Migration and Health, 4, 100069. https://doi.org/10.1016/J. JMH.2021.100069 Thompson, E. C. (2009). Mobile phones, communities and social networks among foreign workers in Singapore. Global Networks, 9(3), 359–380. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1471-0374.2009.00258.X Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2). (2022, June 6). $1 million spent helping over 90,000 migrant workers remain connected with their families. TWC2. https://twc2.org.sg/2020/05/27/1-million-spent-hel ping-over-90000-migrant-workers-remain-connected-with-their-families/ TWC2. (2020). Protecting human rights during and after the COVID-19 joint questionnaire by special procedure mandate holders response to joint questionnaire of special procedures. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/sites/def ault/files/twc2_ohchr_sr_20200610d.pdf Ye, J. (2014). Migrant masculinities: Bangladeshi men in Singapore’s labour force. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(8), 1012–1028. https://doi.org/10. 1080/0966369X.2013.817966 Yea, S., & Chok, S. (2018). Unfreedom unbound: Developing a cumulative approach to understanding unfree labour in Singapore. Work, Employment and Society, 32(5), 925–941. Yee, K., Peh, H. P., Tan, Y. P., Teo, I., Tan, E. U. T., Paul, J., ... & Tan, H. K. (2021). Stressors and coping strategies of migrant workers diagnosed with COVID-19 in Singapore: A qualitative study. BMJ open, 11(3), e045949. Yeoh, B. S., Baey, G., Platt, M., & Wee, K. (2017). Bangladeshi construction workers and the politics of (im)mobility in Singapore. City, 21(5), 641–649. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2017.1374786 Yuen Hong Kong, S., Cheng, E. W., Or, N. H. K., Grépin, K. A., Fu, K.-W., Yung, K.-C., & Yue, R. P. H. (2021). A tale of two city-states: A comparison of the state-led vs civil society-led responses to COVID-19 in Singapore and Hong Kong. Global Public Health, 16, 1283–1303. https://doi.org/10. 1080/17441692.2021.1877769

CHAPTER 7

Indonesian Domestic Workers in Malaysia During the COVID-19 Pandemic Asha Rathina Pandi

Introduction Malaysia is deemed a popular attraction for migrant workers from countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (Zainuddin & Latief, 2021). According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are between 2.2 million to 4 million documented and undocumented migrant workers in Malaysia from countries such as Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Myanmar. One key trend in global migration patterns has been the growing proportion of women leaving their home countries for employment (ILO, 2018). Among intraASEAN migrant working-age population, women account for 48.7% (UN Women, 2017). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic workers in Malaysia largely arrived from Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. World Bank (2019) estimated about 200,000–230,000 migrants

A. R. Pandi (B) Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Highbury, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_7

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work as domestic workers. The movement of people had a substantial impact on the relationship and experiences of labor migration, especially between Malaysia and Indonesia. In recent years, an increasing number of media and non-governmental organizations have reported labor rights abuses against migrant workers, forced labor, and human trafficking (ILO, 2021). Women domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) due to isolation of workplaces, restriction on movement, and weak enforcement and mechanism to protect workers (ILO, 2018; WAO, 2021). This chapter attempts to highlight the lived experiences of the lowincome Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that the realities of performing domestic work can be contradictory to how dominant narratives on power, inequality, gender, and family ideologies play out in the Malaysian and Indonesian context. While Malaysia and Indonesia share similar cultural traits, the challenges, issues, and policies governing foreign domestic worker employment is far more complex and pronounced. The experiences of the foreign domestic worker provide a lens to interrogate the structures, and to understand the “invisibility” of women’s work. Data for this chapter was collected from n = 12 Indonesian domestic workers and key informants located in the Klang Valley region in Malaysia. The semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in October 2021, with women participants using online modes, such as telephone interviews and zoom video calls, due to the lockdowns and restricted movements imposed by the state from March 2020 up to November 2021.

Women, Patriarchal System and Gender-Based Inequality Since the early colonial period, Indonesian women have migrated from urban to rural areas within Indonesia in large numbers. Large-scale migration to destination countries began in the 1970s, and by early 1990s, with the expansion of the middle class in Malaysia, and growth and development in feminized sectors such as healthcare, entertainment, manufacturing, and textiles resulted in growing demand for foreign domestic workers (Milner, 1998; UN Women, 2017). As gender relations and division of labor remained a cultural norm, domestic chores and caring for children were traditionally seen as women’s job (Robinson, 2000) led to the feminizing of migrant domestic work as women’s work. The

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Indonesia (Sen, 1998) and Malaysia states (Ong, 1995; Stivens, 2006) have long deployed contradictory and class-specific gender and family ideologies (Sen, 1998). The state’s dominant middle-class gender ideal was, for low-income transnational migrant workers, translated as a migratory woman who was permitted temporarily to leave her family behind for the sake of the ‘national family’s broader economic development agenda. The dominant patriarchal system established gendered norms and expectations within society where men have relied on unpaid and undervalued domestic labor to provide for the clean and comfortable home from which their own paid careers can flourish (Manne, 2020). Even with the progress made in terms of achieving “equality” between men and women and the life expectancy of women surpassing that of men (Paradies, 2016), systemic biases and injustices toward women continue to impact and have far-reaching consequences. The power and control of men via relationship with institutional structures continues to be a driving force that maintains patriarchal systems, in turn, shaping who has influence in setting priorities and value systems (Hunnicutt, 2009; Matheson et al., 2021). The legal system, in other words, is not a neutral system, but is a male-dominated system with rules and practices governing women and their bodies. The lens of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) adds valuable nuances of structural and individual power imbalances that occur through the “intersecting oppressions” of class, race, disability, sexuality, gender and religion (Collins, 2000; Lee & Piper, 2013). Women from low-to-middleincome countries and racial and ethnic minorities experience inequality far worse than their counterparts as they make up the largest proportion of unpaid and undervalued workers (Bastia & Piper, 2019; GutiérrezRodriguez, 2010; Matheson et al, 2021). This is further compounded by racism that affect the experiences and outcomes for women, with lowincome countries carrying the burden of health inequalities (Paradies, 2016). The greater the extent of marginalization, the greater the negative impacts of health. Due to this, the compounding of disadvantages using an intersectional lens is found to be useful to explore the outcomes on domestic workers in low-to-middle-income countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. In the context of Malaysia, COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated gender inequalities due to collapse in economic activity in areas such as manufacturing and services that reported higher employment of

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women (ILO, 2020; Nungsari et al., 2021). The pandemic has reinforced inequalities surrounding domestic work especially when schools were closed, parents forced to stay home and work, and increased unpaid care work usually borne by the domestic worker as shared by participants in this study. The culture-centered voices of injustices, inequality, and lived experiences among domestic workers are shared in the following sections.

Foreign Domestic Workers The culture-centered approach (CCA) disrupts expert-based solutions, ultimately giving voice to the cultural participants who are able to articulate their problem and needs according to their cultural position (Dutta, 2008, 2017). Low-income migrant women’s narratives thus provide a perspective from the “margins” through which to review the status and treatment of women, the state, religion, production, and consumption (Brenner, 1998; Silvey, 2006). A study by Henderson (2021) showed how the Philippines and Sri Lankan governments enacted and enforced policies that explicitly excluded and disadvantaged “low-skilled’ domestic workers, but at the same time acknowledging “low-skilled” men or “skilled women.” The findings show how discriminatory the policies are based on gender, age, and socio-economic status. Dutta and colleagues (2018) highlighted the importance of health as the interplay of structure and agency, with lived experiences of the female domestic workers (FDW) in Singapore serving as locus through which participants understand their situation. Financial and food insecurity emerged as the main reasons inhibiting access to physical and mental health as a result. Kaur-Gill and Dutta’s (2020) work confirms the cycle of stress and, worry and fear through narratives of domestic workers in Singapore. Their research foregrounds the constitution of mental health amid the structures of domestic work. Dutta and Kaur-Gill (2018) unpack the dialectical relationship between mobility and materiality among migrant domestic and constructions workers in Singapore. Resistance is theorized as (im)mobility in which precarious migrant work is built upon without access to labor rights and basic human dignity. The authors discuss how migrant workers denied their rights, “technologies of mobility” that the state systematically uses to disenfranchise migrant workers.

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Another study by Yeoh and Soco (2014) acknowledges that migrant women working abroad as live-in-domestic workers are located within an interlocking web of gender, race, and class relations that entail the performance of gendered (and racialized) labor in both the home and host countries. Their mobility, as well as possible learning, is limited by their class position at home and their depressed status as domestic workers abroad. Despite these structural constraints, migrant workers experience and do things that they otherwise would not have experienced and done had they remained in their home countries, which is also shared by the domestic workers in this study.

Covid-19 Challenges and Struggles Experienced by Domestic Workers Globally, the pandemic has disproportionately affected the vulnerable population due to lockdown measures and lack of access to resources (Nungsari et. al., 2021). Due to long indefinite lockdowns imposed by the government, and border shutdowns, businesses were shifting from formal to informal sectors that had a substantial impact on women workers according to Thambiah (cited in Aiman, 2021). The increase of women workers in informal sector also meant exploitation, increase in women’s issues and poor mental health as shared by Elda, 27 years old, who was unable to leave Malaysia. She said: I used to earn RM65 a day, working for 8 hours in 2 houses. I get paid only if I work. But during the lockdown, I was unable to work. My boss did not pay me and I suffered from having no salary. I lived on eating rice, egg and black soy sauce. I could not borrow money from anyone as we were all in the same situation. I could not send home money; and I could not ask my family for money. I am a sole breadwinner; my husband died. I have to support my family; my parents and two kids who are in school. They do not know my situation here [in Malaysia]. Only my son knows that I do not have a proper salary due to the pandemic. I used up my savings here [Malaysia] and send them a little. I do not want them to think I am suffering here…I have migraine. I take Panadol if it gets worst. But sometimes I try not to think about my situation and leave it to Allah [God]. If I get sick, there is no one to take care of me. So I take care of myself.

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The inequality and suffering before the pandemic were exacerbated further during the pandemic. Most workers who got a regular a day off in a week could not leave home and felt trapped in the homes of their employers. As Heni, 43 years old, shared: I get a day off in the weekend where I go out and spend it with friends. But now [during pandemic], I cannot go out and feel stuck at home. I feel I have nothing to do; I have to work instead. My employer also expects me to work. I do not get paid and I am stressed out…Both my employers were home with the kids, so I have no choice but work.

During the pandemic, both men and women have seen the hours devoted to unpaid care work increased as a consequence of school closure, work from home arrangements that forces the domestic worker to take on the extra load. The extra work is not compensated as shared by Heni and this resulted in increased stress and anxiety. Many of the workers fall into the low-income group, and due to lack of status that compounds access to healthcare and social protection, and fear of arrest and detention (Fishbein & Hkawng, 2021) and public attitudes toward migrants (ILO, 2019), adds another layer of precarity to living and working in Malaysia. Many of the workers who fall through the cracks are left to fend for themselves, as shared by Elda, 47: I am undocumented…I don’t have insurance. My employer did not register for vaccine. My old boss[first job at a factory] was nice enough to register my name for vaccination. I was hoping to join my old company again, that is why. Otherwise, I will not get vaccinated. She wants me to work in peoples’ house but I must be protected too. Thank God my old boss helped me.

At least 3 out of 12 participants had claimed to be separated from their spouses during their prolonged stay in Malaysia. Each work permit allows for 2 years of service after which the worker is allowed to leave to Indonesia for a short break or end of service. The pandemic situation has not only intensified the situation but it has kept families separated indefinitely due to restricted movement imposed by the state. As Anna, 45 years old, shared: I have been working in Malaysia for the last 8 years. Before the pandemic, I used to go back to visit my family after the end of my 2-year contract.

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I stayed there [Indonesia] between 2-3 weeks. But since 2019 I have not gone back. My spouse found another woman. I have not told my family because I do not want them to worry about me. I allow him to care for our children. It is not easy but I am depressed. I shared my story with my friends but I cannot tell my family members. This has affected my mental health but I have to be strong because my family is depended on my income. I need to stay here [Malaysia] and work more now that my spouse is no longer with me.

The challenges of separation take on a different layer of complexity for women working as domestic worker in Malaysia during the pandemic that began in early 2020. The natural state of a family is a nuclear family, which is dominant in the Southeast Asia region (Silvey, 2006). And separation from spouse and children is considered unnatural. These practices, however, do not conform to the historical family practices in Indonesia as temporary spatial separation of spouses for work purposes has been widespread among low-income families since the colonial era (Saptari & Elmhirst, 2004). The idea of Asian values and family values, especially within Islamic ideals, have somewhat linked poorly to the imagined supra-national Asia (see Milner, 1998). The Malaysian state ignores the sentiments of the low-income migrant domestic worker—servicing the middle class and wealthy Malaysian families—in relation to separation from family.

Dysfunctional Migration Governance Since the 1990s, a growing number of civil society organizations (CSO) and other grassroot organizations have focused on women’s issues in Indonesia (Robinson & Bessell, 2002) and migrants’ rights in Malaysia (Gurowitz, 2000). The migrant domestic workers issues fall between the two states as both countries operate on the basis of memorandums. These memorandums have little impact on the protection of workers. In 2006, Malaysia revised a memorandum regulating the recruitment and treatment of an estimated 300,000 domestic workers (AP Migration-ILO, 2011). The 2006 memorandum allowed employers to retain worker’s passports, lacked clear standards on a minimum wage or rest period (paid day-off/week) and failed to establish clear penalties and enforcement mechanisms (HRW, 2007). The consequences resulted in a large number

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of cases of abuse and mistreatment, especially in 20091 that led to the suspension of migrant workers to Malaysia. A new amended Protocol was signed in 2011, placing greater emphasis on protection of worker rights. The memorandum allowed for workers to take a paid day off once a week and they were now permitted to hold their passports. The memorandum has since expired and new memorandums have been planned between Indonesia and Malaysia. In reality, however, the protection of workers has been minimal and to this day, policies to protect domestic workers in Malaysia have seen little impact due to weak enforcement by authorities in both countries. Domestic workers are largely recruited through agencies in the respective countries, working closely with their private employment agencies in Malaysia. The agencies are powerful entities, responsible for recruitment, training, and deployment. However, regulation and monitoring of the agencies that supply labor and supervise training and eventual placement in Malaysia are inadequate. The pandemic affected many workers in the manufacturing and services industry worldwide (see above). As a result, affecting the socio-economic situation of the informal workers whose income depended on high-income countries are forced to halt their production. As Elda, age 46, says, I was employed to work in a factory…after 10 years the company stopped all of us suddenly… the agent could not help us. I was not able to leave to Indonesia because my family depended on my income. I could not even go back to face my family…I was forced to take up employment as a cleaner, introduced to me by my hostel-mates. I have been working as a cleaner, without permit, for the last 3 years. This created more problem as I have become undocumented…illegal.

Elda’s narrative is shared by many workers as agencies hold extensive power in the decision-making process, and there is no mechanism whereby agencies could be held accountable, not only for the abuse or exploitation of migrant workers, but even for their basic welfare (Kaur, 2007). This sentiment is shared by Katrina, “Many domestic workers in Malaysia are treated like modern-day slaves. They are vulnerable to

1 Domestic worker, Siami, 27, was scalded with hot water and physically assaulted by her employer for making a porridge “too thin”. Accessed at, https://www.malaysiakini. com/letters/100630.

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physical and sexual abuse, deprived of proper working and living conditions and rest, and are sometimes not paid at all for months on end” (Amnesty International Malaysia, 2020). Tini, 51 years old, a survivor who was rescued by an NGO upon completion of contract shared her sexual harassment and abuse story: I have been working in Malaysia from 2018, which is my third time to Malaysia. I am a Muslim but was sent by the agent to work in a Chinese house which had three dogs. I was employed by an agency in Indonesia and had a pay cut for there months. I was promised RM1200 a month but I never saw any money. I contacted my agent to send remittance home. I worked from 5am to 11pm everyday without day-off. The house had 14 rooms and I had to take care of 13 family members…I had no rest and when I ironed clothes, I was monitored by the older adult. After a month, I was chased by the older male adult, 70 years-old, who asked for sexual favors in return for money or assistance. Once he offered me RM1000 to spend just a few minutes with him. He watched pornography every morning and he disturbed me all at the time when there was no one at home. I was not allowed to use my phone… and I could not get help from anyone…I was too afraid to tell my boss because there is no evidence and they will not listen to me. I can only eat whatever given to me…I ate pork because I had no choice. I was given expired food… I was scolded all the time, I persisted so I can leave after my contract ends.

Upon completion of the 2-year contract, Tini forced her employer and agent to send her back. But the employer told her to pay for her own expenses to go back to Indonesia. Her agent sent her to another home on the pretext of helping as they wait out the COVID-19 restrictions and border shutdown. Tini worked in her new employer’s house for a month so that she could save the money to travel to Indonesia. After a month, her agent could not be contacted and her two-year salary was not paid. She also discovered that she was diabetic when her new employer insisted on doing a health check-up. This account points to the weak regulation and mechanism that systematically exploits the foreign domestic workers in Malaysia. The regulation of private job placement agencies is regulated by the Private Employment Agencies (Amendment) Act 2017. The Act requires a fee for recruitment services to be charged to prospective employees by private job placement agencies and “agency fee” can vary from

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3 to 5 months of domestic worker’s salary withheld due to lack of enforcements. As shared by Rheiny, 27 years old, When I first came to Malaysia, I was asked to sign a contract…I did not know what was in the contract. My employer withheld 3 months’ salary. My employer said my salary was to reimburse the agent for my expenses from Indonesia to Malaysia. I could not send home money. But after 3 months, I was also not paid any salary…my previous employer did not pay me. I felt miserable because I did not have any money in my hand. My employer told me to use the personal things she bought slowly as it was limited. I was afraid of asking my employer to buy things for me. I was cheated by my agent and employer. I am currently working in my fifth house.

Another domestic worker, Rini, 33 years old, shared, I looked up a Facebook advertisement and got attracted to a job of working in a massage parlor. The advertisement promised me RM2000 per month. But when I came to Malaysia, the agent said I had to wait to be employed in a massage parlor. So, I worked for a house employer for 5 months, then I was removed from that home and asked to clean office building. To this date, I have never been employed in a massage parlor as promised in Indonesia. The sad part is the advertisement is still online…and agents are dishonest…

The narratives above point to the rapid rise in the exploitation and abuse of Indonesian domestic workers at home and abroad by recruitment and host agents. Despite memorandums between Malaysia and Indonesia, the abuse of domestic workers continues to this day. The Indonesian model for regulation for domestic work is inadequate when measured against the framework of domestic work regulation set out by the International Labor Organization (ILO, 2006; Thambiah, 2021). As a result of the increase in abuse and mistreatment by agencies and employers led Indonesia withdrawing ‘supply’ of domestic workers. Malaysia responded by employing domestic workers from other countries such as Cambodia, Nepal, and India.

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Recognition of Women and Identity of ‘Domestic Work’ Domestic work is defined as “work performed in or for a household or households” (ILO, 2006). The work, however, has been regarded as informal sector work, and its regulations greatly affected by cultural attitudes, and excluded from labor laws that governs salaries and protection. Nasrikah, a key informant, said, The main issue with domestic worker is that they are referred to as pembantu [helper] rather than pekerja [worker]. This is problematic because ‘care and compassionate work’ translate to non-monetary gains which receives no attention by the authorities.

