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COVID-19 is pushing migrants back to their home countries

With large numbers of migrants returning to their countries of origin due to the pandemic, better reintegration plans are urgently needed.

By Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak and Mahreen Khan
COVID-19 is pushing migrants back to their home countries
Indian migrants head to their hometown amid COVID-19 outbreak in Kathmandu, Nepal. 4 June 2020 | Sunil Sharma/Zuma Press/PA Images. All rights reserved
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With COVID-19 disrupting travel, shutting borders, and redefining what is essential work, Pandemic Borders explores what international migration will look like after the pandemic, in this series titled #MigrantFutures

Migrants are critical for many low and middle-income countries like Nepal, El Salvador and Tonga where remittances comprise between 15 to 40% of annual GDP.

Our research using detailed microdata shows that declining trends in 2020 remittances, had a considerable impact on food security and income of migrant-dependent households. This makes migrants especially vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings strongly support the case for supporting migrant households as part of countries’ COVID-19 recovery policies.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0