Tag Archive for: racial discrimination

The COVID-19 Pandemic has accentuated pre-existing global conflicts and fissures tremendously, and India has been plagued with multifaceted challenges from skyrocketing unemployment, demand and public debt crisis to the predicament of labour migration, characterized by a plethora of economic, sociological, political and humanitarian ramifications. The rudimentary objective of this paper is to offer a normative teleological insight into the de facto migrant labour crisis in India, while holistically juxtaposing myriad ontological and epistemological indicators, with an emphasis on the economic and human rights dimension of Pandemic-induced intra-state and inter-state labour migration. While assessing a series of macro-societal and cyclical developments, ranging from “Push and Pull” factors of labour migration, reactionary decision-making of the political establishment to the repercussions of cyclical lockdowns, the attitudinal and ideational component of the social order towards migrant labourers has been highlighted, when a virulent contagion has propelled systemic racial discrimination, cognitive biases, ethnocentrism, xenophobia and institutionalized otherization vis-à-vis the instruments of statecraft, during the pyrrhic rise of mobilization on the closures of borders. While the notion of physical and social distancing is antithetical to the rationale behind society and politics as collective decision-making arenas, the current health crisis has compelled to turn the lens back on the struggles and vast array of insecurities of migration and settlement.  Additionally, this paper throws light on the immediate contours and trajectories of forced and voluntary labour migration, processes of assimilation and acculturation, how networks and kinship ties that migrant labourers bring with them shape the magnitude of internal and international migration by adding to the changing global demography. A series of speculative policy prescriptions have been suggested, advancing an ethos of care and respect.