The Indonesia’s Law No. 13 of 2003 on Manpower acknowledges a worker as “any person worker who works for a wage or other forms of renumeration”, but, despite the fact that domestic workers (pembantu) work for renumeration, the workers are excluded from this definition. This exclusion means domestic workers cannot claim the protection under the Law. The Law ascribes the rights of an employment relationship under its provisions to an entrepreneur and imposes an obligation on employers (job giver) to provide “protection for [their workers welfare, safety and health, both mental and physical]” (Article 35, cited in ILO, 2006). In other words, the Law excludes domestic workers from essential rights, such as formal employment relationship accompanied by a contract of employment the regulation of minimum wages, hours of work, leave and rest days, renumeration and termination terms, and fair procedures and dispute resolution. Similarly, the Malaysia’s Employment Act 1955 currently classifies domestic workers as “domestic servants”, exempting them from basic protections granted under law for other workers. Domestic workers are not allotted proper leave or sick days, or fixed working hours, making them prone to exploitation and overwork. Both nations have routed around the laws and regulations denying domestic workers their protection rights and decent living in Malaysia. According to Thambiah (2021), the lack of protection standards on domestic work relates to one of “hate-love” relationship. Issues that could be resolved are prolonged due to the “emotional landscape” (emoscape) and “emotional archive” of both nations. The heightened anti-Malaysia sentiment took a turn

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when Nirmala Bonat was abused by her Malaysian employer in 2008. The issue became a media sensation when pictures of her severely injured body made its rounds in the media. Malaysia was heavily criticized; skeptics expected the case against the employers to be dropped. However, the Session Court found the employer guilty, and sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment. There were similar abuses cases reported over time which continued to strain bilateral relations between both countries.2 The supply of domestic workers was halted due to this incident but resumed again in 2011 with promise of better protection and working conditions by the Malaysian authorities. Other similar protests were observed in 2012 over insensitive and demeaning posters and advertisements, such as “Indonesia maids on sale” (Jakarta Post, 2018) and “Fire your Indonesian maid now” on the Internet (Jakarta Globe, 2015). This fragile relations between Malaysia and Indonesia goes to shows how “emotions” play out in the political rhetoric of labor migration policies.

Domestic Work as Cultural Threat? According to Thambiah (2021), anxieties stemming from modernity due to migration is seen as a threat to culture by the state. It creates the impression of greater female freedom and ensued empowerment which is in opposition to the narratives of control and suppression of Muslim femininity, found in both countries. As articulated by Thambiah, “When women migrate transnationally, they embody the threat of cultural transgression in part because of their absence from family and nation. If they send remittances to their families, or if they invest their incomes in their home villages, their overseas mobility is less overtly challenging to the family systems and national economy they have left behind. Thambiah’s

2 Adelina Lisao, from Indonesia, died in 2018 due to multiple organ failure suffered from employer abuse in Penang. Authorities found severe injuries on her swollen face and head, with pus leaking for the infected burn marks on her arms and leg. In October 2009, Mautik Hani, a 36 year old from Indonesia, was found bound at her arms and legs, locked in a bathroom with bruises all over her body, and a wound on her leg that was exposed to the bone. Another Indonesian domestic worker Isti Komariyah, 26 year old, was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital and weighed only 26 kg. See Amnesty International, 2010, “Trapped: The Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Malaysia”. Accessed at, https:// www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa28/002/2010/en/.

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account of the need to restrict movement with vigilance and control is shared by Rheiny (33), …I left home [to work in Malaysia] because I was forced to marry at age 17. Getting married means, I will be controlled by my husband. The villagers will have a good impression of me because I will fulfill the duties of being a responsible wife and mother to the children I will bore. I saw the life of my mother [who works as a domestic worker in Malaysia) who got married early. Her husband left her; and she remarried. I don’t want to live to the expectations of my relatives and village members. I am glad my mother supports me, which is why I am here because I want to earn and live life on my own terms. This is my fifth employer; it was hard…but I am surviving.

The commodities and investment decisions the domestic workers make out of their incomes play an important role in reinforcing or transforming their roles within their families and the nations. As Rheiny, 33, shared: My goal is to open a shop in my village. I will not go back [to Indonesia] until I have saved enough to achieve my ambition. When I do that, I will be seen and acknowledged by other village members and relatives. Girls my age should not be married. I want them to see me as their role model. I want them to study and achieve their dreams. The society see us as slaves to our husbands. But my mother has taught me to think otherwise.

The transnational migrant woman who leaves her family and nation to work abroad continues to be debated to this day as the changing perception on women’s ideal roles are being challenged (Sen, 1998). While acknowledging the importance of women’s entry into domestic work abroad, many NGOs have argued that the migration process should be more strictly regulated and that workers should be protected once they are employed aboard.

Conclusion The similarities between the peoples of Malaysia and Indonesia and their inter-connectedness are much to be celebrated. As Elda, 47, shares, “In fact, I do not feel discriminated or stigmatized due to the same culture. I look like a Malaysian Muslim woman. I perform my payers and no one can say I look like an Indonesian.” Elda’s demonstrates hope but at the

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same time there exists contradictions beneath the vague legislative framework. Women represented their migration as a solution to earn an income to support their families, especially their children’s education. In tandem with the narratives of economic necessity, some women also wanted to escape marriages, husbands who were not providing. The widespread emotion expressed in relation to a mother’s separation form her children is serious. Separation from children is painful but necessary, as a sacrifice for the sake of the family’s income needs. Women showed interest in the consumer possibilities provided by a successful overseas job. The narratives of the Indonesian domestic workers highlight the failed policies and mechanism that reinforces intersecting inequalities in the lives of the foreign domestic workers. The pandemic has added another layer of complexities for workers who are trapped in the host country due to the border shutdown. The Malaysian Government’s dysfunctional migration structures the complexity of cultural understanding and the disconnected ideologies of empowerment and suppression systematically discriminate against domestic workers on the grounds of their gender and socio-economic status and push them into irregular and precarious migration channels. As a result, domestic workers are more vulnerable to rights violation and exploitation during recruitment, and subsequently in the host country. The multiple memorandums, the inaction of both sending states to enforce laws to regulate effectively the activities of recruitment agencies work creates conditions for systematic exploitation and abuse of domestic workers in Malaysia. Interviews with domestic worker and key informant revealed that there is often a disconnect between the legal framework governing both countries on migration labor and international standards (ILO), and the actual vulnerabilities and lived experiences of foreign domestic workers. Intersectionality provides a lens to interrogate the structures, including how such a transformation “involves an overhaul of the structures and relationships of power, in terms of unsettling institutional norms of hierarchical organization which disadvantage certain people, especially those who belong to multiple disadvantaged group” (Atrey, 2018, p. 870). I suggest that further actions be taken by the Malaysian government, in relation to Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) committee’s approach to transformative equality. The Government of Malaysia ratified CEDAW in 1995 committing to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of all women and girls.

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In June 2021, social security was extended to domestic workers under the SOCSO3 scheme which is available to any employee in Malaysia. In addition, the first Women’s Tribunal was formed in November 2021, to lay the groundwork for the realization, and the rights of the women, including foreign domestic workers, to be restored (Women’s Tribunal Malaysia, 2021) through pragmatic actualization.

References Aiman A. (2021, May 31). Covid-19 affects women workers the most, say academic. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2021/05/ 31/covid-19-affects-women-workers-the-most-says-academic/ Amnesty International Malaysia. (2020, September 25). End the Culture of violence and discrimination against domestic workers. https://www.amnesty. my/2020/09/25/end-the-culture-of-violence-and-discrimination-againstdomestic-workers/ AP Migration-ILO. (2011). MoU between Government of the Republic of Indonesia and the Government of Malaysia on the Recruitment and Placement of Indonesian Domestic Workers. https://apmigration.ilo.org/resources/moubetween-government-of-the-republic-of-indonesia-and-the-government-ofmalaysia-on-the-recruitment-and-placement-of-indonesian-domestic-workers Atrey, S. (2018). Women’s human rights: From progress to transformation. An Intersectional Response to Martha Nussbaum, Human Rights Quarterly, 40, 859–904. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2018.0048 Bastia, T., & Piper, N. (2019). Women migrants in the global economy: A global overview (and regional perspectives). Gender & Development, 27 , 15–30. Brenner, S. (1998). The domestication of desire: Women, wealth and modernity in Java. Princeton University Press. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics (Vol. 1), Article 8. University of Chicago Legal Forum. Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). Routledge. Dutta, M. J. (2008). Communicating health: A culture-centered approach. Polity Press. Dutta, M. J., Comer, S., Teo, D., Luk, P. L. P., Lee, M., Zapata, D., Krishnaswamy, A., & Kaur, S. (2018). Health meanings among foreign domestic

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workers in Singapore: A culture-centered approach. Health Communication, 33(5), 643–652. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2017.1292576 Dutta, M. J. (2017). Migration and health in the construction industry: Culturally centering voices of Bangladeshi workers in Singapore. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14, 132. https://doi. org/10.3390/ijerph14020132 Dutta, M. J., & Kaur-Gill, S. (2018). Precarities of migrant work in Singapore: Migration, (im)mobility, and neoliberal governmentality. International Journal of Communication, 12, 4066–4084. Elmhirst, R., & Saptari, R. (2004). Labour in Southeast Asia: Local processes in a globalised world. RoutledgeCurzon. Fishbein E., & Hwang. J. T. (2021, 6 August). Fear of arrest among undocumented risks Malaysia vaccine push. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/ 8/6/mixed-messaging-in-malaysia-leaves-migrants Gurowitz, A. (2000). Migrant rights and activism in Malaysia: Opportunities and constraints. The Journal of Asian Studies, 59(4), 863–888. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2659215 Gutiérrez-Rodríguez. (2010). Migration, domestic work and affect: A decolonial approach on value and the feminization of labor (Vol. 26). Routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9780203848661 Human Rights Watch. (2007). Malaysia, events of 2006. https://www.hrw.org/ world-report/2007/country-chapters/malaysia#f0305a Henderson, S. (2021). The legal protection of women migrant domestic workers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka: An intersectional rights-based approach. International Journal of Care and Caring, 5(1), 65–83. https://doi.org/10. 1332/239788220x15976836167721 Hunnicutt, G. (2009). Varieties of patriarchy and violence against women: Resurrecting “patriarchy” as a theoretical tool. Violence against Women, 15(5), 553–573. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801208331246 ILO. (2006, June). The regulation of domestic workers in Indonesia. https:// www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/ genericdocument/wcms_614381.pdf ILO. (2018). Global estimates on international migrant workers. https://www. ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/docume nts/publication/wcms_652001.pdf ILO. (2019). Public attitudes towards migrant workers in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/--ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_732443.pdf ILO. (2020, 11 May). The COVID-19 response: Getting gender equality right for a better future for women at work. https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/corona virus/WCMS_744685/lang--en/index.htm

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ILO. (2021, January–June). Triangle in ASEAN quarterly briefing note. https:// www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/ genericdocument/wcms_614381.pdf Jakarta Globe. (2015, 17 February). Malaysian Ambassador: RoboVac Ad was uncivilized. 2015. https://jakartaglobe.id/opinion/malaysian-ambass ador-robovac-ad-uncivilized/ Kaur, A. (2007). International labour migration in Southeast Asia: governance of migration and women domestic workers. Intersections: Gender, history and culture in the Asian context, 15. Kaur-Gill, S., & Dutta, M. J. (2020). Structure as depressant: Theorizing narratives of mental health among migrant domestic workers. Health Communication, 36(12), 1–12. Lee, S. and Piper, N. (2013). Understanding multiple discrimination against labour migrants in Asia: an intersectional analysis. International Policy Analysis Series, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 6. http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/10073. pdf Matheson, A., Kidd, J., & Came, H. (2021). Women, patriarchy and health inequalities: The urgent need to reorient our systems. International Journal Environmental Research Public Health, 18, 4472. Manne, K. (2020). Entitled: How male privilege hurts women. Crown. Milner, A. (1998). The invention of politics in colonial Malaya. Cambridge University Press. Noor, F. (2016). The discursive construction of Southeast Asia in 19th-century colonial-capitalist discourse. Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10. 1515/9789048527489 Nungsari, M., Yin, C. H., Fong, N., & Pillai, V. (2021). Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on vulnerable populations in Malaysia through an ethical lens: A study of NGOs and organizations involved in aid distribution. Welcome Open Research, 6, 263. https://doi.org/10.12688/wel lcomeopenres.17239.2 Ong, A. (1995). State versus Islam: Malay families, women’s bodies and the body politic in Malaysia. In A. Ong. and M. Peletz (Eds.), Bewitching women, Pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia (pp. 159–194). University of California Press. Paradies, Y. (2016). Colonisation, racism and indigenous health. Journal of Population Research, 33, 83–96. Robinson, K. (2000). Gender, Islam, and Nationality: Indonesian domestic servants in the Middle East. In K. Adams & S. Dickey (Eds.), Home and hegemony: Domestic service and identity politics in South and Southeast Asia (pp. 249–282). University of Michigan Press. Robinson, K., & Bessell, S. (Eds.). (2002). Women in Indonesia: Gender, Equity and Development. ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

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Saptari, R., & Elmhirst, R. (2004). Studying labour in Southeast Asia. In R. Elmhirst & R. Saptari (Eds.), Labour in Southeast Asia: Local processes in a globalized world (pp. 15–46). RoutledgeCurzon. Sen, K. (1998). Indonesian Women at work: Reframing the subject. In K. Sen & M. Stivens (Eds.), Gender and power in Affluent Asia (pp. 35–62). Routledge. Silvey, R. (2006). Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. Global Networks, 6(1), 23–40. Stivens, M. (2006). ’Family values’ and Islamic revival: Gender, rights and state moral projects in Malaysia. Women’s Studies International Forum, 29(4), 354– 367. Thambiah. S. (2021, 6 October). The colliding emo-scapes of Indonesia and Malaysia affecting migration governance: Emotional connectivity and the counter narratives of migrant domestic workers [Video recording] https:// www.facebook.com/LSESEAC/videos/404640354372011/ The Jakarta Post. (2018, September 19). Anger at Singapore ads offering Indonesian maids for sale. https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/09/19/ anger-at-singapore-ads-offering-indonesian-maids-for-sale.html. UN Women. (2017). Migrant workers in the Asia Pacific. https://asiapacific.unw omen.org/en/focus-areas/women-poverty-economics/migrant-workers Women’s Aid Organization (WAO). (2021, 11 January). Refugee women in Malaysia are at increased risk of gender-based violence, while having limited access to protection and justice. https://wao.org.my/refugee-women-in-mal aysia-are-at-increased-risk-of-gender-based-violence-while-having-limited-acc ess-to-protection-and-justice/ Women’s Tribunal Malaysia. (2021). https://www.womenstribunalmalaysia. com/en World Bank. (2019, March 28). Malaysia: Estimating the number of foreign https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/953091562223 workers. 517841/pdf/Malaysia-Estimating-the-Number-of-Foreign-Workers-A-Rep ort-from-the-Labor-Market-Data-for-Monetary-Policy-Task.pdf Yeoh, B. S. A., & Soco, M. A. (2014). The cosmopolis and the migrant domestic worker. Cultural Geographies, 21(2), 171–187. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1474474014520899 Zainuddin, M., & Latief, H. (2021). Preserving ancestral land and ethnic identification: Narratives of Kerinci migrants in Malaysia. TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 9(2), 203–217. https://doi.org/10. 1017/trn.2020.15

CHAPTER 8

Conducting Digital Ethnography with Precarious Migrant Workers in a Pandemic Yeo Qin-Liang, Satveer Kaur-Gill, and Samira Hassan

Introduction If there is one thing that characterizes the ethnographic approach, it is that social intimacy rather than social distancing is crucial to the process. Although we were to minimize physical gatherings, meet in small groups, and remain at a distance from each other during the COVID-19 pandemic, what were the possibilities of conducting ethnography with populations facing precarious contexts during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic?

Y. Qin-Liang (B) · S. Hassan Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] S. Kaur-Gill The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_8

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This chapter presents our reflections on the use of digital ethnography as a method for culture-centered research in a social crisis, when prohibitions on physical interactions limited fieldwork. A critical aspect of culture-centered research entails employing methods that facilitate listening and dialogue with communities. Listening in the culturecentered approach (CCA) is an intentional methodological strategy for (un)doing societal and social exploitation of speaking on behalf of communities. To listen, methodological decisions that center participant voice is a critical aspect of culture-centered projects. Dutta (2008) roots communication inequality as a source of exploitation, where communities are denied the capacity to communicate through strategies of co-optation. Co-optation can occur through top-down communication, where experts and expertise claim and determine health solutions. Co-optation can also occur through limiting communicative channels for communities to articulate their health claims (Dutta & Pal, 2011). Finally, top-down policies and programs can sometimes further exacerbate disparities through stereotyping or marking groups in othering ways (Dutta & Pal, 2011). Thus, listening in the CCA refers to a methodological framework that recognizes “violence embodied in the taken-for-granted assumptions of communication in the mainstream, interrogating the tools, structures, and processes of communication that constitute the mainstream and that carry out epistemic violence on the margins through systematic erasure” (Dutta, 2014, p. 69). To employ methods of listening during the pandemic entailed identifying strategies that kept to the tenets of the framework. We, therefore, began by adopting the definition of digital ethnography as a contemporary form of ethnography that traverses online and offline field sites to develop holistic understandings of how everyday life is being produced, represented, and lived in the digital age (Horst & Miller, 2020; Hjorth et al., 2017; Pink et al., 2016). This definition acknowledges that there are many ethnographic field sites that exist in and across online and offline spaces, including those of precarious migrant workers. Therefore, understanding their lived realities often requires ethnographers to traverse online and offline spaces. Critical to our reading of digital ethnography is recognizing its departure from a focus on studying people in digital spaces. We are instead motivated by the works of Pink et al. (2015) and Horst and Miller (2020), where the practices of digital ethnography are understood as part of the world we inhabit and how it manifests in our realities. Leurs and Smets (2018) remind us to consider “where is the

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human in digital migration?” (p.1), calling our attention to how migrants in digital spaces operate within structural forces that perpetuate jarring power dynamics. Thus, in our approach, conducting digital ethnography to study precarious migrant populations includes the structural conditions in which migrant lives function and remain part of the analysis in guiding the process. Disassociating the technological from the material realities of migrants and their lived experiences keeps incomplete their interactions in digital spaces (Leurs & Prabhakar, 2018). This approach provided key guides for us when using ethnography to engage with precarious migrant workers digitally. Specifically, we explored how they contended with a host of health vulnerabilities that intensified their risk of exposure to COVID-19. These vulnerabilities included poor living and difficult working conditions, lack of access to adequate healthcare, and social marginalization (Dutta, 2020, 2021). In this context, we began physical fieldwork in February 2020. However, it became temporarily impractical after COVID-19 swept across Singapore in April 2020. Migrant workers were confined to their places of residence or extended quarantines (Kaur-Gill et al., 2021). At the same time, we observed social media content produced by migrant workers relating to the COVID-19 pandemic (see, e.g., Kaur-Gill, 2022) and the richness of their online worlds amid lockdowns. Therefore, we expanded our ethnographic field sites. We write this resource on managing and integrating our fieldwork in online and offline spaces when using the CCA. This chapter details the fundamentals of designing, implementing, and analyzing ethnographic research that traverses online and offline field sites. We begin by discussing the utility of digital ethnography to understand the health vulnerabilities faced by precarious migrant workers in Singapore, adopting a variety of digital strategies to connect with communities that were difficult to reach. We proceed to discuss field sites when using digital ethnography. The following sections then review the practical steps of conducting digital ethnography during a pandemic. These steps included designing fieldwork, the methods of fieldwork, and analyzing our fieldwork data. Finally, we conclude by highlighting the key ethical concerns that digital ethnographers should address throughout the research process.

