Human Mobility, COVID-19, and Policy Responses: The rights and Claims-Making of Migrant Domestic workers
通过访谈健康和人道主义组织专家，分析新冠疫情初期政策对国际移民家政工人的差异化影响，揭示其被排除在社会保护体系之外，并强调加强保护是公共卫生和人权要求。
This article aims to explore policy responses to the early phase of the COVID-19 crisis, with a particular focus on disparate outcomes for international migrant domestic workers (MDWs). Through an analysis of interviews conducted with health and humanitarian organizations and experts in key migration corridors, it surfaces the central role that MDWs play in social provisioning and in mediating care responsibilities between the state and the family, particularly during lockdown and shelter-in place orders, and calls attention to the essential but excluded nature of migrant labor. The study investigates how states’ responses to COVID-19 intersected with existing institutions of social provisioning and immigration laws, and with claims-making by MDWs to shape the impact of this crisis upon the well-being of these workers. It emphasizes that understanding what is happening to migrant care workers can help rebuild stronger, more effective social protection systems after the crisis.HIGHLIGHTS Migrant domestic workers (MDWs) perform labor essential for social protection systems.The COVID-19 crisis revealed their exclusion from those social protection systems.Stronger pre-crisis social protection systems were more inclusive of MDWs.Countries of origin largely failed to advocate for these workers during the crisis.Claims-making by worker organizations emerged as workers’ main source of support.Greater social protection for MDWs is a public health and human rights imperative.