Gary Ryhhart, Senior Specialist in Employer Activities, ILO, by Gary Ryhnart
Gary Rynhart: When covid-19 spread around the world, many migrants were no doubt transported home or left to fend for themselves. Migrants have also – due to the sectors in which they work and the poor conditions in which many low-skilled migrants live and work – been vectors for spreading the virus. Examples we have seen are workers in meat factories in Germany and construction workers in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore.
UN News: Is it more likely that migrants have lost their jobs due to the economic crisis?
Gary Rynhart: Job losses have often hit migrant workers the hardest, as they are more likely to work in informal jobs that may lack safety nets in the event of job loss or illness. This is particularly the case for migrants in developing countries and temporary migrants, such as seasonal workers, where social protection at best tends to be limited to compensation for occupational injuries or health benefits.
More than thirty countries in the world receive more than 10 percent of their GDP from transfers. This money sent home by about one billion workers abroad or internally to their families is collectively higher than either foreign direct investment or official development aid. That was almost three-quarters of a billion dollars last year. The World Bank estimates a 20% reduction this year. Families across developing countries are influencing and creating ripple effects throughout their economies.
IOM / Thierry Falise Burmese migrants work in fishing boats and coastal communities in Phang Nga, southern Thailand.
UN news: will migrants be able to find jobs when the global economy recovers?
Gary Rynhart: Disruptions in supply chains and closed borders as a result of the pandemic will probably lead to more companies turning to technology, automation and artificial intelligence. In a recent survey by accounting firm EY, about half of company executives surveyed in 45 countries said they were speeding up plans to automate their businesses, and about 41 percent said they were investing in speeding up automation as companies prepare for a post-crisis world. .
This is potentially bad news for migrants. Southeast Asia is an example: take the clothing factories in the region, which are mostly filled with internal migrants, or the shrimp peeling industry in Thailand, which is done by migrants in Myanmar.
Techniques to reduce or eliminate the need for human workers in these industries already exist.
Call centers in the Philippines, which benefited from outsourcing that began in the 1990s, are also affected. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of these “new” jobs are threatened by automation. It is one million jobs and accounts for about seven percent of the country’s GDP.
UN RWANDAStephen Rodriques, (2nd left) UNDP’s resident representative for Rwanda poses for a group photo with Rwanda’s government officials and representatives of Zorabots, after handing over the robots in Kigali.
Manufacturing, retail, healthcare and hospitality will be significantly affected by sectors. In the Japanese healthcare system, robotic care personnel, or ‘carebots’, are increasingly being deployed to, literally, do ‘heavy lifting’. This removes many of the physically demanding orderly positions traditionally filled by migrants.
The retail sector has typically relied on migrant workers, but the COVID-19 pandemic has seen dramatic growth in online shopping. In the hospitality sector, automated experiments include robots that provide bartending services on cruise ships and at airports and that deliver food to hotel guests’ rooms. More hotels offer automatic check-in via the app or even in China via face recognition. Alexa-enabled speakers in hotel rooms allow guests to request sightseeing tips and order toothbrushes without talking to staff.
With GPS technology, robots can be used in precision agriculture for weed control and harvesting. The pandemic may also have given a new impetus to technology for driverless cars that may soon see taxi driving, another job that many migrants do falls by the wayside.
ILO Photo / Marcel Crozet A schoolteacher in France joins his students at a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recent months have shown that very many processes and meetings (eg doctor meetings, visa renewals) can be done online. Telemedicine has increased sharply, and as video technology improves, diagnostics such as measuring temperature, heart rate and blood pressure can also be done via a webcam. Some parts of the teaching can take place via digital platforms, and there is currently a large increase in Internet-based education services.
Enhancements to virtual reality, augmented reality, hologram technology and collaboration tools make all this even easier. Many administrative functions can be performed remotely:
There are many new employment opportunities here, which can reduce the need for migration, and teleworking can open the door for women to have access to opportunities commensurate with their talent by practically going elsewhere without physically moving. This is especially important in regions where there are cultural prejudices against women actively seeking work: platforms have been shown to help women find work and teleworking can give them an important veil of anonymity.
UN news: has the pandemic affected the attitudes of migrants?
Gary Rynhart: There has been an increase in discrimination, especially anti-Asian discrimination specifically related to COVID 19, and some populist political parties have tried to scapegoat migrants (we have seen this in Italy, Spain, Greece, France and Germany, among others).
Hassan Akkad, a BAFTA-winning filmmaker and health worker from Syria, now living in the UK, By ยฉ Hassan Akkad
But the post-pandemic world is not necessarily all bad news, and there are signs that it could bring new opportunities for migrants and even improved perceptions.
For example, many migrants fill medical roles at the forefront or provide important services such as stacking supermarket shelves or cleaning hospitals. In addition, we have seen some easing of restrictions on foreign-educated and foreign-born health workers in high-income countries to cope with the crisis: refugee doctors without recognized qualifications were called to Germany and their qualifications recognized quickly in the UK, some US states have allowed foreign-trained doctors to work, and Australia raised working hours on foreign-trained nurses.
Despite the latest populist rhetoric, attitudes towards migrants have steadily and markedly improved in recent years. According to a survey of 18 countries published last year, 63 percent of American citizens considered immigrants a burden for the country, as early as 1994, and only 31 percent felt that they strengthened it.
Fast forward 25 years and the numbers are reversed. In the relationship between two and one American citizen is relocation. According to the same survey, majorities in the top migrant destination countries, which host half of the world’s immigrants, say immigrants are strengthening their countries. Majorities in the UK, France, Spain, Australia, Canada, Sweden and Germany all agree with the statement “migrants make my country stronger”.
Perhaps the result of this crisis will be more inclusion and more diversity in the global workplace and an improvement in some of the factors that make people leave their homes and countries in search of better livelihoods.
Low-skilled labor migrants in cramped dormitories have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic: over 95 percent of those confirmed covid-19 cases in Singapore before 19 June 2020 were migrants. 90 percent of people around the world rely on transfers sent home by migrant workers. The economic crisis has significantly affected this flow of money. With migrants losing jobs and at higher risk of becoming infected, many workers are returning to their countries of origin: India, the country of origin of the largest number of emigrants, had facilitated the return of more than 1.3 million stranded migrants on 3 September.
Information taken from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Data portal
Source: sn.dk