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Why Digital Ethnography? Ethnographic research can be a critical method for social scientists to understand the lived experiences of precarious migrant workers richly. Unlike research methodologies that involve one-off interactions, such as interviews and surveys, ethnography is conventionally characterized by in-depth observation of communities in their naturalistic settings (Amit, 1999). This process of immersion in the real world context and detailed analysis enables ethnographers to discover and describe the complexities and shared cultural nuances of the social world of migrant workers. However, social scientists often consider conventional ethnography with precarious migrants as sometimes unviable because they are largely a hard to reach population group (Yea, 2020). Migrant workers spend most of their time confined to their work sites and places of residence, both of which are typically closed to outsiders. This alone makes it impossible for ethnographers to physically accompany migrant workers throughout their daily routine to conduct participant observation, a cornerstone of the conventional method. Moreover, precarious migrant workers are often wary of speaking openly about their circumstances to outsiders for fear of survelliance, threats and deportation. It is common for them to be warned by their employers that there would be repercussions for doing so, including verbal reprimanding, salary deduction, physical abuse, repatriation, and more (Bal, 2022; Baey & Yeoh, 2015). Migrant workers tend to take these threats seriously, especially when they have little means of recourse and weak bargaining power against their employers. Consequently, migrant workers would often refuse to participate in research while in active employment, unless their confidentiality can be guaranteed. The difficulty of accessing precarious migrant workers has been illustrated in Hamid and Tutt’s (2019) reflection on their experience recruiting Tamil migrant construction workers for an ethnography project in Singapore. Researchers in the study noted that they could not observe participants inside construction sites or dormitories. This was prohibited. Thus, their avenues for participant observation were limited to the recreational spaces where migrant workers spent their rest days. This meant that researchers had limited opportunities to collect ethnographic data on the working and living conditions of migrant workers. Another limitation of conventional ethnography is the inability to follow the social worlds of migrant workers in digital spaces. Over the past two decades, more migrant workers have gained access to the internet

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as affordable smartphones and wireless internet connectivity become commonplace. Most, migrant workers now leverage digital technologies to facilitate their migration journeys (Farbeblum et al. 2018), connect with fellow migrant workers (Anderson, 2016; Napier-Moore & Sheill, 2016; ILO 2019: Roudy-Fraser, 2021), adapt to new communities, workplaces, and cultures of their host countries (Codagnone & Kluzer, 2011), and maintain links with their families and societies back home (Baldassar et al., 2016; Nedelcu, 2018). Moreover, with the outbreak of COVID-19 and the imposition of movement restrictions, migrant workers found themselves relying on digital technologies even more. Activities included remitting salaries through mobile banking applications (Verma, 2021), voicing their grievances via social media platforms, and mobilizing for change (Sholihyn, 2020), and creating and consuming entertainment on social media and streaming services (Naheswari & Oh, 2021). The social activities of migrant workers digitally create new opportunities for ethnographers to study migrant lives in richer ways. To bypass the limitations of conventional ethnography, researchers have been calling for the use of ethnographic techniques to study migrant life in digital spaces (Acedera & Yeoh, 2018; Babis, 2021; Cabalquinto, 2018; Le Duc, 2016; Wijaya et al., 2018). Migrant worker communities are prevalent and active on social media platforms (Hennida et al., 2021; Thompson, 2009). Migrant communities can be organized according to their occupation (i.e., domestic work, construction, maritime, etc.), their nationality (i.e., Bangladeshi, Indian, Chinese, etc.), and interests (i.e., information sharing, music, poetry, sports, entertainment, etc.). These communities could serve as different entry points for ethnographers to connect with migrant workers more intimately. Of course, access to these communities for research purposes is contingent on gaining the consent of community gatekeepers, overcoming language and cultural barriers by the researcher, and recognizing workers’ as equitable and agentic members of the research process. Second, digital ethnography can enable researchers to study social phenomena of migrants more fully. The internet is embedded in the daily lives of migrant workers. Online and offline worlds are interwoven experiences. Using digital technologies to access the internet is an extension of other embodied ways of being present in the world, rather than a means of accessing some discrete virtual domain. Their lived experiences straddle online and offline spaces. For example, migrant workers’ grievances over COVID-19 social restrictions are no longer confined to private spaces,

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but are articulated through digital spaces and formats such as Facebook postings (Tee, 2020), and TikTok videos (Sholihyn, 2020). Ethnographic research that aims to follow the lives of migrant workers would traverse online and offline spaces. More formally, we argue that digital ethnography is a contemporary form of ethnography that traverses field sites online and offline to develop holistic understandings about how everyday life is being produced, represented, and lived in the digital age. The next section will elaborate on the configuration of field sites when employing digital ethnography.

Field Sites in Digital Ethnography Configuring Field Sites Traditionally, the field site is conceptualized as a bounded space containing a whole culture. While the field site is not completely disconnected from external forces, their influence is treated as secondary to the local culture (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997). This bounded conception of the field site followed earlier anthropological traditions in which fieldwork often occurred in a remote village or tribe. Reliance on a bounded field site enabled anthropologists to make arguments about cultural differences that unseated presumptions of the universal or biological basis of social practices. Early studies in digital ethnography adopted the traditional conception of the field site as a bounded space. In doing so, these studies proposed a sharp division between offline and online spaces, which Bassett (1997) described as a “technologically mediated rupture”. The digital ethnographers in these studies typically selected a discussion group or virtual world as their primary field site. Offline engagements, such as interviews and participant observation, were common, but were merely used to supplement, support, or form a contrast to the online. However, the theoretical developments in ethnographic practice—and digital ethnography itself—challenged the traditional configuration of the field site. As ethnographers moved to study new social phenomena, they observed that the approximate containment of culture within a small, bounded space was increasingly less accurate. Among the most influential critics, Marcus and Fischer (1986) reflected upon neo-Marxist movements and argued that local cultures were becoming increasingly embedded in larger impersonal systems of political economy. They noted that local

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cultures would register, materialize, and reflect certain aspects of the larger systems in which they were embedded. As such, ethnographers began to revise the conception of culture as spatially fixed and bounded. Instead, culture became understood as being constituted by the intersection and flow of objects, individuals, and ideas that span over vast physical and digital terrains (Appadurai, 1996; Castells, 1996; Clifford, 1992; Hannerz, 1992; Ong & Nonini, 1997). This new conception of culture presented a practical problem for ethnographers: How should the field site be (re)configured to make sense of socio-cultural phenomena that occur across a vast terrain? Marcus’ (1995) proposal for a “multi-sited ethnography” has become the foundational text for ethnographers seeking to articulate ways of configuring the field site outside of the limitations and biases inherent in bounded field sites. In practising “multi-sited ethnography”, Marcus recommends that ethnographers follow people, things, metaphors, narratives, plots, biographies, and conflicts. “Following” implies flexibility in data collection, requiring ethnographers to move from one site to another when it is deemed relevant. As such, the field site becomes an artful construction rather than something an ethnographer simply “finds” (Amit, 1999). After Marcus’s proposal, authors writing about the ethnographic field in the context of new technologies have expanded and refined the author’s ideas. Especially relevant to digital ethnography is Burrell’s (2009) renowned proposition of the field site as a “network” composed of fixed and moving points including spaces, people, and objects. Burrell (2009) emphasizes how it is the ethnographer themself through the everyday tracing of different actors, that pulls together the field as a network. In the process, digital ethnographers would typically construct a network of online and offline spaces that embodies the social relations of the research participants and their connections to physical and digital objects. The network is produced as a “continuous” space because one point can, through one or more steps, connect to any other point. It also does not assume proximity, spatiality in a physical sense, or even homogeneity. As such, online spaces are taken to be continuous and embedded in our social spaces.

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Positionality of the Researcher A consequence of adopting “multi-sited” forms of ethnography is the relationship between the ethnographer and the participant. This relationship redefines the practicalities of accessing field sites. In the classic notion of fieldwork, where the object of study is an isolated village that is treated as a whole culture, entering the field site was simply interpreted as a process of crossing the boundary from outside to inside. Ethnographers are assumed to arrive at their field sites unmarked, that is, almost completely foreign to the local community. They are to participate in and learn about the culture of their host community with the goal of becoming an insider. However, Burrell’s (2009) notion of “field site as a network” offers a strong critique of this classic notion of fieldwork. It argues that most ethnographers are marked before their arrival at their field sites because even the most remote communities in contemporary times are, in various ways, exposed to foreigners and foreign cultures. Ethnographers researching precarious migrants would naturally experience foreignness at their field sites. Thinking through and reflecting on these markers that distinguish between individual researchers and precarious migrant workers are critical. Researchers cannot and will not experience occupational hazards, culture, religion, and migration experiences in the same way. Therefore, we might find ourselves researching from an “outsider” position. This may introduce particular challenges in migration research. For instance, if we are perceived to be associated with structural actors, our informants might experience fear of negative repercussions from sharing information. Nonetheless, conducting research from an “insider” position—where migrant workers perceive ethnographers to be identical to them—may be equally problematic. By emphasizing ethno-national “sameness”, we run the risk of obscuring dimensions of “otherness” that can influence our research process. In fact, when researchers and informants share ethnonational origins, for example, differences in class, education, or other social markers can be accentuated. As such, it is our ethical and methodological duty to acknowledge and manage the social differences that exist between us and the migrant groups we study and research with. Therefore, Carling et al. (2014) argue that ethnographers should step away from the archetypal insider–outsider divide and adopt “third positions” when conducting research. They suggest that the markers of insider–outsider status will differ in their apparentness to informants, may

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be (truthfully) amplified or masked by researchers, and carry distinct influences depending on the research context. This allows us to be fluid in crafting our research positionality; in other words, the “position that the researcher has chosen to adopt within a given research study” (SavinBaden & Major, 2013). Carling et al. (2014) propose five different and non-exhaustive “third positions” beyond the binary insider–outsider role: explicit third party, honorary insider, insider by proxy, hybrid insider– outsider, and apparent insider. Adopting these “third positions” can allow us to exercise greater freedom from unwanted “outsider” associations and focus on individuals rather than categories in our encounters with migrant workers. Practically, positionality is often formally expressed in research papers through a “positionality statement”, essentially an explanation of how we have developed a critical and reflexive lens throughout the course of our field work. For most, this statement will necessarily be a fluid statement that changes as we develop throughout our research project. A strong “positionality statement” would typically include a description of our philosophical, personal, and theoretical beliefs; our chosen position about the research participants; the research context; and how these factors could interact to influence the research process (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013).

Research Design and Preparation Having discussed how we may configure our field sites and position ourselves in digital ethnographic research, this section elaborates how we can design and organize our fieldwork. It sets out an iterative process to expand, integrate, and trim our network of field sites online and offline. It is generally advisable for digital ethnographers to begin fieldwork by curating and immersing in offline field sites (Miller & Slater, 2000). This practice helps ensure that we treat our online field sites as continuous and embedded in offline spaces (ibid.). Through our initial interactions with migrant workers, we are likely to discover online spaces that are valuable to them and hence important to curate as our online field sites. We may also identify the community gatekeepers of these online spaces, and perhaps obtain practical advice on how we might access these online communities through our offline fieldwork. When scoping out these online spaces, we may filter them according to four criteria. First, they must be relevant to our research topic. Second, online sites should be

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actively maintained. There must be fresh content on these sites on a regular basis, regardless of whether they primarily disseminate information or encourage active participation. Third, the site should be media rich in offering images, audio, and video for data collection. Finally, the site should be accessible throughout the intended duration of the research with permission from participants to observe or engage on these sites. In the process of curating field sites, it is good practice to consistently reconnect our online and offline field sites (Przybylski, 2020). This integration can be achieved by linking ourselves online to the people we interact with offline, and referencing our online communication when interacting with our research participants in-person. Significantly, these steps ensure that we can build an active and diverse set of online sites that connect and extend our physical field locations. We also begin to maintain a field log to organize our fieldwork time. First, we anchor our calendar with key activities including relevant webbased activities and in-person meetings or events. Then we insert any obligations of a personal or professional nature of ours that occur at specific times. Now we have a skeleton around which we can plan other research activities: informal interactions with other participants, planned interviews, field site observations, and writing time for daily fieldnotes. Crucially, it is important to know when and where to expand or reduce our network of field sites. The potentially infinite size of a network of field sites and the lack of a natural stopping point may present problems for ethnographers here (Strathern, 1996). We should strategically expand our network of field sites in a way that produces meaningful saturation. When interviews with new people and observations in new locales yield a repetition of themes, this may indicate that the research process has come to a natural conclusion. At the same time, we may find that following certain connections may lead us to field sites where there are fewer frequent encounters with the topics of interest. Here, we may choose to prune our network of field sites and return to the field site’s starting point to pursue another set of connections. What results is an iterative process in which we continually prune networks as they proliferate, eventually building a skeletal “field as network” that conceals as much as it reveals social phenomena (Burrell, 2009).

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Methods of Digital Ethnography Having explored how digital ethnographic research is designed and organized, this section will cover the various methods available at our disposal to collect data in our offline and online field sites: participant observation; photography, videography, and audio recording; ethnographic interviews; and surveys. Participant Observation At the heart of ethnographic fieldwork is participant observation, which is a “learning process through exposure or participation in daily or routine activities of participants in the research setting” (Schensul et al., 1999). The term is a combination of “participant” referring to the role of the researcher in the community and “observation”, which is a data collection technique based on noting and recording phenomena. Gold’s (1958) classic typology of researcher roles identifies a continuum. At one end, ethnographers adopt the complete observer role and are as detached as possible from the setting under study. While such a role is thought to represent a kind of ideal of objectivity, it tends to be out of favor because it can lend itself to deception and raise ethical issues of covert observation. At the other end, the ethnographer is a complete participant who disappears completely into the setting and is fully engaged with the people and their activities. This role is impractical when studying precarious migrant workers, because of the barriers and ethical challenges of working and living alongside migrant workers, where one will never fully comprehend the precarity even with close and engaged observation. As a result, most ethnographers position themselves somewhere between the ends of the continuum when researching precarious migrants. One may take on the role of an observer as participant, whereby the researcher conducts observations for brief periods to set the context for interviews or other types of research. The researcher is known and recognized, but relates to his or her participant as a researcher. Alternatively, the researcher could become a participant as an observer by more fully integrating into the life of the group under study. The researcher is as much a friend as a neutral researcher, whose research agenda and activities are still acknowledged by the community. We begin our participant observation by preparing ourselves for fieldwork (Boellstorff et al., 2012). This involves setting up our physical work environment to ensure that it is conducive to our ethnographic

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research. Digital fieldwork, in particular, requires us to work with a reliable computer setup and stable internet connection. In addition, beyond our workspace, it is our responsibility to prepare our language and technical proficiency when entering our field sites. This means familiarizing ourselves with the various features of our digital field sites, the technical and linguistic conventions in these spaces, and the general happenings in them, whatever is necessary to participate. Crucially, ethnographers also need to create their social media profiles for online and offline fieldwork. Some may choose to utilize their personal social media accounts, which has the advantage of showcasing your authenticity to your research participants. Others may create a research-only social media profile. This approach is especially valuable when studying sensitive topics which require researchers to protect their personal safety by separating their private and other professional networks from the field. Regardless of how, ethnographers should explicitly list and explain their research goals, activities, and affiliations through their social media biographies and features (such as archived Instagram stories). A final consideration when preparing our research involves making decisions about the type of presence we have within the communities we are studying. This could mean clarifying our positionalities in different field sites, as well as our intended forms and extent of participation in the communities we study. Upon completing preparation, we can begin to initiate relationships with informants at our field sites. This can be done through private messages, emails, posts, comments, forums, emails, and in-world. We should clearly explain our research to our participants in obtaining their consent and galvanizing them to become supportive partners in inquiry. We should not study people who decline participation, and we do not report on their activities even when encountered through more informal participant-observation techniques. In principle, we aim to participate actively in our online and offline field sites, to expose ourselves to beliefs and practices that may challenge our preexisting assumptions. However, there may be activities that we may choose not to participate in or unfeasible for us to participate. For instance, Holmes (2013) described participation in the US-Mexican border crossing with migrants as risky—including death by dehydration and sunstroke, kidnapping and robbery, rattlesnake poisoning, and the possibility of being charged with the felony of aiding and abetting—and warns future students of immigration against taking on such risks. Other

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activities may violate our core beliefs or, in our assessment, constitute a breach of ethical principles. Thus, there may be times when we will have to make difficult ethical decisions. Additionally, there may be instances where our participants suggest something that may be dangerous or risky for them. For example, migrant construction workers may invite ethnographers into their dormitories to study their living conditions, despite it violating the regulations set by their employers and dormitory operators. Any risks to participants should always be minimized, and therefore, declining the offer is critical in this instance. Although participation is important, the “observation” aspect of participant observation is also critical and is captured in extensive fieldnotes. Generally, ethnographers keep observational notes and their own interpretations distinct. For example, a dormitory room for migrant construction workers can objectively be described as having “six doubledecker beds arranged side-by-side with less than a meter gap between them.” An interpretive description may allude to it being “overcrowded and uncomfortable”. Moreover, ethnographers tend to emphasize being open-ended when writing fieldnotes (Boellstorff et al., 2012). We collect data without always knowing its meaning or significance in advance. These data include our encounters with individuals and social groups, informant statements, our surroundings, interesting events, and cultural artifacts. Online field sites may provide unique data collection possibilities, such as chat logs, screenshots, and audio and video recordings. To stay as open-ended as possible, we should avoid pre-editing data that might gloss over the details of interactions and events. Photography, Videography, and Audio Recording Participant observation is complemented by documentation of photographs, videos, and audio. These forms of documentation have several functions. They log visual and auditory information in a way that augments written fieldnotes. In addition, they may act as documents for discussion with research participants. In addition, they may be shared with audiences—according to media distribution ethics—to aid us in presenting a visual and/or auditory impression of our field site. Here, we should keep in mind that photographs, video, or audio recordings “are most usefully treated as representations of aspects of culture; not recordings of whole cultures or symbols that will have complete or fixed

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meanings” (Pink, 2007). When utilizing them to recreate an experience, they will inevitably reflect our interpretive choices. Online fieldwork presents several unique opportunities for ethnographers to record and collate photos, videos, and audio. First, chat logs and comment threads are especially helpful for understanding the discursive dynamics of online groups and how their social conventions are negotiated. Second, screenshots can provide a representation of our virtual environments and give us an instant summary of happenings. Thirdly, screen recordings of online activities enable us to create a record of participant observation for the latter coding or presentation purposes. For example, in studying the literary work of Indonesian foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Singapore, Mintarish (2019) videoed a non-profit organization facilitating online workshops in English prose and writing for FDWs. Digital ethnographers often complement the data they have collected with photographs, videos, and audio recordings produced by migrant workers themselves. The ubiquity of smartphones and the advancement in their technology have allowed migrant workers to create their own recordings of publishable quality and engage in autoethnography. Ellis and Bochner (2000) define autoethnography as “autobiographies that self-consciously explore the interplay of the introspective, personally engaged sled with cultural descriptions mediated through language, history, and ethnographic explanation”. Autoethnography is especially valuable in the research context of precarious migrant workers. As a form of collaborative and participatory method, it minimizes the power relationship between researchers and the researched. It empowers migrant workers to produce revealing accounts of their everyday experiences and offers an alternative to stereotypes about them, which may prove to be very useful in realigning these narratives and challenging preconceived perspectives about them. For example, Hamid and Tutt (2019) used the photo diaries of 11 Tamil migrant construction workers in Singapore to enable them to present their lives through their own lens and identify new sites of inquiry to examine the inequalities they face. However, the practice of autoethnography does not come naturally to anyone. We unconsciously enact our cultural scripts as we go about our daily lives such that it requires considerable self-reflexivity to recognize how our actions are guided by culture. Therefore, it is important for us to support our research participants in articulating the experiences that

