Events

COVID-19 and Southeast Asia Webinar Series: The Experiences of Southeast Asia's Migrant Workers, Asylum Seekers, and Refugees During Covid-19

Hosted by the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre

Online event

Speakers

Gretchen Abuso

Sociology and Anthropology Department of Xavier University, Philippines

Thomas Daniel and Puteri Nor Ariane Yasmin

Foreign Policy and Security Studies Programme of ISIS Malaysia

William Jamieson

PhD candidate in Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London

Francesca Humi

Kanlungan

Chair

Dr Murray McKenzie

Research Officer at LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre

SEAC hosts an online roundtable discussion with five speakers on the topic of the experiences of the region’s migrant workers, asylum seekers, and refugees during COVID-19 as part of the centre’s seminar series and its ‘COVID-19 and Southeast Asia’ project. Q&A and further discussions will follow the four speakers’ presentations.

 

Talk abstracts

* Click the titles to read the full blog posts 

Longing for home: the plight of labour migrants in the Philippines in the times of COVID-19 (Gretchen Abuso)

“Worker walks for 5 days from Alabang to Cam Sur to return home amid quarantine”

“Construction worker walks 280km to return to his province after losing his job in Manila”

“Stranded worker dies while waiting for bus ride home to Bicol”

These and other heart-breaking headlines paint a picture of the agonizing ordeal of labour migrants in the Philippines in the time of COVID-19. This paper provides a broad picture of the government’s measures, which are proving to be immensely inadequate, to manage the spread of COVID-19 in its notoriously dense urban areas. It also reflects on the sad turn of events for the Filipinos who, in search of better lives for themselves and their families in the rural provinces, find themselves trapped in inhospitable circumstances in the country’s capital in the middle of a pandemic.

 

The impact of COVID-19 on refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia (Thomas Daniel and Puteri Nor Ariane Yasmin)

COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions to the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia. Many have lost their jobs and incomes, and because of existing socio-economic conditions, are more vulnerable to the coronavirus. Refugees and asylum seekers are considered ‘illegal’ immigrants under Malaysian law and have very little rights and protections. Their current predicament is made worse by negative public sentiment, a rise in xenophobia and disinformation, tighter border controls and a crackdown by the government. These issues however are not solely the result of COVID-19 but of decades worth of policy neglect and mismanagement. The lack of a proper refugee policy in Malaysia, coupled with stakeholders often working in silos, exacerbates the situation for both refugees and policymakers. The latter often end up flip-flopping on policy, much to the detriment of the former. The government’s response thus far has been to securitise the portrayal and management of refugees and asylum seekers. The crackdown on refugees has received strong backing from most Malaysians, with the government stating it does not have the capacity to absorb more. Malaysia is in a tough spot - while it isn’t a signatory to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, it has, for the most part, tolerated refugees and displaced people from the region, and adhered to non-refoulement. Malaysia needs to explore long lasting solutions that include a comprehensive policy on refugees, as well as domestic and regional burden sharing.

 

Logistical violence and virulence: migrant exposure and the underside of Singapore’s model pandemic response (William Jamieson)

At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, a handful of East and Southeast Asian nations and territories supposedly set the global standard for the response to coronavirus. Singapore was lauded in particular for its early declaration of a public health emergency, its assiduous testing regime and track and trace system, and for its quarantining of positive cases. After an initial spike of cases, Singapore seemed to have kept their pandemic under control. However, in April, a spike of cases revealed how the unique fault-lines of Singapore’s political economy destabilize and problematize its vaunted model of governance. Outbreaks in migrant worker dormitories erupted across the city-state, swelling to 60% of outbreaks recorded. Often quartered between 12-20 to a room, social distancing measures were practically impossible to enforce within these dormitories. The situation degenerated to the point that infected dormitories were collectively quarantined on defunct ocean liners, inverting the centuries-old practice of plague ships. This contribution will map how Singapore’s dependency on cheap migrant labour for reproducing its logistical supremacy and Global City model was unmasked by the pandemic. Migrant construction, maritime, and domestic workers are the condition of possibility for its vaunted model of governance, yet also present a recurrent problem for this governance: their exclusion from civil society and exposure to risk, disease, and death eventually threatened their recovery from the pandemic.

