Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migration

Low-skilled labor migrants have contracted the pandemic in disproportionately high rates than citizens. According to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations-affiliated agency, poverty is a major cause in the spread of COVID-19 among migrant populations in relation to citizens. Low-income migrant workers tend to live in crowded housing, perform strenuous work, and eat poorly, all of which put them at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. The share of immigrant workers living in poverty is high in several OECD countries (32 percent in Spain, 25 percent in the United States, and 30 percent in Italy in 2017). Pandemic-triggered unemployment has affected citizens and migrants alike, but since migrants do not benefit from government relief packages, they become more impoverished and therefore more likely to contract the virus. Furthermore, low-wage migrants have limited familiarity with available health resources, whether because of language barriers or because they have limited exposure to official medical directives. Low-income migrants also lack access to the same levels of health insurance as citizens. Moreover, migrants are overrepresented in sectors defined as essential, both because they tend to work in infrastructure sectors (in 2020, 69 percent of all migrants in the United States worked in essential infrastructure jobs), and because they tend to work in jobs where working from home is impossible. In Saudi Arabia and Singapore, migrants made up 75 percent and 94 percent, respectively of all new confirmed cases in May-June 2020.[1][2][3]

Refugees are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19, especially those residing in camps and temporary shelters. They are at heightened risk of contracting diseases because of their poverty, overcrowded living conditions limited access to medical services, and exclusion from benefits given to citizens. Refugees and asylum seekers make up about 10 percent of all international migrants, and according to the International Organization for Migration, the 20 countries with the highest number of COVID-19 infections are home to 9.2 million refugees, almost half of all refugees worldwide. Internally-displaced migrants - individuals displaced within their own country - are similarly vulnerable. At the end of 2019, there were 50.8 million people internally displaced, 45.7 million of them due to conflict and 5.1 million in the context of disasters. These internally-displaced persons are particularly vulnerable to pandemics, especially those among them over the age of 60, who number 3.7 million.

Even after the outbreak of COVID-19, migrants continue to cross the Central Mediterranean, described by the International Organization for Migration as the most dangerous maritime migration route worldwide. An estimated 4,056 people attempted this crossing in August 2020 (up from 3,477 in the same month in 2019), although Italy's port closures and suspension of search and rescue operations, in response to COVID-19, have made the crossing deadlier than before. Some 283 individuals are known to have died on this route between March and August 2020, and the lack of rescue boats suggests that more shipwrecks have gone unnoticed.[3][2]