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they have recorded, and the significance behind them, when engaging in an autoethnographic project. Furthermore, historical and archival recordings are essential to any digital ethnography project. They allow us to learn about the origins and history of online groups, as well as trace the development of their social practices. Archival recordings may include older posts and comment threads within social media groups, online forums, blog posts, community Wikipedia pages, and more. For example, Le Duc (2016) examined the role of social networks in the building of communities for illegal Vietnamese migrant workers in Thailand by investigating past episodes of solidarity online. He described the collective, digital mourning of Vietnamese over a vehicle accident that killed 78 Vietnamese migrant workers in 2014. Le Duc (2016) also highlighted how the Vietnamese migrant workers shared knowledge online to raise awareness of scams that were especially rampant after the governments of Thailand and Vietnam signed the Memorandum of Understanding of Labour Cooperation in 2015. Ethnographic Interviews Interviews are an integral part of ethnographic research. Ethnographic interviews are a particular type of discursive interview that occurs, either formally or informally, in the context of participant observation (Spradley, 1979). It aims are to discover “what people articulate as their own understanding of how social processes work and how they, as individuals, might negotiate the complex social terrain” (Young, 2006). It is especially useful for investigating aspects of the culture observed that are still unclear or ambiguous, even though they have been subjected to close observation (Gobo, 2008). Nonetheless, we need to recognize that what is said during the interviews will be co-constructed by the interviewee and the interviewer, and will be limited by perception, memory, evasion, and self-deception. We certainly cannot uncritically take what is said in any interview as “the truth” at all times. Interviews must be treated as generated accounts and performances (Atkinson, 2015) and to be recognized as occasions when those interviewed will construct themselves as particular types of people. As such, ethnographic interviews differ from conventional discursive interviews in several ways (Gobo, 2008). First, ethnographic interviews should always be recognized as part of the wider ethnography and hence interpreted in conjunction with data obtained through other research

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methods or through other interviews. Second, ethnographers need to analyze interviews with much more care than is often given to them. We need to be cautious of misinformation, evasion, lies, and fronts, and look for taken-for-granted meanings, problematic meanings, and selfdeception. In the case of migrant workers, fear and threat of deportations by employers may lead to them being fearful of providing a holistic pictures of health violations. We may need to interrogate the interviews and compare what is said in one account with what is indicated by another interview or research method. Third, because ethnographic interviews occur within the context of participant observation, they may be held spontaneously during fieldwork, be brief and centered around understanding a particular scene or behavior, and be repeated across the course of research with a less urgent need to achieve any knowledge objective with one single interview. There are additional factors that we should consider when interviewing precarious migrants. To begin, our structural positions—including race, gender, age, etc.—construct multifaceted insider–outsider positionalities between us and our interviewees. They bring various advantages and disadvantages to our interview encounters, which warrants reflexive considerations (Gu, 2019). Furthermore, we must be sensitive to cultural and language barriers that may hinder the flow of qualitative interviewing and the accuracy of interpreting the experiences of our interviewees (Gu, 2019). Lastly, incentives may facilitate the recruitment of interviewees but must be within the bounds of research ethics and cultural appropriateness (Weiss, 1994). Online forms of interviewing are becoming more common in research. They include asynchronous (non-real time) options such as email exchanges, comment threads, and discussion groups, and synchronous (real time) options like text-based chat rooms, instant messenger protocols, phone calls, and videoconferencing (Janghorban et al., 2014). These communication modes offer convenience to both the interviewer and the interviewee, and hence facilitate access to migrant workers who are especially difficult to access. However, we should be wary that some migrant workers may not be digitally literate or lack access to digital devices and high-speed Internet. A reliance on online forms of interviewing might lead to their exclusion from the study and a potential loss of theoretical perspective. Moreover, we must contend with technical concerns. Phones, especially cell phones, can be cut out; video and voice chat services may be interrupted due to the quality of internet access; and any interview

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data loss might not be retrievable (Przybylski, 2020). Just as we would practice with a physical recording device before conducting an in-person interview, it is important to practice calls, videoconferencing, and chats in the location from which we plan to work. Surveys Although ethnographers may use surveys, they generally are used with participant observation and qualitative interviews throughout the research process. Their use can be for providing an initial overview of the range of experiences within a population as a way of contextualizing the “rich narratives” elicited in follow-up ethnographic interviews (O’Connor, 2019); to “quantitatively verify” hypotheses developed through fieldwork (Snodgrass et al., 2016); or to demonstrate the generality of findings. However, as physical fieldwork was difficult during the COVID19 pandemic, more ethnographers recognized the value of surveys as a method of ethnography. One reason is that survey data can also be rich. By combining a variety of closed-ended questions (which include a predefined list of answers that are coded as quantitative data) with open-ended questions (which ask respondents to provide a qualitative answer in their own words) multifaceted and nuanced accounts of life can be elicited (Long, 2020). Another reason is that online surveys are remarkably agile and responsive research tools. They can be put online within hours of a research question arising, quickly gathering hundreds of responses. However, collecting survey data on precarious migrant workers has been a major challenge for researchers. This is mainly because migrant workers represent a hidden population without a sampling frame, that is, a list of all those within the migrant worker population who can be sampled. Due to the lack of a proper sampling frame, the usual standard procedures for drawing samples from a population would fail. Therefore, alternative methods have been proposed to sample and survey migrant workers. These include respondent-driven sampling (Heckathorn, 2007; Tyldum, 2021), origin-based snowballing method in their home countries (Beauchemin & Gonzalez-Ferrer, 2011), workplace-based stratified probability sampling design conducted in their host countries (Agadjanian & Zotova, 2012; Thachil, 2018), leisure-based stratified probability sampling design (Chung et al., 2020), sampling from migrant workers’ social networks (Merli et al., 2016), or using web-based social media advertisements (Potzschke & Braun, 2017). Ethnographers may select

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the most appropriate sampling technique by identifying when and where potential respondents can be approached through pre-survey fieldwork. Even if they can be identified and included in our sample, another complication in surveying precarious migrant workers is that they may be difficult to access for various reasons (Fête et al., 2019). Migrant workers may be under the heavy surveillance of their employers and disallowed from communicating with researchers about their employment circumstances. Moreover, limited spare time due to long working hours can make them less motivated to spend time participating in a survey. Non-response rates for migrants can also be higher if they do not trust the survey and/or surveyor, making them more reluctant to provide information. These concerns can be partially offset if the design and implementation of surveys are conducted in a culturally sensitive manner. Again, this typically requires ethnographers to engage in pre-survey fieldwork (Freidenberg et al., 1993; Pearce, 2002). Pre-survey fieldwork informs us on where, when, and how potential respondents can be engaged to participate in the survey. For instance, respondents may prefer to participate in in-person surveys over online surveys, but may only be approached at certain times of the day and/or at specific locations. If online surveys are preferred, it is important to find online avenues to disseminate them effectively. In addition, respondents may be more familiar with certain terms when describing a certain social phenomenon; these terms should be used when phrasing the questionnaire to facilitate the survey. Addressing such concerns (and more) would likely improve the response rates of surveys, and hence mitigate the challenge of accessing precarious migrant worker communities.

Fieldwork Analysis Through fieldwork, a variety of data can be amassed. There is textual data, including field notes from participant observations, interview transcripts, survey responses to open-ended questions, and audio transcripts. There is also visual data consisting of photographs and videos of your research participants, their settings and artifacts, and past events. This section outlines a grounded theory approach to analyzing and synthesizing a collection off fieldwork data. Grounded theorists focus on deriving “analytic categories directly from the data, not from preconceived concepts or hypotheses” (Charmaz, 2001). They argue that

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researchers are more likely to develop new analytic categories and original theories from data by minimizing adherence to preconceived theories. At the working level, the approach consists of three procedures: close reading, analytical coding, and writing memos (Emerson et al., 2011). While they are presented as discrete and sequential phases, it is common for ethnographers to analyze their data in an iterative manner, that is, moving from reading to coding to memoing, and then back again. Ethnographers typically begin with a process of close reading, that is, reading through all textual data as a complete corpus and in the sequence that they were written. It is advisable to read line by line through as much of our textual data as possible, at least until coding seems to generate no new ideas, themes, or issues. In the process, we should observe and reflect upon how our relationship with those in the field and our interpretation of events that may have changed over time. Ethnographers often combine close reading with another procedure termed analytical coding. Qualitative analytical coding often occurs in two sequential phases. In opening coding, we read our textual data line by line to identify and formulate ideas, themes, or issues. Here, the objective is to generate as many codes as possible without considering their relevance to already established concepts in our discipline or the initial focus of your fieldwork. However, a separate code should only be created when the unit of analysis, a line, sentence, or paragraph, conveys a new idea. These codes should be stored and organized in a codebook, which clarifies the definition of each code. Here, we may start writing theoretical code memos to record our insights on the general patterns and themes that emerge across and connect a number of disparate incidents or events (Hewitt et al., 2022; Charmaz, 2014). Through initial coding and memoing, we would usually identify more ideas and themes than we could possibly pursue in a paper. As such, ethnographers would proceed by selecting core themes to explore further in a single paper. This leads to the second phase of analytical coding: focused coding. Having selected the core themes, we repeat the line-byline analysis of their textual data, but on the basis of themes that have been identified as being of particular interest. This allows us to develop selected themes by connecting data that initially appear disparate and delineating subthemes that clarify variations within the broader themes. Upon developing a set of themes, we may begin writing integrative memos. These memos aim to provide a more sustained examination of each theme, pull together the data that demonstrate each theme, and

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explore the relationship between the themes to inform an argument. Here, visual data—including photos and video recordings—are drawn into the fieldwork analysis if not already included. Pink (2007) advises ethnographers to adopt a reflexive approach when analyzing visual data, which emphasizes that the content of visual images is constitutive of context and diversity of interpretation. This requires us to conscientiously draw the interlinkages between visual and textual data, ultimately to construct a rich and coherent set of themes. We may also utilize quantitative data from your surveys to verify and develop your themes while writing integrative memos. Quantitative data are especially useful to demonstrate the generality of a single observation if the survey has attained a large, representative sample of the community under study. In addition, quantitative data may reveal insights and patterns that were unanticipated, thereby elucidating earlier observations that were inexplicable or misinterpretations (Sieber, 1973).

Ethical Guidelines Similar to its conventional counterpart, we should be aware of potential ethical concerns when doing digital ethnography. These ethical concerns will emerge from the start of our fieldwork, continue throughout our data collection process, and after the publication of our findings. And they are especially prevalent when researching populations facing vulnerable contexts such as precarious migrant workers. This section reviews some ethical considerations that ethnographers should address when doing digital ethnography. A central ethical concern is whether ethnographers should even treat online spaces as public or private contexts. Some researchers propose that the use of publicly available electronic documents, even if accessing personal information, does not constitute a violation of privacy, as it is not a “normatively” private context where individuals can reasonably expect others to protect their privacy (von Benzon, 2019; Wilkinson & Thelwall, 2011). However, Thompson et al. (2021) argue that this perspective does not sufficiently reflect the increasing importance of privacy concerns. As Markham and Buchanan (2017) note, people often maintain their expectations of privacy, even when participating in digital spaces that are supposedly public. Moreover, most people interact in online public spaces without considering the technical and storage capabilities of internet technologies, which potentially puts them at risk (García-Peñalvo et al.,

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2012). Therefore, regardless of whether the online space is public or private, it is advisable to protect the privacy of our research participants. This means adhering to informed consent and data anonymization procedures, where necessary. Another critical ethical consideration is whether ethnographers should view data that are produced online as texts or people. McKee and Porter (2009) noted that one’s view of online spaces as text versus people will shape our ethical choices. For example, if we approach an online discussion forum as a text-based data rather than a space produced by people, the very process of gaining consent is transformed, as a text cannot give informed consent. As such, this approach positions public data in online spaces outside of the informed consent process. Regardless of the orientation one takes toward such spaces, McKee and Porter (2009) suggested that building trust with an online community should be pursued similarly to how we might build trust with an offline community. This requires us to engage in an ongoing process of informed consent, while sharing our interpretations and representations with our research participants prior to sharing them with the broader research community. A third ethical concern is whether ethnographers should offer anonymity or pursue openness in our research. Anonymity procedures are one method by which researchers try to mitigate any harm inflicted on our participants. However, to achieve this, we must make critical decisions about what to include and what to omit from the data that are presented. This can affect the data if certain aspects are important or pertinent for the analysis, such as a person’s ethnic identity or religion (Clark, 2006) and could lead to a misrepresentation of the position of the participants. Furthermore, it is important to consider that some participants might want their real details to be used instead of a pseudonym. In working with displaced migrants, Bailey and Williams (2018) found on numerous occasions that participants wanted their real names used because it became a source of pride for one participant to know that his name might be used in a publication. Therefore, we should converse with our participants about their preferences to be identified or otherwise throughout the research process and in relation to the different things they have said and done. Finally, we should be concerned with exercising reciprocity in our research. The principle of reciprocity requires that there be a reasonable balance of the costs and benefits derived from the research for participants and researchers. It is sometimes claimed that ethnographic research, especially with populations facing vulnerable conditions, involves

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exploitation; that people supply information which is then used by the researcher while getting little or nothing in return. As such, researchers have offered various recommendations on how we can achieve reciprocity. Morrow (2009) and Graham et al. (2013) suggest that reasonable payments could be offered to individuals for their participation. Ngo et al. (2014) propose that researchers may also provide non-material rewards such as mentoring or even scholarships. Considering these various options, Head (2009) argues that a reflexive approach to reciprocity should be implemented. This ongoing reflexive process would allow the researcher to assess the situation in the field and then make an informed decision collectively with community members as to what informs reciprocity, if any, would be appropriate. In culture-centered research, the community decides collectively what they hope to gain from the research process from the start to the end of the research study (see, Dutta et al., 2016). Culture-centered researchers also provide navigational, social, and cultural capital and support to participants. For example, assisting workers with disenfranchising work conditions by advocating for change with them.

Conclusions In this chapter, we explore digital ethnography as a potential methodological choice for research with precarious migrants in the context of their erasure and invisibility in mainstream sites and spaces. We began by exploring the limitations of conventional ethnography, especially with the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic over an extended period of time, and discussed the value and challenges of employing digital ethnography when studying precarious migrant workers using the CCA. Next, we elaborated on and discussed how may digital ethnographers configure their online and offline field sites, negotiate their positionalities during fieldwork, as well as design and organize their fieldwork. We then discussed a wide palette of methods for data collection, and a grounded theory approach to analyzing the data collected. Finally, we discussed questions of ethics when conducting digital ethnography. Ultimately, we hope that this chapter shares the value of digital ethnography as a methodology for researching precarious migrant workers that engages with them dialogically, despite a community conventionally difficult to access and provides a roadmap for studying

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precarious lives digitally for research endeavors that engage participatory and dialogic opportunities with participants.

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CHAPTER 9

Profiling the Diseased: Tablighi Jamaat and Racist Experiences in Assam Suraj Gogoi and Rohini Sen

Introduction It is said that a racist will never admit to their racism. In the face of such a refusal, a crucial methodological consideration, while enquiring about racism, could be to highlight the instances where racist experiences were felt (Memmi, 2000). The Tablighi Jamaat controversy in Assam is one such case which brings to light the racist experiences of Muslims in the state. The selective use of an event which was attended by a specific sect of Muslims from Assam was extrapolated to all Muslims in the region. Their bodies were marked as a site of disgust, and were socially ostracised and squarely blamed for bringing the COVID-19 virus to the state. The framing of the ‘Bangladeshi’ as contaminants and carrier of the virus bear

S. Gogoi (B) RV University, Bengaluru, India e-mail: [email protected] R. Sen University of Warwick, Coventry, England

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_9

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a long history of hate and othering of these people in Assam, where many share an East Bengal ancestry. We see this incident of the Tablighi Jamaat in the backdrop of COVID-19 in Assam as a manifestation of hate which helps us unpack racism in Assamese society. These contextual experiences of racism resonate with the dream Benedict Anderson refers to in his work on nationalism (Anderson, 1983).1 Census reports on Assam, starting with 1881, have been consistent with the fact that the majority of Mohammedans in Assam are Sunnis.2 Tablighi Jaamat, a Sunni tradition, perhaps finds popularity due to the dominant Sunni population in Assam. If one were to divide Assam geographically into Brahmaputra and Barak Valley, the history of Muslim population in these two locales also varies.3 Among “indigenous” Assamese Muslims are the four groups of Garia, Moria, Desi and Jhula. Their occupation forms the essence of their distinction, although today, such rigid occupational boundaries have diluted (cf. Gogoi & Chakraborty, 2022). According to historian Edward Gait (1906), Garia Muslims belong to the Gaur province of Bengal. Some colonial accounts have also classified them as tailors. The Morias are known to have specialised in bell-metal work. The Deshis trace their ancestry back to the Dhubri-GoalparaCooch Behar area of Lower Assam, which were part of the Bengal Presidency at the time of annexation of Assam through the treaty of Yandaboo in 1826. Julhas, on the other hand, are Muslims among Assam’s tea tribes, who were traditionally known to be weavers (ibid.). The 1881 census report on Assam terms the Muslims to be ‘ignorant’ about their faith. In other words, the census reports projects that there was a lack of doctrinal Islamic practices among the local Mohammedan population. This narrative is corroborated by historian Jayeeta Sharma. Sharma (2011) writes that most Muslims in Brahmaputra Valley or Thalua

1 Anderson argues that while nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, racism dreams of external contaminations. 2 In 1881 census, of the reported a total of 1,107,924 Muslims in Surma Valley, 1,103,736 returned as Sunnis and in Brahmaputra valley only 1.3% of Muslims returned as Shias (cf. Census of Assam, 1881, p. 34). 3 Muslims, Musalmans and Mohammedan are interchangeably used in the chapter. In early census documents, Mohammedan is often used. We use this to designate the religious orientations of the groups in Assam and not to talk about different internal and external divisions made among the Muslims in Assam.

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Musalmans (Muslims of the place) followed customs that were similar to their Hindu counterparts and many of them could not read the Koran. The 1881 census notes that, ‘Koran is hardly read, even in Bengali, and in the original Arabic not at all; and many of those who have heard of it cannot tell who wrote it…yet, any Muhammadan peasant, when asked, will be able to repeat a few scraps of prayer in Arabic with a pronunciation of surprising accuracy…’ (Census of Assam, 1881, p. 100). In the late nineteenth century, Assam became exposed to the influences of pan-Islamist and other revivalist movements which came from North India. In Darang, around the 1880s, a preacher called Zalkad Ali inspired a lot of people to accept orthodox Islamist practices where the Tablighi and Wahhabi traditions also played a role in the later decades (Sharma, 2011). This indicates a shift of Mohammedan faith in Assam as lacking in doctrinal Islam to revivalist Islam premised on purity of Islamic thought, among a select few. Beyond the official register, the Muslims in Assam have been categorised into different groups. Assamese intellectuals such as Ambikagiri Raychoudhury and Nilmani Phukan called the peasants who migrated in the early decades of the twentieth century from East Bengal as the Na-Asamiya or the New Assamese.4 That claim was also supported by different sections of the society. The Thalua Musalman was distinguished from the Charua Musalman, the later being the new settlers who settled by the riverine areas known as char-chaporis. This is the same group of people who the intellectuals referred to as Na-Assamiya. Hussain (1987) noted that Muslims in Assam are not a “single homogenous community” and there are four kinds of them: (a) Assamese Muslims (Thalua Musalman): captured soldiers and descendants who stayed back in Assam, artisans brought into Assam by the Ahom kings, preachers and local converts during the Ahom period

4 The discourse of assimilation is central to becoming the new Assamese. Accepting

Assamese language and culture and, at the same time, giving up one’s own was seen as essential to the assimilative process. In that sense, the language of assimilation is no different from the colonisation process and anyone who refused to change was seen as a cultural threat or an ‘other’. Such denial of refusal is where xenophobic and chauvinistic politics of the Assamese nationalist can be located.

