On 27 May 2020, a panel discussion was conducted by Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism [GRFDT] on the topic, “Gulf Migration: During and Aftermath of COVID-19” seeing the vast number of international migrants stuck in the Gulf region.
Mr FroilanMalit Jr, from the University of Cambridge, UK discussed on how migration mobility will be affected by COVID-19 with a special focus on the Filipino repatriation from the gulf region. He raised the question of gulf migrant worker’s resistance to accept repatriation schemes from Philippines. He looked upon the similarities and the differences between the South Asian migrants in Gulf at large and the Philippine migrants. He also focussed on the governmental interventions to tackle with the issue.
According to Froilan,the COVID-19 situation has eliminated the power dynamics of South Asia and has put everyone on an equal footing wherein each country is struggling with the same problems. Both Philippines and other South Asian countries are facing the problem of high proportion of vulnerable migrants, both young and old, there is a problem on data collection for regular and illegal migrants, the process of rehabilitating thousands of migrants and providing them employment are a few of them. He further stressed that demonization of the migrants is an additional problem the world is facing.The same people who were considered assets are now liabilities.
Froilan had pointed outthe major differences between the between the condition of Philippine and other South Asian migrants.He said that themajority of the Filipino migrants do not wish to returnwhich is not the case with other South Asian migrants. Thereby, the government back home isunable to create a clear contingency plan. With no opportunities back home, only 27,000 out of 3 million Filipinos expressed their desire to return.Hence, the government has offered either optional repatriation or the option of 200$ to each Filipino abroad. Therefore,Froilan stressed not only onthe need for local informed policy institutions to better prepare states in the future, but also said that drastic changes must be made in migration governance if States want to effectively deal with such crises in the future.
He thus concluded by calling for a globalcrisis migration frameworkand urged the countries to manage good coordinated diplomatic arrangements to ensure that we as a world are not only providing short term assistance in crisis but also long term ones that will facilitate smooth functioning and movement of migrants once the pandemic is over.
Ujjwala Lakhanpal is a final year student of International Relations and Economics at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhinagar. Her areas of interest include Conflict Studies, Asian geopolitics, International migrations and the Middle East.Twitter Id- @UjjwalaLp