 

Tragic intersections: exposing the transnational precarity of Filipino migrants, healthcare regimes, and nation-states in the wake of COVID-19 (Francesca Humi)

In April, Piers Morgan paid tribute to the contributions of Filipino nurses to the NHS on his programme, Good Morning Britain. This shout-out was widely shared among the Filipino community on social media. Family members and friends gushed over the tribute, feeling that the labour and sacrifice of our workers in the NHS was finally being acknowledged in the mainstream. But behind this heart-warming tribute lies a more complex and tragic reality for Filipino healthcare workers and their families back home. In the UK, over 25 Filipinos have already died after contracting COVID-19 whilst working for the NHS - making up nearly 20% of NHS Covid-19 deaths despite representing 2% of the NHS workforce. The Filipino healthcare worker is at the intersection of two separate – but now overlapping – narratives casting them as heroes. NHS workers have been hailed by the public as heroes whom we applaud from our windows. In the Philippines, for years, the push to work abroad has been bolstered by popular narratives of the OFW as a modern-day hero, who endures tremendous hardship to form the backbone of the Philippines’ economy. The Covid-19 crisis reveals the emptiness of both of these hero narratives that emphasise personal sacrifice and risk to health over material comfort and economic security. Neither narratives have guaranteed Filipino NHS workers access to PPE or pathways to citizenship. The survival of the West hinges on the contributions of Filipino healthcare workers but governments are as of yet unwilling to safeguard their rights. For Filipinos still at home, the crisis shows the need to fundamentally question the hero narrative surrounding OFWs. Of course, the hardship faced by Filipinos abroad must be recognised and appreciated, but a new narrative must be forged, one of willing immigration based in autonomy and agency.

 

Video

A video of this seminar is available to watch at Facebook.

 

Speaker biographies

  • Gretchen Abuso is a tenured faculty at the Sociology and Anthropology Department of Xavier University, Philippines. She is currently studying PhD in Sociology at the University of the Philippines. Her research engagements and publications focus on the collective memories of Filipinos on state-sponsored violence.
  • Thomas Daniel is a Senior Analyst in the Foreign Policy and Security Studies Programme of ISIS Malaysia. His interests lie in the security/strategic challenges and impacts of major power dynamics on ASEAN and its member states, the South China Sea dispute, and Malaysia’s national security and foreign policies. Thomas also looks at the policy implications of refugees, asylum seekers and other displaced persons in Malaysia, and the Malaysian government’s refugee policy of “not having a policy”. Thomas obtained his Master of Arts in International Studies from the University of Nottingham (Malaysia) where he graduated with Distinction, completing a dissertation that assessed Malaysia’s responses to China in the South China Sea dispute through the balance of threat approach. He also holds a BA in Communication and Media Management, and a BA Honours in Communication, Media & Culture from the University of South Australia. Previously, he was a public relations practitioner focusing on social media management and media engagement strategies for clients from the government and enterprise technology sectors. Puteri Nor Ariane Yasmin is an Analyst in Foreign Policy and Security Studies at ISIS Malaysia. Her research interests include refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia and forced migration in the region; mental health; drug addiction, treatment and rehabilitation; and socio-economic dynamics. She holds a BA (Hons.) in Political Science and History from the University of Melbourne, and an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge. Ariane previously interned with ISIS in 2010.
  • William Jamieson is a PhD candidate in Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. His work is concerned with the integration of political geography and literary theory through critical creative writing methods to enhance our understanding of how space is 'read' and 'written' by capital. His project concerns dynamics of land reclamation in Singapore and sand extraction across Southeast Asia. His fiction has appeared in Ambit and The Evergreen Review. His fiction pamphlet, Thirst for Sand, was published by Goldsmiths Press.
  • Francesca Humi, as an active member of the Filipino diaspora, writes personal essays and analytical pieces about Filipino identity and racial politics. She has developed knowledge on these issues through her work in peacebuilding in the Philippines, inclusive education at the LSE Eden Centre for Education Enhancement, and, presently, at Kanlungan – a charity empowering Filipino migrants in the UK. She holds a BA in International Development Studies from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and an MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation from LSE, for which she researched American colonial discourses of discipline in the Philippines, 1898-1910.