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(b) Neo-Assamese Muslims (Charua Musalman): The new migrants who migrated to Assam for East Bengal during the colonial period were termed ‘Na-asamiya’ or Neo-Assamese (c) Muslims of Barak Valley: most of them moved into Cachar from the neighbouring districts of East Bengal during the British period and (d) North India Muslims: those who moved into Assam primarily from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. He also observed that ‘obviously there is no Muslim and non-Muslim conflict in colonial Assam’ (Hussain, 1993). This underwriting of Hussain is significant because it totally undermines the cultural anxieties of Assamese nationalism (for whom the Muslim question was central) which was rife even in the early decades of the twentieth century in the colonial period. Hussain’s sympathy lay with the Assamese Muslims5 as is evident in his omission of the concerns raised about the recent immigrants. Price (1997, p. 135) notes that the omission of Hussain allows the ‘RSS and Hindu Nationalist to solely focus on the latter.’ The social ostracisation of the recent immigrants to Assam whose legibility of citizenship is often socially questioned finds a legitimate expression in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) Process. The targeting of these recent immigrant communities by the Assamese nationalist is further deepened by creating such categories which Hussain takes the liberty to indulge in and, from whom the ‘Assamese Muslims’ and ‘Neo-Muslims’ often maintain a safe distance. It is due to such political measurement one sees support for NRC from many Muslims in Assam. The recent state recognition of Assamese Muslims as ‘indigenous’ to Assam further fractures the Muslim question in the state.

5 The Assamese Muslim is considered to be within the fold of what is known as ethnic Assamese or indigenous Assamese. It is often observed, as is evident in the projection of Hussain, that for them the cultural identity of Assamese and Assamese language takes precedence over their religious identity. Seemingly, we bracket the elite in this section of Muslims as part of the Assamese ruling class.

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The Tablighi Case and Judgement Tablighi Jamaat is a Muslim revivalist movement with roots in the ‘Deobandi’ tradition. A group of ulama came together to establish an Islamic seminary more popularly known as a madrasa called Dar-ul Ulum in a town called Deoband in the mid-nineteenth century. Maulana Muhammad Ilyas, a student of that madrasa is regarded as the founder of the Tablighi Jamaat tradition. Tablighi Jamaat seeks to revive Islam by encouraging Muslims to lead their lives in accordance to the Shari’a Law (Sikand, 1998). It seeks a break from the ‘worldliness to a world of piety and spirituality’ in order to achieve salvation and success in both the worlds (Ali, 2003). The foundations of Tablighi Jamaat comes from politicisation of Muslim life and is seen as a medium of communication of the prophetic message to the ummah (community). The membership to it is voluntary and free. All the expenses are borne by the individuals themselves. Tablighi, which means to preach, is done by both men and women amongst themselves (ibid.). Tablighi Jamaat is deemed to be ‘apolitical’ in nature (Ali, 2003). They remain ‘aloof’ from political acts that are associated with capturing power and are dedicated towards moral reform of individual Muslims (Sikand, 1999). The oral ethos of the Tablighi Jamaat appealed to many lower middle class people who were drawn towards its ideals. By removing the importance of the written word, it attracted a great deal of social underclass into its fold (Sikand, 1998, 1999). In 2020, the Tablighi Jamaat pilgrimage occurred across February and March in New Delhi. The gathering included Muslim visitors from various countries who soon found themselves under arrest and vilified as bearers of COVID-19 in course of a nationwide Islamophobic propaganda. In March, soon after a countrywide lockdown was imposed, the Tablighi Jamaat gathering was blamed for ‘spreading’ the coronavirus infection despite following isolation protocols as soon as the new measures were announced. The Home Ministry directed state governments to initiate criminal action against them under different statutes and following the F.I.Rs, 3,500 foreign nationals from 35 countries were arrested and later detained in different government and private facilities across India. These individuals faced charges under sections of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Disaster Management Act, 2005. Some of the charges under

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the IPC included ‘disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant’ (section 188), ‘negligent act’ likely to spread infectious disease (section 269), ‘malignant act’ likely to spread infectious disease (section 270) and ‘public nuisance’ (section 290). Although accused of similar ‘crimes’, in some cases, the FIRs only mentioned sections of the Epidemic Diseases Act or the Indian Penal Code. While in others, the police invoked sections of the Foreigners Act for allegedly flouting visa rules by ‘indulging in the proselytisation activities’. After six months of arrest and detention, on 22nd August, three different High Courts— Bombay, Madras and Karnataka—granted them respite and quashed the F.I.Rs. The Bombay high court’s 58 page judgement was most scathing and unearthed a direct nexus between the arrests and Islamophobic agenda of the current right wing government. While chastising the action of the state police and the media, it identified three strands to this propaganda. . The judgement said there was “big propaganda” and “virtual persecution” in print and electronic media against the foreign pilgrims, blaming them for the spread of Covid-19. The government, with little to no evidence, claimed that the Tablighi gathering was a major source of national spread of Covid-19. This triggered a tide of hate speech, violence and Islamophobia followed by relentless social media slander. Use of hashtags such as #CoronaJihad were frequently accompanied by vilification from TV news channels. In most media stories between 20th March to 20th April, the most frequently appearing words alongside “Tablighi” and “Jamaat” were “coronavirus”, “Delhi”, “crime”, “spitting”, “terrorist”, and “jihad”. These stories formed the scaffolding for creating and propagating Islamophobia and projecting the ‘diseased body’ on the Muslim ‘other’. . The court also observed that the FIRs were filed out of malicious intentions and this was a significant observation and consideration. The decision to criminalise foreign nationals of a particular community was a manner of “an indirect warning” to Indian Muslims protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) across the country. “It can be said that due to the present action taken fear was created in the minds of those Muslims. This action indirectly gave warning to Indian Muslims that action in any form and for

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anything can be taken against Muslims ” (Konan Kodio Ganstone & Ors, 2020, p. 44). The court went on to observe that ‘A political government tries to find the scapegoat when there is pandemic or calamity and the circumstances show that there is probability that these foreigners were chosen to make them scapegoats’ (Konan Kodio Ganstone & Ors, 2020, p. 38). These measures were taken without any corroborating evidence, suggesting that they were part of a larger Islamophobic agenda and as per the court, ‘The aforesaid circumstances and the latest figures of infection in India show that such action against present petitioners should not have been taken’ (ibid.). . The court dismissed confidential central government circulars that stated that the Tablighis had violated provisions of their tourist visa by “spreading Muslim religion by giving speeches in Masjid”. Invoking the history of the Tablighi Jamaat, the court called it a reform movement founded by Maulana Mohammad Iliyas in 1927 in Delhi and for being popular in villages and peasants. The court also rejected the government contention that visa provisions were violated. Visa provisions do not restrict, “foreigners to visit the religious places and to have religious discourse”, and the court could not infer that they were “spreading Islam religion and there was intention of conversion”. The Madras and Karnataka High Court quashed the F.I.Rs as well. However, unlike the Bombay High Court’s resounding criticism of the government’s Islamophobic policies, the underlying considerations for each of these courts were different. In each instance, the pilgrims were made to sign an affidavit admitting that they had violated visa conditions and would not return to India for 10 years along with a fine to pay. The Madras High court exonerated the pilgrims from false allegations of spreading the virus and marked their detention as ‘unreasonable, unjust and unfair’. The Karnataka High Court, however, opined based on the reasoning that ‘reprieve’ needed to be ‘bestowed’ on the ‘miscreant’ foreign pilgrims while holding that the Tablighis’ actions had ‘not prejudiced public tranquillity’. It is interesting to note the spectrum of opinions across the three courts and their willingness to excavate the

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formulation of these government measures. While upholding rights in ‘extraordinary times’ was the common consensus, only the Bombay High Court went forth to unpack the undergirding of cultural racism.

Segregation and Bangladeshi Question in Assam Disease is a reflection on the condition of the human flesh, and racism emanating from engaging with or in relation to a disease is the refraction of the political. Diseases such as COVID-19 particularly mirror human flesh and show how the flesh as social bodies are found in society. In that regard, the profiling of people, segregation, disgust and social ostracisation of carrier or diseased bodies are embedded in politics of a variety. We argue that racism is one such politics which helps us understand how the diseased body is articulated in everyday life. This section will show the instances and ways in which racism became pronounced in Assam by targeting and profiling the COVID-19 patients, not just as patients but patients who were Muslims. This excess is where the object of this racism lies. Profiling of Muslims in Assam, particularly Muslims of Bengali origin, is not new. The experiences of racism felt by the ‘Bangladeshi’ / Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam is built on a history of hate politics that is not divorced from Assamese nationalism and the embedded political economy questions. A history of segregating the incoming migrants from erstwhile East Bengal is a case in point here. Segregation as we know is one of the major foundations on which racism rests. The apartheid in South Africa is a serious account of such segregation which seeked to establish white supremacy. One of the solutions to the ‘threat’ allegedly posed by the black people was to contain them in zones which allowed control and exploitation of the black community (Besteman, 2019). Policies, regulations and law directed at racially segregating Americans have led to persistent inequalities (Rothstein, 2017). In fact, Mills (1997) goes on to argue that even seemingly egalitarian systems are formulated by making invisible notions of white supremacy. Such systems operate on a racial contract (between white tribes of Europe) where all other races are to be subsumed by whiteness that projects itself as the normative. In this backdrop, segregation is nothing but an amplification of an already racist mainframe. Blacks in America were segregated from whites by law in institutions such as prisons and armed forces to social/public services such as transportation, recreational facilities and public accommodations, among

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others. Such segregation also brings about ‘differential access to mobility’. Zones of containment, like the apartheid, also come with exploitation of labour. In other words, racism or the community which faces racism are almost always subjugated to exploited labour conditions. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, Tablighi attendees who tested positive were also segregated. A total of 129 foreign nationals from Asia, Africa and European countries were kept in institutional confinement. They were first kept in the Puzhal Central prison in Chennai. This was followed by a few weeks in Saidapet sub-jail and finally in the Borstal School, which was hurriedly converted into a detention centre for them (Shantha, 2020). Such confinement is nothing but segregation as they were identified not only as a COVID-19 positive but also as Tablighi attendees. It shows how faith became a distinguishing marker to profile people in this pandemic. The new immigrants from Bangladeshi experienced institutional segregation in Assam during the colonial period. The Line System introduced to segregate the incoming migrants from the ‘native’ population is a case in point.6 The Line System, meant to contain flow of landless peasants into designated zones, was in operation since 1916 as an executive measure and with provincial sanction since 1920. It was prevalent in all the lower and central districts of the Assam Valley Division. However, beyond the primary intention of Colonisation Scheme, Line System since 1929 sought to designate and confine settlement of all landless peasants from East Bengal to certain areas (cf. Dey, 2015). This system of segregation which came into practice in the backdrop of clashes between the native population and the incoming peasants made way for settlement of migrants from East Bengal and opened up possibilities of accessing proprietary rights in select mauzas of certain districts in Assam. Guha (2006) highlights the kind of criminalisation and profiling of the migrant as land hungry, criminal, scavenger and a danger to the local population was replete in both the Council and the press. These efforts at segregation and slandering which resulted in alienation of the migrants are the reasons why the Muslim League found vogue among the migrants. The Tablighi Jamaat tradition in Assam can also be read within such a socialisation process of alienation where the work of tablighi (preaching) forges social bonds and solidarity among its members. It

6 Different accounts talk about the native interchangeable with indigenous settlers, ethnic Assamese, resident peasants and so on.

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gives them a new face and moral support to the new cultural and political habitus in Assam. Sikdand (1998) had highlighted the fact that ‘Deobandi’ culture tradition helped the new Muslim migrants in Britain to ‘adjust’ into the host country particularly among the ‘lower and lower middle class’. The Line System as an administrative policy was a segregative register of Muslim migrants in different districts of colonial Assam. The Assamese intelligentsia in the early decades of the twentieth century widened the divide between the native and the migrants by projecting them as ‘mutually incompatible’ thereby pushing for the assimilative discourse (Dey, 2015). Their involvement gave further legitimacy to the practice of segregation. The Line System along with the Colonisation Scheme and Developmental Scheme created ‘ethnic zones of cultivation’ (Dey, 2015). There were also reports of areas designated for ‘Hindu immigrants’ and ‘Mohammedan immigrants’ in Mangaldoi (ibid.). The Line System failed primarily because the native population started selling off their land to the migrants outside of the Line System, and often at exorbitant prices. It is not to be discounted that locals profited from such transactions (Sharma, 2011). Such administrative segregation finds a lot of resonance in the way hate is projected at the ‘Bangladeshi’. Not only does this project of segregation speak volumes of how these peasants were treated, but the geographies in which they were relegated is also suggestive of the fact that they were seen as lesser beings. The riverine geographies of the Brahmaputra river and its many tributaries, where most Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam reside, is seen with a gaze of inferiority. Their dwelling is questioned to be illegal, and a danger to the ecological balance of the region. In popular culture, they are blamed for causing floods, unemployment, erosion, man-animal conflict and deforestation (Gogoi & Borbora, 2019). The question of dwelling in particular ecologies which, in colonial registers were seen as waste lands, is also transposed to the people residing in them. They are understood as degraded, unwanted and something that can be ‘dumped’ like waste, hence discardable for political and cultural habitus of Assam.

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Profiling of Patients: Media and Assamese Middle Class One could argue that the category of middle class serves as a meta explainer in existing literature to the social conditions of Assam. In our limited subject of racist experiences felt by the Muslims in Assam, also often designated under the umbrella of illegal ‘Bangladeshi’, the role of the caste Assamese middle class is of paramount importance. Neither the Assamese intelligentsia nor the caste Assamese ruling class have expressed any problem with segregation inherent in the Line System. They have had no problems in segregating people into fixed locals based on their identity. This middle class played a pivotal role in categorising the migrants as an en-block category which found support from the media too. It is not without reason that Amalendu Guha accused the local media of engaging in playing to the gallery of the middle class in Assam. Guha (2006) claimed that the press in Assam was in control of the ‘bourgeoisie since 1978’. The anti-migrant sentiments were certainly seconded by the local media, however, the media was just a reflection of the kind of socialisation in Assam and the ability of the Assamese elite to successfully register their voices (Price, 1997). Price rightly shows the overstatement of Guha with regards to the role of the media as the events of 1983 were to follow.7 The PUCL fact finding report of 1980 also mentions the role of local media (including All India Radio-Guwahati) in their complicity in supporting the anti-foreigner Assam Movement which made the life of the Bangladeshi in Assam very precarious. With such a legacy of the media, it is hardly surprising that the vernacular media reacted to COVID-19 in a very communal manner. In a TV newsroom discussion held earlier this year by Pratidin Time on the Tablighi Jamaat controversy in Assam, writer Abid Azad noted that his

7 The Nellie Massacre took place on 18 February 1983 in Assam in the midst of a sixyear-long Assam Movement (1979–1985) where official accounts put the victims at 2000. People belonging to the Muslims of Bengali origin community were massacred in a matter of hours on that fateful day with homemade machete and similar spears. This collective violence is the direct outcome of the communal tensions flared by the leaders of the Assam Movement. Primary among those involved were the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), Assam Sahitya Sabha (ASS) and many leaders of broken factions of regional parties which would culminate to form the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) after the Assam Accord was signed in 1985 bringing an end to the six-year-long agitation.

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foremost identity is that of an Assamese and therefore, his Muslim identity, is irrelevant. Mrinal Talukdar, host of the programme, agreed with this assertion and added more fuel to the intolerance towards religious and cultural differences. Azad further noted that religion/faith is his personal matter and Muslims girls are excellent Bihu (a cultural festival in Assam) dancers, indicating their cultural assimilation. Talukdar was quick to add that he, too, prioritises his Assamese identity over his Hindu one. The show went on to demonise the practice of Tablighi in Assam and attributed it to fanaticism. It was suggested that such practices within Islam are uncalled for. The backdrop of this discussion rests on the fact that the first set of COVID-19-positive patients in Assam happened to be the Muslims who participated in the Tablighi markaz in Nizamuddin, Delhi. This context was used to turn the virus into a ‘Muslim virus’, as if they were solely responsible for bringing the infection to the region. The racial overtones around this became louder each day with certain ministers in the current state government also reporting the virus to be essentially associated with that of the Tablighi participants. It is to be noted that the health details of COVID-19 in the first few weeks starting in April were released first in the official Twitter and Facebook profile of the then-health minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sharma. Those official accounts of the minister in question existed prior to him assuming office and the personal accounts were turned to official pages from where all COVID-19-related reports were released. The posts from that time would categorically mention that the patients were from a certain community and background. A list of the names of people who attended the Nizamuddin markaz in Delhi, along with their phone number and addresses, were circulated in various platforms (Choudhury, 2020). In a state where communal tensions are already rife, such explicit comments and provocations created a lot of frictions on the ground. In social media too, the hate towards Tablighi participants was visible. The comments used in social media platforms such as Facebook were filled with Islamophobic and ethno-racial sentiments. Some of those texts included comments which framed the Miyas or Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam as destroyers of the place, there were calls to avoid buying vegetables and fish from them, insinuations of them making a corona bomb to infect the Assamese, suggestions that they be shot dead, they alluding to their dietary preferences in a derogatory way, calling for the mosque where they congregated in Delhi to be burnt so that the germs staying inside will die and so on (Choudhury, 2020).

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A detailed report released by Avaaz titled ‘Megaphone for Hate’ highlighted the kind of hatred Muslims of Bengali origin face in Assam where they are often called criminals, terrorists, pigs, dogs and so on (Avaaz, 2019). The report, generated around the NRC process, had sampled 800 posts and comments relating to Assam and the NRC. It found that 26.5% of those 800 violated Facebook’s own community standards on hate speech. The NGO added that after sharing this evidence with Facebook, the organisation removed 96 of the 213 comments. Use of racialised animalistic metaphors and ‘thingification’ of people are not an aberration to any society (Goldberg, 2015). Those metaphors often come with a ‘manual’ of what to do or a ‘declaration of intent’. Racialised metaphors are not banal or stupid, they are extremely rigorous and a call for direct action or engagement. Examples of such metaphors will include blacks being equated to monkeys, Jews to snakes, Muslims to cockroaches or wolves, ‘foreigners’ as termites and so on. Use of such metaphors reveals the nature of racist classifications, their sense of power and imagination of the other. The very use of animalistic metaphor turns it into a site of direct action. It invites like-minded people to participate in spreading hate or eliminating the disgusted object (Hage, 2017). In yet another incident, Kamalesh Kumar Gupta, a member of the Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) from Baksa district in Assam donated a sum of money along with some colleagues from the same FT to the Assam COVID-19 fund known as Assam Arogya Nidhi. After donating, he categorically wrote in a letter dated April 7th 2020 that ‘our only prayer is that the help may not be extended to the members of violators of Tablighi Jamaat, Jehadi and Jahil’. Comparing Muslims to Jihadi is a common trope of profiling Islam and turning any of its followers as potential threats. This public statement by a FT member, a government official appointed to serve in such capacity, reveals the deep seated everyday racial profiling of Muslims present in Assam, and seemingly also affects humanitarian sensibilities of distinguishing the receiver of aid.

