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

243 Pages·2023·3.729 MB·English

by  Satveer Kaur-Gill, Mohan J. Dutta

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 Mohan J. Dutta
The Dartmouth Institute for Health Department of Communication,
Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel Journalism and Marketing
School of Medicine Massey University
Dartmouth College Palmerson North, New Zealand
Hanover, NH, USA
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
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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 perspec-
tive. Through ground-up theorizing, we pay attention to how migrants
frame pandemic communication as unequal. Constitutive of their expe-
riences 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 discus-
sions on the COVID-19 pandemic and migrants. Neutering scholarship
focused on community-led theorizing directed at structural transforma-
tion, 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
vii
viii PREFACE
limitedly marks and groups the experiences of migrants from a gaze of
otherness and simultaneously pathologizes the Global South as cultur-
alist 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 Satveer Kaur-Gill
Palmerson North, New Zealand 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.
ix
Contents
1 The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Migrants:
An Outbreak of Inequality 1
Satveer Kaur-Gill and Mohan J. Dutta
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 27
Rati Kumar
3 The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Health
of Rohingya Refugees 51
Md. Mahbubur Rahman and Mohan J. Dutta
4 Listening for Erasures as Method in Making
Sense of Health Disparities: Culture-Centered
Constructions of Health Among Refugees 69
Pooja Jayan and Mohan J. Dutta
5 The Implications of Being Thrice-Marginalized: Work
Migrants in India During the Coronavirus Lockdown 85
Devalina Mookerjee and Shubhabrata Roy
xi
xii CONTENTS
6 Extreme (Im)mobility and Mental Health Inequalities:
Migrant Construction Workers in Singapore During
the COVID-19 Pandemic 107
Satveer Kaur-Gill, Samira Hassan, and Yeo Qin-Liang
7 Indonesian Domestic Workers in Malaysia During
the COVID-19 Pandemic 131
Asha Rathina Pandi
8 Conducting Digital Ethnography with Precarious
Migrant Workers in a Pandemic 149
Yeo Qin-Liang, Satveer Kaur-Gill, and Samira Hassan
9 Profiling the Diseased: Tablighi Jamaat and Racist
Experiences in Assam 179
Suraj Gogoi and Rohini Sen
10 Community-Based Art Interventions, Migrant Health
Inequalities, and COVID-19 Coping 195
Srividya Ramasubramanian and Anthony Ramirez
11 Culture-Centered Migrant Organizing at the Margins:
Resisting Hate Amidst COVID-19 217
Mohan J. Dutta, Indranil Mandal, and Pankaj Baskey