The “unspoken Others “: The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the (im)mobility amongst undocumented migrants in the Global South

Long before COVID-19, migration and mobility were already intrinsically embedded into a hierarchical globalized regime of asymmetric power, that largely determines who can move and under what conditions. This global regime has established a population of “unspoken Others” whose mobility is highly regulated and hindered. This pre-existing restriction on movement for many people, crossed with a global health crisis, has potentially deadly consequences: indeed, a recent study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that migrants have a two-to-three times higher risk in getting COVID-19. The proposed project looks to understanding the impact on (im)mobility amongst undocumented migrants in the Global South during the pandemic, in particular related to migration governance (of control and exclusion) and the embodied experience of (im)mobility for migrants. In other words, how and in what ways have migrants been able to continue or have been stopped from working and moving and how does this tie into their own choices as well as governing restrictions. The project analyses undocumented migrants in four countries, namely Mexico, Nepal, Qatar and Zimbabwe. All are in the Global South (Mexico, Nepal, Zimbabwe) or are major destinations of Global South migrant workers (Qatar). For each of these contexts, the research will firstly consider the structural conditions of COVID-induced precarity as well as (new) governmental measures of control. Moreover, the project will consider the embodied experience of (im)mobility as well as the discursive exclusion of migrants. The research methods include semi-structured interviews, a content analysis of important speeches as well as telephone survey with migrants. The project has an intersectional approach, explicitly considering power imbalances of mobility including not least gender, race, class and nationality.