Conclusion Racism is a dynamic process. Racists often find ways to discriminate, threaten, harm and humiliate the victims. The case of Tablighi Jamaat attendees in Assam show us how a virus, affecting millions across the world, was turned into a Muslim virus through on account of a few individuals participating in the markaz. Generalisation of specific experiences

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and their projection as the trait of a community is often used as a racist strategy. We understand the case of the Tablighi Jamaat associated racism in Assam as an instance of racist experiences felt by the Muslims in the region. This event draws its social legitimacy from the existing hate towards the ‘Bangladeshis’ who are mostly Muslims of Bengali origin. The general hate for the outsider is sustained by the believers of Assamese nationalism in their everyday life. The personal biographies of the Jamaat participants intersects with the culture of hate towards ‘outsiders’ present in the public sphere in Assam to form a new kind of racism experience in the backdrop of COVID-19. The coronavirus pathogens do not distinguish between the people they infect. Yet, the infected body was profiled as a different flesh altogether—one that posed a ‘threat’ to the Assamese people. It was argued that the Muslims, perceived as outsiders, were weaponizing their bodies to affect the people of Assam. Historically, prior to COVID-19 such disease-related profiling has been absent in Assam. Even with diseases such as cholera or kala azar, which posed a significant social and bureaucratic threat to the colonial government in the late 19th and early twentieth century, such manner of targeting of the first carriers of the virus or disease were absent. The Sanitary Reports of that time on Assam did not register any such cases of conflict or charges of initiating infection in a region. Such communalisation of the COVID-19 patients lays bare the nature of the political society we have inherited in Assam today. It also speaks of the public emotions that we find in everyday life of the state, particularly against its minorities. Racism as an ‘external contamination’ has found a new grammar with the Tablighi Jamaat case in Assam. In the spirit of Anderson’s observations, it is a ‘dream’ which will continue to haunt Assam.

References Ali, J. (2003). Islamic revivalism: The case of the Tablighi Jamaat. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 23(1), 173–181. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Annual Sanitary Report of the Province of Assam: 1902–1947. https://archive. org/search.php?query=assam+sanitary+report

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Avaaz. (2019). Megaphone of Hate. https://avaazpress.s3.amazonaws.com/ FINAL-Facebook%20in%20Assam_Megaphone%20for%20hate%20-%20Comp ressed%20(1).pdf Besteman, C. (2019). Militarized global apartheid. Current Anthropology, 60(S 19), S26–S38. Census of India. (1883). Report on the Census of Assam for 1881. Office of Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta. https://books.google. co.in/books?id=fQEJAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_sum mary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Census of India. (1923). Report on the Census of Assam for 1921. https://arc hive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.31059/page/n5/mode/2up Choudhury, A (2020, July 4). Coronavirus Outbreak: Actions of Tablighi Jamaat in spreading contagion condemnable, but resulting in online hate speech against Assam’s Muslims equally deplorable. Firstpost. https://www. firstpost.com/health/coronavirus-outbreak-actions-of-tablighi-jamaat-in-spr eading-contagion-condemnable-but-resulting-online-hate-speech-against-ass ams-muslims-equally-deplorable-8227981.html Dey, S. (2015). Settlement of East Bengali farmers and consequent histories in Assam 1900–1951, 2015 [PhD thesis]. Jawaharlal Nehru University. Gait, E. (1906). A history of Assam. Thacker, Spink & Co. Gogoi, S., & Borbora, A. P. (2019, May 9). In the Guise of Protest Music, Assamese Artists Churn out Hate Speech. The Wire. https://thewire.in/thearts/assam-protest-music-citizenship-bill-hate-speech Gogoi, S., & Chakraborty, G. (2022, May 6). Assamese Muslims & IDs: Manufacturing definitions is Assam’s new normal. The Quint. https://www. thequint.com/voices/opinion/assamese-muslims-ids-manufacturing-defini tions-is-assams-new-normal#read-more Goldberg, D. T. (2015). Are we post-racial yet? Polity Press. Guha, A. (2006). Planter Raj to Swaraj: Freedom struggle and electoral politics in Assam, 1826–1947 (Rev. ed.). Tulika Books. Hage, G. (2017). Is racism an environmental threat? Polity. Hussain, M. (1987). Muslims in the Indian State of Assam: A note. Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 8(2), 397–402. Hussain, M. (1993). The Assam movement. Manak Publications. Konan Kodio Ganstone & Ors. V The State of Maharashtra, Criminal Writ Petition No. 548 of 2020. https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-380 282.pdf Memmi, A. (2000). Racism. University of Minnesota Press. Mills, C. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press.

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Price, G. (1997). The Assam movement and the construction of Assam identities [PhD thesis, University of Bristol]. https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ en/studentTheses/the-assam-movement-and-the-construction-of-assameseidentity People’s Union for Civil Liberties. (1980). Report of the fact finding committee appointed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on Assam Unrest. https://fdocuments.in/document/pucl-report-on-assam-unr est-1980.html?page=1 Raychoudhury, A. (2009). Ambikagiri’s Omnibus. Assam Prakashan Parishad. Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation. Shantha, S. (2020, June 30). Tamil Nadu has created a detention camp just to hold 129 Foreign Tablighi Jamaat members. The Wire. https://thewire.in/ rights/tamil-nadu-detention-camp-tablighi-jamaat Sharma, J. (2011). Empire’s Garden: Assam and the making of India. Duke University Press. Sikand, Y. S. (1998). The origins and growth of the Tablighi Jamaat in Britain. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 9(2), 171–192. Sikand, Y. S. (1999). The Tablighi Jama’at in Bangladesh. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 22(1), 101–123.

CHAPTER 10

Community-Based Art Interventions, Migrant Health Inequalities, and COVID-19 Coping Srividya Ramasubramanian and Anthony Ramirez

This chapter focuses on the role of community-oriented art and storytelling interventions relating to migrant health and healing. With the COVID-19 pandemic, confinement at home, social and physical isolation, homeschooling by parents, and fear due to lack of physical safety have led to heightened emotional responses, anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms. Researchers have talked about how the interventions needed to mitigate a pandemic (such as social distancing and stay at home orders) are exactly the opposite of what is needed to facilitate mental health (Marroquin et al., 2020). Stress coping is greatly helped with social

S. Ramasubramanian (B) Newhouse School of Public Communication, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Ramirez University of Houston, TX, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_10

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support, everyday interactions, and access to health care, which help to receive advice, care, and assistance for negating the psychological stressors of challenges associated with the COVID-19 outbreak. Apart from the death and destruction, there are also severe economic losses. About 15.4% of the U.S. population consist of international migrants (Guadagno, 2020). Countries like the United States with large migrant populations have to especially consider and include immigrant perspectives in their COVID-19 pandemic response in order to contain the pandemic as well as ensure the mitigation of physical, psychological, social, and economic impacts on immigrants. Within the United States, over 30 million people have lost their jobs during this pandemic (Morath, 2020). Since health insurance is often tied to employment in the United States, it means that several uninsured people do not have access to mental health and physical health resources when they need it the most during this pandemic. In this context, art-based interventions can serve an important therapeutic role, especially for underprivileged groups such as immigrants, who might experience heightened stressors due to separation from loved ones and lack of social support. We first situate the role of art in healing from complex and chronic trauma situations. Migrants are especially susceptible to additional unique psychological stressors due to systemic inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We offer brief case study examples to illustrate various types of arts-based interventions that have helped immigrants cope with acculturation and related stressors. These everyday art practices as well as public arts-based community interventions serve as an example of the ways in which communication can play a role in healing, self-expression, truth telling, solidarity with others, community building, and bringing about transformative social change. In particular, we examine case studies from the U.S. context about interventions relating to essential worker support, mask making, poster making, digital art, comic books, and narrative storytelling as ways of coping used by immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude the chapter by focusing on the “Quarantined Across Borders” case study, which is a collective storytelling intervention that includes experiences about borderlands, immigration, and diaspora during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Migrant Experiences, Acculturation Stress, and Health Outcomes The COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic has led to various types of stressors and losses around the world. In this chapter, we take a traumainformed approach to communication. Trauma can be caused by a single incident or be much more chronic and long term. It can be complex and varied, leading to pervasive and severe consequences on emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing. The scale and scope of trauma called by the COVID-19 pandemic is something that we are continuing to grapple with as it is an ongoing humanitarian global crisis. It can be seen as a major historical time period that is having severe health consequences on individuals and on communities at large. Due to systemic health inequalities based on factors such as social class, race, gender, age, occupation, geographic location, health status, citizenship, and religion, the effects of the pandemic also differ. The risks, vulnerability, effects, type of care, and survival rates are unequal. The COVID-19 pandemic is not just a public health crisis due to the virus itself but also a mental health crisis. Since social distancing and isolation are important ways to contain the spread of the coronavirus, there is an added burden caused by loneliness and isolation. Such severe ongoing exposure to highly stressful trauma is something that greatly impacts how people are able to function. Marroquin and colleagues (2020) conducted a study in the United States on how social distancing influences mental health. They defined social distancing as both stay-at-home orders as well as personal distancing in terms of proximity with non-household members. They found that social distancing negatively affected mental health symptoms of depression, acute stress, anxiety, and insomnia. Indeed, even with social support and access to resources relating to mental health, individuals reported these mental health symptoms. The current chapter specifically focuses on migrant experiences in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Migration is a life-changing experience, moving from one cultural context to another. Acculturation from a home country to a host country often involves significant stressors and even trauma, depending on the context and nature of migration. Migrants can be of many types, including, immigrants, refugees, asylum seeking, international students/sojourns, and migrant workers. Migrant experiences also vary greatly depending on

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other factors such as social class, occupation, gender, citizenship status, geographic region, and political climate. The migration itself could be either planned voluntarily or more sudden due to crises and conflicts as is the case with refugees and asylum seekers. Migrants often experience psychological stressors and adversity, especially when it involves transcontinental migration due to economic inequalities, globalization, and intergroup conflicts (Kuo, 2014). Acculturation stress can significantly impact mental health and wellbeing (Yoon et al., 2012). Beyond acculturation stress caused by relocation and adapting to a new culture, migrants can also experience discrimination, violence, loss of status, health issues, and other forms of oppression in the host country (Yakushko et al., 2008). They often do not have strong social networks of support in their host cultures. Berry et al. (2006) has put forth contemporary acculturation theory that highlights two main perspectives on migrant cultural adaption. One is the assimilation perspective, which focuses on learning about new cultural environments (Ward, 2001). The other is focused on stress and coping in making cultural transitions (Ward & Kennedy, 2001). This latter perspective is how we will approach this chapter.

The U.S. Context, Immigrant Inequalities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic During his run for office during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, then candidate Donald J. Trump’s would constantly bring up his political platform of immigration of building a wall along the U.S./Mexico border (Rivers & Ross, 2020). In his presidential announcement speech, he said: I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall. (Time Staff, 2015)

Additionally, President Trump has since built a barrier on the U.S./Mexico border and his administration has created multiple policies against border crossing immigrants and even immigrants who are documented (Garrett, 2020). Prior to the pandemic, President Trump signed an executive order banning travel to the United States of individuals from Muslim-majority countries (Arafa, 2018). The president claims

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he did this for national security reasons and for the interests of the United States, but many adversaries criticize the motives as being discriminatory. During the pandemic, Trump’s administration went even further to create further stressors as they enacted new policies that restricted international students in the United States including limiting their student visas to two to four years depending on the country (Walsh, 2020). Furthermore, the Trump administration also attempted to strip international students of their visas if they did not attend in-person classes, although this plan was then rescinded (Jordan & Hartocollis, July 14, 2020). Additionally, some countries were given even further limitations including Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Sudan as the administration dubbed them “state sponsors to terrorism.” Around the world, borders were closing in order to contain the COVID-19 virus from spreading, and the United States followed with President Trump closing the U.S. borders on March 19, 2020 (Burnett, 2020). With the borders closing, multiple Mexican protests wanted Mexico to close the country’s border from the United States as the cases of the United States were over 65,000 at the time, compared to the fewer than 500 confirmed cases in Mexico (BBC News, 2020). As the pandemic grew, hostility toward border crossers did too. The Trump administration created yet another initiative to capture and return all undocumented border crossers who do not come into the United States legally. Many of these migrants were put into holding process centers and children were separated from their families (Garrett, 2020). Perhaps the most egregious of mistreatments has been the recent allegations of forced sterilization through unwanted hysterectomies of several immigrants held in detention centers in the state of Georgia (Moore, September 25, 2020). While being held in unsanitary holding centers and with the virus spreading, 3,917 cases of positive COVID-19 were reported during the start of the outbreak, but the number of cases only grown to 6,541 confirmed cases for detention centers around the United States. (International Rescue Committee, 2020; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2020). El Paso, Texas which is a border city right next to Mexico, has one of the highest numbers of active COVID-19 cases in the country with 6,325 (City of El Paso, 2020; Delgado, 2020). In a pandemic, migrants experience unique challenges, over and above those of other types of residents. According to Guadagno (2020), immigrants with linguistic barriers, living in crowded conditions, relying on public transportation, living in places with limited access to key hygiene

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items are more likely to contract COVID-19. Limitation in access to healthcare service, living in underserved locations, not being aware of their healthcare options, language barriers with healthcare professionals, and stigma/fear of asking for assistance also inhibits immigrants from accessing health care once they contract the disease. Furthermore, due to pre-existing travel and living conditions among immigrants, they could also be more likely to experience severe symptoms. Apart from the physical symptoms, social distancing also has negative effects on mental health (Marroquin et al., 2020). They are especially likely to affect immigrants because of lack of access to outdoor spaces, isolation, barriers to proper burial or cremation of loved ones, and anxiety about potential racial/ethnic discrimination (Guadagno, 2020). Another related issue is the economic burden that is especially felt by immigrants during the pandemic. Job precarity, discontinuation of assistance programs, not being included in government subsidies and exemptions (such as rent relief or stimulus packages for small businesses) and inability to maintain legal citizenship status due to travel bans and other legal barriers means that migrant workers and international students are especially susceptible (Guadagno, 2020). Within the United States, there are six million immigrant workers that are helping at the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of whom are undocumented workers (Gelatt, 2020). These immigrant workers are employed in various sectors: 29% of all physicians, 38% of home health aides, and as workers cleaning hospitals, staffing grocery stores, and producing food at farms (Gelatt, 2020; Migration Policy Institute, 2020). Since 2016, the Trump administration in the United States has created negative rhetoric, fear, and anti-immigration policies that created restrictions for immigrants including public assistance programs including food subsidies and various insurance programs (Callaghan et al., 2019). During the COVID-19 pandemic, this has become an added stressor on undocumented immigrants in the United States on top of already fearing deportation, living with an executive administration that is malicious toward immigrants, and other anxieties (Abrego, 2011; Becerra et al., 2012; Sanchez, 2019). Moreover, the Trump administration and Republicans of the U.S. government tried to stop a provision that would allow undocumented immigrants to receive a stimulus payment regardless of their legal status (Narea, 2020; Stellino, 2020). California State Representative, Lou Correa who introduced the Leave No Taxpayer Behind Act, believed that immigrants deserved coronavirus relief:

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While many of us sit at home, these hardworking immigrants are still at work in our hospitals, our fields, and countless other industries. The coronavirus doesn’t care about a person’s wealth, job, or immigration status. By casting out immigrants, we are placing some of our most vulnerable residents in grave danger. Every individual taxpayer, irrespective of citizenship status, needs government assistance now. (Narea, 2020; Scibetta, 2020)

With respect to the COVID-19 outbreak, research on immigrants and racial/ethnic minorities in the United States during the pandemic document significant health inequalities (Rothman et al., 2020). They have found that African Americans and Latinx/Hispanic Americans were especially likely to experience worse health outcomes, including mortality from COVID-19. This was especially true, if racial/ethnic minorities were also negatively affected by other psychosocial factors such as poverty, homelessness, education, access to health concerns, and immigrationrelated stress. Apart from the disproportionate burden of the disease due to prior comorbidities such as hypertension and diabetes as well as living in crowded urban conditions, there are other factors such as working as “essential laborers,” not having access to primary care doctors, and suffering from severe mental illnesses and substance abuse. Many immigrants who have contracted COVID-19 are scared of seeking health assistance or care due to fear of deportation. They also have many challenges and barriers in seeking health resources. For instance, immigrant populations and racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. are less likely to have access to transportation to go to a doctor. Many immigrants cannot rely on government aid, as the Trump administration created regulations that only allow immigrants with a green card to be eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance, and other programs (Raff, 2020). Undocumented immigrants are not the only minorities being mistreated during the pandemic as police brutality sparked movements of Black Lives Matter protests in order to showcase racial injustice (Arora, 2020). Due to police brutality many Black lives have been lost, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, leading to millions of Americans protesting police violence and advocating for Black lives. Due to all these complex and traumatic experiences, it is now more than ever important to showcase the power of healing. Art has the power to heal many as it can be used as a coping mechanism, message for political and social statements, and a method of storytelling.

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Despite these stressors and challenges, there are programs and interventions that help migrants in the United States cope with the situation, build resilience, and resist systemic inequalities. There are various nonprofit organizations and campaigns that seek to help immigrants and undocumented workers. For instance, “Protecting Immigrant Families” is a non-profit organization and campaign that helps provide information to immigrant families with various issues including COVID-19. They share important information with migrant workers that focuses on immigrant eligibility for various public programs during the pandemic as they relate to health care, cash assistance, food assistance, and unemployment insurance (Protecting Immigrant Families, 2020). Prior research shows that communication, storytelling, media, and art can play a role in stress coping for migrants. For instance, research by Ramasubramanian et al. (2017) shows that with Indian-American immigrants, consuming diasporic Indian media rather than the mainstream U.S. media content can help increase ethnic pride and self-esteem, which could have a positive effect on immigrant communities. Similarly, Girgis (2020) has found that with Egyptian-American immigrants, among other factors, art can play a significant role in stress coping. For instance, participants discussed the role of music, movies, and humor as ways to diffuse everyday stressors.

Art as Therapy, Collective Healing, and Migrant Coping Art is an integral part of communication scholarship as it is a form of creative expression that is discursive, reflexive, and relational. Art can help connect with others, initiate conversations, create awareness about issues, challenge the status quo, and lead to transformative collective action. Art can help individuals to feel, express, reflect, connect, disconnect, mobilize, and disrupt, among many other outcomes. For arts-based research, metrics or productivity cannot be gauged through numbers and citation counts. It is about beauty, meaning, and truth. As communication scholars, it is important to add legitimacy, visibility, recognition, and material value to artistic and creative labor. Trauma-centered approaches to communication scholarship emphasize the role of art in healing by serving as a spontaneous creative expression of trauma and emotional distress. Williams (2018) discusses the role of art in increasing mindfulness, self-expression, and compassion toward self

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and others. Similarly, Ramasubramanian (2017) finds that contemplative practices such as journaling can help youth in expressing their innermost feelings, stress coping, and building academic resilience. Art can help to create space for play, which is an essential part of holistic health. It can help with individual healing and resilience but also collective care, community building, and social transformation. For instance, scholars have studied the role of graffiti (Klingman et al., 2000), drama (Beckhusen, 2018; Mermikides, 2020), and sandplay (Kronick et al., 2018) as forms of art-based healing among children and youth. There are many forms of art that can be used for individual and collective healing such as poetry, music, dance, drama, painting, and so on. Literary arts projects can include writing through prose, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression, including the Quarantined Across Borders collection of essays. Visual arts projects could include paintings, digital art, murals, comic books, and other graphic/visual art projects relating to borderlands and migrant identities. For instance, an artsbased fundraiser that was hosted by the first author for the local migrant worker community in Texas that raised over money to support the rent and utilities for this community. Performative arts can include music, dance, drama, and other such individual and collective performance. For example, the junta festival conducted by Anil Srinivasan in India to raise funds for COVID-19 migrant workers. Contemplative arts can include mind-body-soul integration through yoga, tai chi, meditation, and what we are called contemplative arts. For example, many immigrants and communities of color have used breathing practices, mindfulness, and yoga as ways to build community and organize around social justice issues (Seppälä, Bradley & Goldsten, 2020). Many of these spaces incorporated Indigenous, ancestral traditions, culture-centered approaches to care as ways of healing. With migrants, art can help as a sense-making tool to understand their own experiences. This is especially true for kids and youth in immigrant families. Art and play help children make sense of their real-world migration experiences and use creativity and symbolic representation to share their hopes and fears. The stories that especially resonate with them are those that are autobiographical accounts of personal migration experiences as well as those about fantasylands, which helped to modulate anxieties and other deeper emotions (Kronick et al., 2018; Sandqvist et al., 2019). Topics such as safety, surveillance, danger, hiding, and

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capture are often themes that come up in narrative storytelling among those fighting for everyday existence. Research done with asylum-seeking children from Asia in Canada, for instance, has demonstrated the role of art as play and therapy to cope with trauma of living in detention centers (Kronick et al., 2018). In this study, storytelling using sand play helped 3- to 13-year-old kids to deal with conflicts within their lives, including about what it means to seek refuge in another country. The kids used various items such as dolls, toy cars, and other play things to work through their emotional distress. Art making in small groups can also help build resilience and negotiate with identities (van Katwyk & Seko, 2019). Immigrant youth are often framed within educational contexts as unruly, dangerous, and even as delinquents. However, rather than focusing on risk framing, which emphasizes adversity and deviance, these scholars find that participatory art projects can help with building self-esteem, independence, and problem-solving skills, which leads to positive coping from trauma and stress. More public forms of participatory arts include works such as murals, graffiti, theater, music, and dance. For immigrant groups, these participatory arts projects can especially help build community, improve overall wellbeing, and also increase cultural citizenship across racial boundaries (O’Neill, 2018). For example, in the “Respect Our Rights” campaign for foreign domestic workers in Singapore, Mohan Dutta et al. (2014) used photovoice, photo exhibitions, and storytelling techniques to help those who were abused, harassed and intimidated by their employees to express themselves and challenge the system that rendered them otherwise invisible. Similarly, Beckhusen (2018) describes the American Dream, a theater performance that includes young people who are immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the United States. The activities that young kids from Central America participated in helped to process the trauma of being separated from their families and to start to bridge the gap between generations and distances. Other scholars such as Parker and colleagues (2013) found that when U.S. students engaged in art as part of a study abroad experience in Italy, it helped to support health and wellbeing and alleviate suffering. It helped increase compassion, active listening, and affirmation of self. It also helped to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity. Additionally, it transported participants to a different time and space and also helped them

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to see the commonalities across humanity. Art also was seen as emphasizing beauty and balance, which participants connected with soothing the soul and creating a sense of harmony, which were associated with promoting holistic wellness. Bates and colleagues (2019) turned this idea on its head and used art as a way for the community to express themselves about health and wellbeing. Specifically, they had participants create mural paintings to express their ideas of what health means to them. This was an arts-based participatory culture-centered approach to understanding health and wellbeing in Chaquizhca, Ecuador.

Arts-Based Interventions, COVID-19, and Migrant Coping: Case Studies from the United States Understandably, there are not yet many published research studies about art-based interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic as ways of helping migrants to heal and cope. However, we were able to find newspaper articles and a handful of scholarly publications on this topic. For instance, a commentary by Mallory Braus and Brenda Morton (2020) discusses the role of art therapy in coping with COVID-19. They point to activities such as baking bread for neighbors, sidewalk chalk art to thank essential workers, D-I-Y mask-making for communities, and sharing musical performances on balconies to encourage medical workers as some examples of how art has played an important role in coping in many contexts across the world during COVID-19. Another interesting example is the “Performing Medicine” organization (www.performingmedicine.com) in the United Kingdom, which has used arts-based performance and drama therapy for medical professionals and students. During the COVID-19 crisis, healthcare workers, many of whom are immigrants themselves, are experiencing significantly more stressful and longer working hours. Educational initiatives such as “Drama out of crisis” created using performance arts have focused on helping medical workers with tips from live performers to deal with unexpected situations. Similarly, another video series called “Careful Encounters” focuses on building communication skills, empathy, and emotional awareness. Writer and artist, Hector Gonzalez Rodriguez III (2020) uses his comic book, El Peso Hero: The Essentials, as an opportunity to highlight undocumented farmworkers as essential workers. With farmworkers being the main focus of the comic, it highlights a sympathetic representation of

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the immigrant workers instead of a demeaning, threatening, or negative stance on immigrants (Mastro, 2019). Rodriguez III discusses a variety of issues that farmworkers face including a lack of health care, lack of safe health procedures like wearing a mask and social distance protocols, and fear of being deported. Immigrants make up for 37% of meat processing industry workers, 34% of workers in commercial bakeries, 31% of fruits and vegetables preserving industry workers, and 26% of workers within the seafood processing industry (Gelatt, 2020). Additionally, the writer discusses the various essential workers like doctors, nurses, grocery store employees, and postal service workers. Throughout the comic, the storyteller makes it clear of the importance of masks and how they must be worn for the safety of ourselves and others. As masks have become more of a staple within society people have become creative with their uses of masks and their styles of masks. Many people go for function over style but others go for style and art over function (Wilson, 2020). Moreover, various artists and illustrators use their talent to create masks with both powerful artwork and statements in support of immigrants as essential workers. The Creative Action Network features a variety of masks and designs by various artists that focus on different social movements (Creative Action Network, n.d.). Some masks feature messages like: essential workers need essential rights, people over profits, power to the workers, I am not disposable, and essential workers, among many others. When a person buys a mask, another mask is donated to an essential worker. These are all creative and innovative ways people are making masks, but undocumented workers are struggling to find work opportunities and use mask making as a way to create income. One of these undocumented workers was a 60-year-old woman, who was a house keeper, gardener, and nanny had be working and living in Staten Island, New York for 17 years since arriving from Mexico (Michel, 2020). Due to the pandemic, her employers canceled her appointments leaving her without a way to make income. The women along with another friend of hers began to make handmade reusable cloth face masks. From there, the two women were able to have two industrial sewing machines and fabric donated to them by MakerSpace NYC, which is a non-profit organization in New York City. While the two women are creating masks and it has given them enough to get by, it still does not compare to their income pre-pandemic. Furthermore, within Clinton Township, a local non-profit organization called Refuge for Nations provides support and employment for immigrant and refugee women in

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the Detroit area (Fox 2 Detroit, 2020). Members of this non-profit are female immigrants and refugees from West Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America as they make clothes, bags, and protective masks for first responders and families in need. Around the United States, several artists and graphic designers created posters in order to bring awareness to the COVID-19 pandemic (Designed to Save Lives, 2020). These artists used their talents to display messages such as, “Racism causes a higher risk of coronavirus related illness or death in the black community.” Other posters were created in various languages like Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Filipino, and Arabic in order to reach immigrants. Additionally, these artists wanted to showcase the beauty of masks through their colorful posters and diminish the criminal stereotype of wearing face coverings. Another online campaign called “Immigrants Are Essential” focuses on artwork about immigration farmworkers, DACA, dreamers, and Black Lives Matter and other political movements in relation to people of color. The campaign is an online art space featuring posters from various artists. It was started by the national immigration law center and resilience force groups. The purpose of this campaign is to share immigrant stories and tell politicians to act promptly on various issues. Additionally, it is used to encourage people to support and donate to non-profits supporting immigrant essential workers living wages and job protection, access to COVID-19 testing, treatment and care, and also protected status and citizenship. Imagery features various artwork with messages of Black Lives Matter, people of color in masks, and other subject matters. The city of Los Angeles in California has their own COVID-19 safety campaign. It features various illustrations and prints from various artists in order to highlight the importance of wearing a mask as a sign of respect to follow community members, while highlighting essential workers and people of color within the Los Angeles area. According to the Migration Policy Institute (n.d.), there are over 1,000,000 undocumented immigrants in the county of Los Angeles. In addition, some of the prints are written in Spanish due to Los Angeles having the largest population of Latinx people in the United States (Brown & Lopez, 2013).

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Quarantined Across Borders: Collective Storytelling Intervention on COVID-19 Quarantined Across Borders (QAB) is a multi-media, cross-platform, artsbased project that the first author of this chapter curated through her non-profit collective called Media Rise. The second author served as an editorial assistant in this intervention. Quarantined Across Borders is a collection of stories, essays, and journal entries from people, especially immigrants, around the world who are writing about their experiences and observations while quarantined across borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. This intervention was organized by Media Rise, a global collective for educators, artists, activists, and community leaders committed to meaningful media for social change. It can be accessed at www.mediar isnow.org/qab where they are presented in a narrative quilt-like design. During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyday life was restricted in many ways in the context of “lock-downs” and “shelter-in-place” orders that were issued in several states within the United States in an effort to “flatten the curve” and reduce the spread of the virus. Schools were largely closed in late spring of 2020 in the United States. Many offices and colleges pivoted to virtual online environments. However, not everyone had jobs where the transition to online spaces was possible. Many immigrants served as “essential workers” such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, grocery store workers, custodial service workers, postal workers, public transportation workers, and so on, who had to risk their lives in continuing to work or lose their jobs. With several immigrants, this meant putting themselves not just at physical risk from the virus but also emotional stress due to implications for work permits and visas to continue to work or study in the United States. Additionally, since immigrants often are separated from their families across borders, it meant that many of them had to make the difficult choice of staying in their host country or returning back to their home countries. The QAB initiative was started as a way for immigrants to write about how they cope with their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose was to amplify the voices of historically marginalized groups to consider how borderlands, diaspora, and immigration were being experienced during the pandemic. The immigrant story within the United States is complex and varied as the country has a rich history of people from multiple continents, nations, faiths, occupations, and backgrounds migrating to this country over several centuries. These immigrants often

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live bicultural/multicultural lives that weave together several traditions, subcultures, values, and histories that spans many generations, geographic regions, and time periods. Although news stories were covering the coronavirus pandemic through the lens of daily cases, deaths, hospital bed capacity, and health mandates, we were more interested in the everyday experiences of immigrants. In particular, we wanted to document and collect personal stories in the voice of immigrants themselves. Beyond stories about pain, loneliness, fear, and stress, we were also interested in creating spaces to share stories about empathy, inspiration, and interconnectedness. The call for entries received over 80+ entries from a diverse set of writers from over 30 countries from around the world. Authors described various themes such as community, family, food, identity, discrimination, insecurities, fears, loneliness, hopes, and dreams that were experienced while quarantined. In addition to the entries, each author was asked to provide a sentence or two that they wanted to highlight within their entry. Through various social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter account of Media Rise, three entries were displayed in a quilt-like pattern every day in June 2020. This case study can be seen as an arts-based public communication intervention based on writing and sharing about a collective experience through literary arts. It is an open archive that is shared with the community at large. The writers included many first-time authors who had never published before. The entries were short—with only 800–1000 words or so. Almost all the stories that were submitted were showcased. This was done because unlike scholarly publishing or other types of curated and edited writing, the purpose of this intervention was to allow community members, most of whom were not writers by profession, to have a space and platform to share about their experiences. The blog series has been viewed over 10,000 times in the last three months since it was published. The quilt pattern became an artistic and symbolic metaphor of QAB. It was selected because the QAB collection was public, participatory, and a collective artistic effort. Quilting has been used in the United States by various communities, especially by women, to share personal storytelling as a way of preserving collective memory. Several small town communities across the United States continue to have quilting groups where women gather to have dialogs, seek informal advice, and build community. While the QAB project was not restricted to the United States, most of the entries were from immigrants in the United States. Given that the

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United States is a nation with a long history of immigration over several centuries, a narrative quilt was picked as a metaphorical representation for the project. The various colors and textures of a quilt vary just like the many themes, viewpoints, and experiences of immigrants depending on when they migrated, under what circumstances, at what age, and to which part of the world. Yet, their stories hang together. One can still identify common weaves, threads, and patterns that pull them together into a single large quilt. In our case, the commonality was the experiences relating to borderlands, immigration, and diaspora during the early part of COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020.

Conclusions Overall, our analysis of case studies of migrant art-based interventions suggest that art plays an important role in collective memory, archiving the pandemic, and also coping with the stress and trauma that come with it. Immigrants are especially vulnerable to stressors during the COVID19 due to travel bans, movement restrictions, lack of host government support, health inequalities, and acculturation stressors. Especially undocumented immigrants in the United States are additionally burdened due to lack of healthcare access, stigma, xenophobia, and fear of police brutality. However, our chapter shows that immigrants can also come together to resist these oppressive forces by using creative and artistic ways to challenge the status quo. While individual art projects can bring about individual healing, scaling up these efforts to the community level can bring about collective healing. Therefore, public participatory projects such as the Quarantined Across Borders initiative described here help to build community, a sense of shared solidarity, and collective coping, which are essential for many underprivileged groups, including immigrants. Acknowledgements The authors dedicate this chapter to all artists who have used their art to heal themselves and others during this pandemic. As immigrants and artists themselves, the authors are grateful to the editors for giving them this opportunity to bring different aspects of their identities in conversation with one another in this chapter. They are sincerely grateful to Emily Riewestahl for her encouragement and support for completing this chapter. They would also like to thank Olivia Osteen and Miranda Calderson for their support for the Quarantined Across Borders blog series.

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CHAPTER 11

Culture-Centered Migrant Organizing at the Margins: Resisting Hate Amidst COVID-19 Mohan J. Dutta, Indranil Mandal, and Pankaj Baskey

The accelerated and extreme neoliberal reforms across the globe have catalyzed the disenfranchisement of low-wage migrant workers (Dutta, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c; 2021a, 2021b; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021). The exploitative conditions of precarious work have been pushed into the public sphere by COVID-19, and at the same time, COVID-19related prevention policies have further contributed to the disenfranchisement of migrants engaged in hyper-precarious work, embodied in callous responses of an exploitative global neoliberal order (Dutta, 2021a, 2021d). The erasures and silencing of migrant workers that have been routinized into the infrastructure of neoliberal development were rendered visible by COVID-19 and the lockdown measures put into

M. J. Dutta (B) · I. Mandal · P. Baskey Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Palmerson North, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_11

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place to prevent it. India’s COVID-19 response has been marked by the violence of a lockdown that was initially implemented within an aggressively small window, expelling India’s migrant workers into the pathways of exposures to a wide array of health risks (Dutta, 2021b). This response, reflective of the overarching populist authoritarianism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is set in the backdrop of the largescale polarization of India through the deployment of exclusion and hate (Sinha, 2021). Hate works as a key strategy for consolidation of power in authoritarian capitalism, enabling the perpetuation of the extractive and exploitative strategies of capital. This infrastructure of hate is a key feature of Hindutva, the masculinist political ideology that has secured its hegemony over India’s political economy, drawing on the virality of hate catalyzed by digital platforms (Sinha, 2017). The organizing framework of Hindutva, a nationalist political infrastructure that deploys the constructs of a monolithic race (jati) and monolithic nation (rashtra) established on the infrastructures of a monolithic culture (sanskriti), imposes a monolithic construction of Hinduism while simultaneously othering India’s Muslim and Christian minorities. Through the structures of organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hindutva disseminates hate, producing continually the Muslim “other” the disenfranchisement of whom is the target of state-led policymaking. This hate is propelled through digital platforms, forming the infrastructure of profiteering of digital capital while simultaneously organizing the consolidation of power and control in the hands of the capitalist class (Gopalakrishnan, 2006). The deployment of hate under Hindutva in India works alongside authoritarian strategies of disenfranchisement of those at the margins, in the form of economic policies such as demonetization (Kumbamu, 2020) and neoliberal reforms in farming policies (Sethi, 2021). For the poor, the overarching narrative of Hindutva, on one hand, offers the divisive rhetoric of hate, and, on the other hand, continues to push authoritarian strategies of exploitation. The authoritarian strategies of exploitation are branded as nationalist response, necessary for the good of the nation, simultaneously marking and attacking dissenting voices as anti-national and seditious. In this Chapter, we report on a culturecentered worker-led communication intervention to resist the hate seeded by the Hindutva forces in West Bengal, India, amidst the pandemic. The workers organized through digital platforms such as Facebook and

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WhatsApp, complemented by face-to-face interactions. The messages they created in advisory groups were then discussed and voted upon, which then formed the basis for our creative team to work on. The advisory groups then discussed and finalized the messages. After the messages were finalized, they started being distributed via digital platforms, forming a communicative infrastructure for resisting Hindutva and its politics of hate.

Extreme Neoliberalism and Worker Exploitation In the first author’s earlier work with low-wage hyper-precarious migrant workers in Singapore, he explained the ways in which hegemonic accounts of Asian values are enlisted into the legitimization of the authoritarian state as a disciplining structure that catalyzes and propels the neoliberal transformation (Dutta, 2021d). Extreme neoliberalism, the free market ideology pushed beyond its limits, incorporates the police-military infrastructures of the authoritarian state to enable the expansion of the market. As exemplified by the Singapore model of development, authoritarian developmentalism is a necessary tool for extreme neoliberal expansion (Dutta, 2019a, 2019b). Technologies of surveillance, policing, and disciplining are therefore key resources in the expansion of extreme neoliberalism, enabling the processes of expulsion, extraction, and exploitation. Of particular salience to the deployment to authoritarian technologies of managing the population is the consolidation of power. Authoritarian power catalyzes the processes of privatization, enclosure of public spaces and resources, and expansion of the free market (Arsel et al., 2021; Dutta, 2021a, 2021d). In India, the mid-1990s witnessed the turn to neoliberalism, with the liberalization process being pushed aggressively in the form of minimization of subsidies and tariffs, the transformation of public welfare, and the privatization of a wide array of public resources. The turn to neoliberalism in India was marked by the accelerated forms of attacks on unions and worker collectivization, with the aggressive pursuit of special economic zones where worker rights were erased from the registers of organizing (Das, 2020; Sarker, 2014). Simultaneously, rural and agrarian communities experienced the forces of the global free market alongside the seductions of technologically mediated transformation to a cash crop agriculture, resulting in the epidemic of farmer suicides as farmers took on large debts, became exposed to the forces of the global free

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market, and struggled with negotiating the high debts taken on to finance techno-intensive agriculture (Falnikar & Dutta, 2019). These rapid transformations in agriculture expelled the rural poor into the regionalnational networks of exploitation, working as precarious migrants without labor protections and without the opportunity to organize. The material interventions of neoliberalism were propped up by the propaganda infrastructure of free market rationality circulated through communicative inversions (Dutta, 2017). Hindutva and Far-Right Hegemony The political ideology of Hindutva is organized around the consolidation of power through processes of incorporation, exclusion, and expulsion (Dutta, 2021e). The ideology seeks to build India as a Hindu nation (rashtra), rooted in its construction of a monolithic Hindu culture (sanskriti) and Hindu race (jati). The authoritarian populism of Hindutva has catalyzed processes of extraction and privatization through the circulation of disinformation and hate on one hand, and through the organized attack on dissent on the other hand. The disciplining techniques of Hindutva therefore have been integral to the consolidation of crony capitalist power. The systemic and targeted disenfranchisement of the poor through strategies of digitization and incorporation into the global free market has worked alongside the digitally circulated rhetoric of hate. Platform capitalism, integral to the surveillance and hate structures of Hindutva, has simultaneously profited in new ways through the incorporation of the margins as sites of extraction, exploitation, and profiteering (Dutta, 2019b). The COVID-19 outbreak witnessed globally the strategic organizing of hate as an instrument of political mobilization. Hindutva produced and circulated Islamophobic narratives based on disinformaton, placing disinformation on digital platforms, and strategically incorporating the digital networks to amplify hate. Narratives blaming Muslims, stating that Muslims were distributing COVID among Hindus as a terrorist strategy circulated on Hindutva platforms. A gathering of Muslim missionaries in March 2020 was strategically constructed as the source of COVID19 outbreak in India. This key narrative, rooted in disinformation, was then tied to other narratives such as Muslims spitting on food, Muslims infiltrating communities etc. to spread Islamophobia. For the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi, the key political structure

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of Hindutva, the virality of digital hate is integral to political marketing, deployed amidst the pandemic in the elections held in West Bengal. After three decades of electoral hegemony of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), when the Hindutva organizations were largely controlled through a grassroots politics that challenged hate and committed to land redistribution, West Bengal has been governed by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) since 2011 (Ray & Dutta, 2018). The TMC strategy of deploying targeted violence attacking the grassroots workers of the CPI(M) alongside symbiotic relationship with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has resulted in inroads made by Hindutva made into West Bengal, and particularly rural and Indigenous spaces of West Bengal. Hindutva-run schools for instance have grown dramatically at the site of this fieldwork in Jangalmahal, an area with a large Indigenous population and that has been the space of Indigenous uprisings. The strategy of incorporation deployed by Hindutva in Jangalmahal draws on a colonizing framework that marks the Indigenous communities as objects of co-option into the infrastructure of hate while simultaneously continuing to expel Indigenous people and communities from their lives and livelihoods (Sundar, 2019). Culture-Centered Approach The CCA theorizes structural inequalities constitutive of health inequalities in relationship to the communicative inequalities, the inequalities in the distribution and ownership of communication resources and infrastructures (Dutta, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2021). Based upon the key tenets of Subaltern Studies theory that trace the erasures in the dominant discursive spaces, the CCA attends to the processes of erasure, situating the erasure from discursive spaces in relationship to structural marginalization (Dutta, 2008). Arguing that the erasures of the voices of the margins from discursive spaces shape the processes of ongoing disenfranchisement from health resources, the CCA then turns to the voices of communities at the margins in theorizing health and wellbeing. Voice infrastructures become the basis for structural transformations, creating registers for social change, grounded in the material struggles of the “margins of the margins” against the aggressive expansion of capital. The articulations of health and wellbeing, emergent from the margins, disrupt and dismantle the hegemonic formations of health communication and seek to transform the political and economic structures that

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constitute the conditions of poor health. Individuals, households, and communities at the margins experience poor health because of their inaccess to decent work, decent education, decent food, decent housing, and living wage, which are shaped by the practices of capitalism and colonialism. Previous culture-centered studies with migrants document the structures of migration that shape the economic conditions that migrants negotiate, often being placed in conditions of exploitation. Culture is articulated in the CCA through the presence of the voices of individuals, households, communities, and the precarious and working classes at the “margins of the margins” of the capitalist-colonial project. Culture, narrated through stories at the margins, is resistance to the hegemonic narratives of cultural essentialism that serve the interests of authoritarian capitalism (Dutta, 2019a, 2019b). Culture is expressed through agency, the capacity of individuals, households, and communities to co-create meaning and participate in actions emergent from these meanings. The placing of culture as the site of transformation through the enactment of individual and community agency turns to culture as heterogeneous, diverse, plural, dynamic, and continually negotiated. Culture thus is placed in its relationship to structure, the rules, roles, and forms of organizing resources and distributing them in society. Hegemonic structures circulate the cultural narratives that serve the interests of the structure, enabling the consolidation of power. Culture is expressed through the lived experiences of communities at the margins, as the values, stories, and shared meanings voiced at the margins that serve as the basis for mobilization to transform structures. As a resource at the margins, culture offers stories, scripts, and imaginations that offer the basis for organizing at the margins. Through culturally circulated stories, communities at the margins negotiate, resist, and transform structures. Within the overarching context of organizing precarious migrant workers at the global margins, the process of cultural centering foregrounds narratives that challenge the dominant communication strategies that are deployed to consolidate power. What are some of the key organizing narratives voiced by hyper-precarious migrant workers negotiating Hindutva?

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Method This chapter draws on 23 in-depth interviews carried out with lowwage migrant workers, accompanied by an ethnographic account of the organizing of migrant workers, guided by the key tenets of the culturecentered approach (CCA). The chapter describes the organizing work against hate carried out by an advisory group of low-wage migrant workers, emergent from within the culture-centered process of cocreating voice infrastructures at the “margins of the margins” (Dutta, 2018). These in-depth interviews were intertwined with the formation of an advisory group of low-migrant workers, and are part of a larger ethnographic culture-centered intervention with hyper-precarious migrant workers that includes 230 in-depth interviews and observations of digital spaces where migrant workers participate. The field site is based in Jhargram district, distributed across largely remote and rural spaces with predominantly indigenous and caste oppressed communities. The fieldwork is conducted by our community research team across 33 villages across Jhargram, with predominantly indigenous and outcaste (dalit ) communities, which are the feeders into internal migration with/in India. The COVID-19-specific research designed was embedded in a culturecentered intervention on migrant health, with the framework of research designed by an advisory group of low-wage migrant workers (Dutta, 2018; Dutta, Pandi, Mahtani, Falnikar, Thaker, Pitaloka, … & Sun, 2019). This specific manuscript describes an element of the culturecentered interventions co-created by the migrant workers. Since 2020 after the outbreak in India, our team of academics, activists, and community researchers have been co-creating an advisory group of low-wage migrant workers. The participants for the interviews are members of the advisory group, representing the “margins of the margins” of the community (Dutta, 2018). The interviews were conducted by the community researchers in Bengali, Hindi, or a mix of both languages. The interview questions focused on the organizing work being carried out by the advisory group in challenging the disinformation and hate circulated by Hindutva. Data analysis was carried out through line-by-line coding of the interviews, followed by the organizing of the codes into broader themes. The initial themes emerging from the analysis were shared with the advisory group of low-wage migrant workers, who made sense of the themes through their lived experiences amidst COVID-19 and their reflections on the communicative strategies they drew upon in countering hate.

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Findings The three key themes presented in this chapter draw upon the articulations of organizing shared by the low-wage migrant workers. These articulations of organizing outlined here form the basis of the digital resistance that is co-created by the workers. They participate in creating memes, posts, and videos that are shared through digital platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram. These resistive artifacts are also shared via Facebook and Twitter. Co-creating Class Consciousness The organizing of the low-wage migrant workers articulates class as the basis for disrupting the hate propelled by Hindutva. As they come together in advisory group meetings and discuss strategies for resisting Hindutva, they point to the urgency of foregrounding the class identity of migrant workers. For the participants, the process of expulsion from their sources of livelihood and incorporation into exploitative work conditions in the spaces of urban capitalism is marked by the individualization of work, and the simultaneous attack on worker collectivization. Here’s the voice of Roton,1 What has happened to the worker? You see the condition here. The worker has no rights. Where will the worker go? Is there a union? No, the union is not there in many of these jobs. So here I work on construction. There is no union here, and the builder and middle man, they do what they want to do, and the worker does not have any right to say anything. If the worker says anything, the company boss can make him disappear.

The voicing of the exploitation of the worker forms the basis of challenging the hate organized by Hindutva. The participants organize into a collective around their identities as workers, noting the precarity of their 1 The names of the participants have been changed to protect their identities. Because of the organized politics of hate by Hindutva targeting dissenting voices, our advisory group of migrant workers dialogued with activists, community researchers, and academics to outline a wide range of safeguarding strategies. The interviews were conducted with attention to confidentiality and safeguarding the identity of the participating migrant workers. Strategies included carrying out interviews in contextually relevant private spaces, not recording the interviews, not recording the names of the workers in the logs, not gathering demographic information, etc.

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everyday lives. They note that it is this working class identity that has been erased systematically by the capitalist state and that should serve as the basis for organizing against the politics of Hindutva. Salient in the narrative is the everyday threat of violence scripted into neoliberal urban structures of development. Workers risk being exposed to violence for speaking out against the forms of oppression and exploitation they experience. The claiming of their identities as workers serve as the basis for the participants to highlight the challenges of health and wellbeing they experience as workers. They note that the pandemic rendered visible the exploitative conditions within which workers live, and the extreme forms of exploitation that are often perpetuated in the building, construction, and service sectors where they work. These exploitative conditions have been propelled by extreme neoliberal policies that have attacked worker rights and erased the claims to worker rights, reflected in the absence of unions. The voicing of worker rights and worker collectivization through unions serves as the basis for challenging the practices of capitalist exploitation and the authoritarian consolidation of power by the state. Making visible and explicitly voicing their identities as workers is the basis for challenging Hindutva. Co-creating class consciousness therefore serves as the anchor for challenging the divisive organizing politics of Hindutva by connecting workers with each other and keeping the focus on the essential struggles of decent wage, decent living conditions, and security. The participants discuss how in their communication strategies they continue to highlight the exploitative conditions that are experienced by workers. For instance, Jatin shares, So what has been our main experience in these months? What have we experienced directly and paid with our lives as migrant workers? We have seen how this exploitation by the rich has made the worker vulnerable. When the rich have accumulated more and more wealth, it has been at the expense of the worker, by mistreating the working and abusing him.

The lived experiences of negotiating the authoritarian implementation of the lockdown without care for low-wage migrant workers forming the economic infrastructures of India’s urban spaces forms the basis for the resistance to Hindutva. Challenging Hindutva therefore is fundamentally about making visible the everyday conditions of life. The turning

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to narration of the hardships brought about by the lockdown disrupts the communicative infrastructure of Hindutva, with the actual realities of worker struggles forming the basis of communication directed at recruiting other workers. The disinformation infrastructure of Hindutva is challenged through the voicing of worker struggles. Making visible the role of Hindutva politics in distracting public discourse away from the exploitation of workers serves as the basis for raising demands from the state. Challenging Disinformation Migrant workers participating in the advisory group note the rapid pace at which disinformation circulated in their social networks, pointing out that the volume and reach of the disinformation grew rapidly. They discuss the preponderance of disinformation on WhatsApp, with hate being circulated through the production of disinformation. In the advisory group meetings, they express the role of countering the images, videos, and stories circulated on digital media by placing alternative stories. The alternative stories draw upon material evidence to counter the narratives that have inverted the evidence. Placing the evidence in the conversation threads, they note, disrupts the flow of disinformation and hate. An account based on material evidence challenges the communicative inversions, engaging the recipients of the messages to question the disinformation. In the early part of the lockdown, as they struggled with the lockdown, being stranded by the lockdown, they witnessed the disinformation that was being spread by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and other Hindutva organizations. They noted that this information was easy to identify as based on false accounts because of the hate directed toward Muslims. For instance, in March 2021, during the first wave of the outbreak, Muslim preachers who had assembled for a conference are targeted, constructed as the source of the outbreak. The narrative constructions turn to Muslim terror, offering accounts of Muslims spreading COVID-19 in Hindu communities as a terrorist strategy. The messages shared on digital media turn to images, video, and memes to target Muslims, constructing accounts such as Muslims spitting on food to spread the virus. Amidst this climate of proliferating disinformation, shared Jairam,

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We had to challenge the distorted information that was being circulated in the community. I open up my WhatsApp and it is full of forwards that are saying that the Muslims are causing this virus to spread. There are pictures that have been made up and created for WhatsApp to make people believe in the lies that are being spread by the RSS here in the villages.

The migrant workers who formed the advisory group co-create strategies of everyday intervention into the Hindutva narratives. Challenging the account that COVID-19 is being spread by Muslims, the workers create posters, images, and text built on evidence. They draw on a wide array of empirical evidence to challenge the misinformation. In one instance, a participant discusses how when he received the message that Muslims were spitting on food in a WhatsApp group, he countered it with evidence. To build the evidence, the workers often searched for information. In the context of their adivasi cultures and communities, the workers voiced the ways in which Hindutva erased adivasi culture by imposing its monolithic agenda on the community. They documented the examples of the many Hindutva organizations, particularly schools and charities that have started in the community over the decade. To challenge the disinformation, notes a worker, “we have to keep talking about our culture. This culture is different from what the RSS is saying in these schools, and telling villagers that they are Hindus. Our culture is not the RSS culture of what is a Hindu.” The advisory group co-creates images and stories that foreground Indigenous culture, and retell the stories of the culture that resist the narrative offered by Hindutva. Forging Connections Amidst the divisive hate that forms the communicative infrastructure of Hindutva, the migrant workers articulate a politics of connections as the basis of challenging the hate. They create memes, images, and texts that narrate stories of connections. These stories of connections draw on the everyday lived narratives of worker unity, forged across religious, caste, and community contexts. They foreground Hindu-Muslim connections that form the fabric of community life in rural West Bengal, and also depict the Hindu-Muslim connections in the spaces where they work. They narrate how migrant workers live together and work together in urban spaces, sharing shelter and food. They articulate this sense

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of connection as a register for challenging the hate that is seeded by Hindutva. In narrating the stories of connections, they turn to their everyday lived experiences, with the everyday cultures of their lived experiences anchoring the narratives they create. The cultures of everyday migrant life and everyday rural life offer registers for transformation. The everyday lived experiences of culture as inter-community, inter-faith connections break open the Hindutva monotheism that catalyzes culture as a monolith to serve the agendas of the nationalist political project. In the account offered by Kaseem, You see, the Muslim worker, the Hindu worker, the worker’s pain is the same. The working class has the same struggle here and everywhere, how to get the pay that is his. How to secure the wages that are rightfully his. So we have to struggle here and to connect our different struggles as a collective. We have to see beyond the differences that the ruling party wants to create between communities.

The foregrounding of the worker identity as the basis for solidarity depicts the ways in which the migrant workers struggle against the divisive forces of Hindutva. The messages and images created by the workers foreground the practices of everyday connections, and the ways in which these connections reflect the underlying struggles of the workers. The struggle for a decent living wage and to make sure that the worker is getting paid is a theme that is highlighted in the images and narratives created. For instance, in a meme, the workers voice, “Deny the rights of the workers, and divide us in the name of religion. We see your game.” The narrative of connections is tied to articulations of collectivizing in worker struggles. The messages of resistance as critical interventions into Hindutva foreground the notion of seeing through the communicative inversions and distortions carried out by Hindutva. Worker unity is foregrounded as a framework for disrupting the divisive politics of Hindutva. To challenge the divisive strategies of Hindutva is voiced as the basis of worker collectivization in securing decent wage and decent working conditions. When forwarded messages blaming Muslims for the COVID-19 spread, they counter the messages by pointing out that the intention of the messages is to divide the workers and draw attention away from the oppressions and exploitations that are experienced by the workers. Pointing to the callous mismanagement of the pandemic by the Bharatiya

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Janata Party-led government, they note that the government treats workers as disposable. Participants compare the callous implementation of the lockdown to the callous and authoritarian implementation of demonetization, noting that the worker is expendable. The strategies of Hindutva and the political forces of Hindutva draw attention away from the plight of the precarious and working classes. This is shared by Jaidev, We created these messages, and they were about how as workers, we are united. How our struggles are united. The messages we forwarded on WhatsApp, creating small groups among us, and then getting into larger groups to spread the messages.

The creation of connections among migrant workers both offline and online served as the basis for building the networks for challenging hate. The messages created by the advisory group catalyzed the formation of organizing structures among the workers, recruiting more migrant workers into the WhatsApp groups to spread the messages challenging Hindutva. The crafting of messages of connections served to build connections, co-creating alternative communication infrastructures that resisted and challenged the narrative structures of Hindutva (Figs. 11.1 and 11.2). Moreover, the connections challenged the digital networking strategies of Hindutva that work through the deployment of viral hate on digital platforms.

Discussion Culturally centered worker organizing amidst the pandemic creates and draws on cultural resources and cultural forms of storytelling to resist the disinformation that is produced and circulated by populist authoritarian religious nationalism. Right wing religious nationalism consolidates its power and control through digital platforms, leveraging the virality afforded by digital platforms to disseminate hate, reworking the citizenry into the organizing structure of hate. The platform logics of digital infrastructure catalyze and accelerate the circulation of hate, working alongside authoritarian politics and the consolidation of power in the authoritarian state (Dutta, 2020b; Udupa & Pohjonen, 2019). The callous cruelty of the lockdown implemented by the authoritarian state and the ongoing erasure of welfare resources to support the needs of the working classes and those experiencing precarity forms the backdrop against which the

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Fig. 11.1 Poster promoting Hindu-Muslim unity circulated via digital platforms (Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, CARE)

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Fig. 11.2 Poster voicing the rights of migrant workers and demanding employment guarantee

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articulations of migrant workers offer transformative possibilities (Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021d). Culture-centered organizing of precarious migrant workers resists the disinformation and hate messages propagated by Hindutva through the offering of material accounts of the lived experiences of workers. The turning to their embodied struggles as the basis for resistance shapes migrant worker organizing. Subaltern voices, located at the “margins of the margins,” disrupt and dismantle the communicative inversions that form the infrastructure of authoritarian neoliberalism, propelled by Hindutva (Kim & Dutta, 2009). The chapter depicts the concept of structural transformation that forms a key element of the CCA, reflected in the role that an advisory group of low-wage migrant workers played in cocreating the communicative infrastructure for resisting Hindutva. Cultural Hindutva works through othering (Dutta, 2021e). The digital infrastructure of hate deployed by Hindutva is challenged through the participation of migrant workers in voicing their narratives of everyday struggles and everyday negotiations of extreme neoliberalism amidst COVID-19. The migrant voices foreground the accounts of their lived struggles with deprivation catalyzed by the callous state (Dutta, 2021b, 2021d). The carelessness of the state, the disposability of the migrant workers, and the everyday exploitations of the migrant workers serve as registers for organizing resistance. Extreme neoliberalism, the free market mantra pushed beyond its limits, needs authoritarian control to consolidate its power (Dutta, 2021a). The extreme forms of exploitative conditions and the corresponding strategies of expelling communities from their homes, livelihoods, and ecosystems are managed through authoritarian power and control. In India, the organizing of hate by Hindutva works to catalyze authoritarian power and control, silencing dissent and marking dissent against the extreme neoliberal policies as anti-national. As witnessed with the discursive mobilization of the anti-national trope to target, stigmatize, and attack farmer protests, challenge to the repressive strategies of extraction that enable capitalist consolidation is attacked through various forms of violence. Communicative inversions are integral to this infrastructure of violence. By foregrounding worker rights, the migrant workers put forth a communicative register that challenges Hindutva. The articulation of migrant culture as rooted in working class connection challenges the seeding of Islamophobia and othering that form the strategies of cultural Hindutva. Cultural centering through the voicing of

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everyday lived cultures of connections foregrounding worker rights and the many spaces of inter-faith solidarity in rural and urban spaces of lives of those at the margins disrupts the hegemonic processes of othering seeded by Hindutva. In the backdrop of COVID-19 and the elections in West Bengal where Hindutva deployed large-scale investments into the dissemination of the ideology, the offline and online organizing of the migrant workers offers an example of culture-centered processes of resistance. The emancipatory possibilities of structural transformation are voiced in the worker accounts of their everyday struggles amidst COVID-19. Drawing on and supporting the theoretical tenets of the CCA that suggest voice as the basis of structural transformations, the presence of the voices of the low-wage migrant workers dismantles the propaganda infrastructure of Hindutva. The agentic capacity of the migrant workers, evident in their everyday strategies of seeking out information to challenge the disinformation and hate spread by Hindutva, foregrounds the transformative role of culture-centered processes in resisting the political economy of digital hate. Moreover, the registers of transformation co-created by the migrant workers amidst the extreme forms of hardship produced by authoritarian mismanagement of COVID-19 depict the openings of socialist organizing rooted in grassroots democratic participation at the margins.

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