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Migrants and the
COVID-19 Pandemic
Communication, Inequality,
and Transformation
Edited by Satveer Kaur-Gill · Mohan J. Dutta
Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Satveer Kaur-Gill · Mohan J. Dutta
Editors
Migrants
and the COVID-19
Pandemic
Communication, Inequality, and Transformation
Editors
Satveer Kaur-Gill Mohan J. Dutta
The Dartmouth Institute for Health Department of Communication,
Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel Journalism and Marketing
School of Medicine Massey University
Dartmouth College Palmerson North, New Zealand
Hanover, NH, USA
ISBN 978-981-19-7383-3 ISBN 978-981-19-7384-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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For all migrants
freezing in blizzards
scorched by the sun
hunted by hate
kept behind cages
left without loved ones.
Preface
This edited book collection highlights applied communication research

that analyzes the experiences of migrants and refugees from a structural
approach. The book aims to bring to the fore the voices of migrant
communities, theorizing health inequalities from a grassroots perspec-
tive. Through ground-up theorizing, we pay attention to how migrants
frame pandemic communication as unequal. Constitutive of their expe-
riences of the pandemic are their narratives of outbreak inequality.
The health experiences and outcomes of migrants during the pandemic
were unequally felt throughout the world. The dominant global health
communication literature limitedly engages the experiences of migrants
from the Global South, with the disciplines’ excessive focus on traditional
message effects, public health responses, policy making, health literacy,
and strategic and culturally sensitive health promotion in the discus-
sions on the COVID-19 pandemic and migrants. Neutering scholarship
focused on community-led theorizing directed at structural transforma-
tion, the hegemonic global health communication scholarship enables
the perpetuation of the exploitative and extractive capitalist-colonial status
quo in its production of migrant health as lens for experts and expertise,
not engaging the voices of migrants.
The curation of these chapters assembled in this book is an attempt
to address the gap in communication scholarship on the experiences of
migrants in and from the Global South, where communication theory
and praxis with its traditional episteme of global health communication
vii
viii PREFACE
limitedly marks and groups the experiences of migrants from a gaze of

otherness and simultaneously pathologizes the Global South as cultur-
alist difference. Instead, we hope this edited book brings to our readers
how communication, while deeply unequal for many communities around
the globe, can also be transformative for social change when led and
anchored by communities at the margins, foregrounding questions of
class, organizing, social and racial justice, and resistance.
Singapore, Singapore Satveer Kaur-Gill

Palmerson North, New Zealand Mohan J. Dutta
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the labor of migrants at the global margins who form the
infrastructures of scholarship exploring the effects of COVID-19 among
migrants.
Mohan would like to acknowledge the support of his whanau, his
parents, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, children and partner
Debalina for their sustained support in building registers of solidarity
across spaces of marginality in global labor chains. He would like to
acknowledge the community researchers and organizers, activists, and
advocates that have sustained and held up the networks of organizing
at the “margins of the margins.”
Satveer would like to acknowledge her greatest cheerleader and best
friend, Jaipal, who continues to champion her scholarship through care,
commitment, and unwavering support. Embodied in the writings of this
book are Jaipal’s constant reminders to remain principled in the face of
power, no matter the sacrifice. Always insufficient, Satveer also shares her
profound gratitude to her mother for working tirelessly to give her the
opportunities she now has. Despite retiring, you continue to share your
labor, just so that your daughter can have a little more sleep at night. And
finally, Satveer acknowledges her Ma and Baba, and to all the Mas and
Babas, who despite incredibly perilous journeys, enduring immense pain
and suffering, made their homes away from home just so their children
could have better lives and opportunities.
ix
Contents
1 The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Migrants:

An Outbreak of Inequality 1
Satveer Kaur-Gill and Mohan J. Dutta
2 The Role of Contemporary Neoliberal Government
Policies in the Erosion of Migrant Labor Rights
During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Examination
of Executive, Legislative and Judicial Trends in India
and the United States 27
Rati Kumar
3 The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on the Health
of Rohingya Refugees 51
Md. Mahbubur Rahman and Mohan J. Dutta
4 Listening for Erasures as Method in Making
Sense of Health Disparities: Culture-Centered
Constructions of Health Among Refugees 69
Pooja Jayan and Mohan J. Dutta
5 The Implications of Being Thrice-Marginalized: Work
Migrants in India During the Coronavirus Lockdown 85
Devalina Mookerjee and Shubhabrata Roy
xi
xii CONTENTS
6 Extreme (Im)mobility and Mental Health Inequalities:

Migrant Construction Workers in Singapore During
the COVID-19 Pandemic 107
Satveer Kaur-Gill, Samira Hassan, and Yeo Qin-Liang
7 Indonesian Domestic Workers in Malaysia During
the COVID-19 Pandemic 131
Asha Rathina Pandi
8 Conducting Digital Ethnography with Precarious
Migrant Workers in a Pandemic 149
Yeo Qin-Liang, Satveer Kaur-Gill, and Samira Hassan
9 Profiling the Diseased: Tablighi Jamaat and Racist
Experiences in Assam 179
Suraj Gogoi and Rohini Sen
10 Community-Based Art Interventions, Migrant Health
Inequalities, and COVID-19 Coping 195
Srividya Ramasubramanian and Anthony Ramirez
11 Culture-Centered Migrant Organizing at the Margins:
Resisting Hate Amidst COVID-19 217
Mohan J. Dutta, Indranil Mandal, and Pankaj Baskey
Notes on Contributors
Pankaj Baskey is an Indigenous (Santali) Community Researcher with

the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation
(CARE) based in West Bengal, India.
Mohan J. Dutta (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is Dean’s Chair
Professor of Communication and the Director of the Center for Culture-
Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, developing culturally-
centered, community-based projects of social change that articulate health
as a human right. His research examines the role of advocacy and activism
in marginalizing structures, the relationship between poverty and health,
political economy of global health policies, the mobilization of cultural
tropes for the justification of neo-colonial health development projects,
and how participatory culture-centered processes and strategies of radical
democracy serve as axes of global social change.
Suraj Gogoi is a sociologist interested in social, political, and ethical life
in South Asia. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of
Liberal Arts and Sciences, RV University, Bangalore. His forthcoming
book Tribal Question and Assamese Identity: Poetics and Politics of
Indigeneity (co-authored with Manoranjan Pegu) frames the social and
political life in contemporary Assam by situating the figure of the tribal in
conversation with caste Assamese society (and culture), official language
politics, and the nature of Assamese nationalism. His current research also
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
engages with regimes of citizenship and the figure of the minority citizen-
subject in South Asia. He is a social critic and writes regularly on culture,
politics, and society in contemporary India.
Samira Hassan is a writer, researcher, and translator who has worked
on issues of migration, race, and mental health across Singapore,
Bangladesh, and Seoul. His research experience is deeply connected with
her grassroots advocacy and activism for migrant worker communities in
Singapore.
Pooja Jayan is a Junior Research Officer and Ph.D. student in the Center
of Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE),
School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey Univer-
sity, Palmerston North, Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her current research
interests are in health communication, specifically looking at health expe-
riences and inequalities among marginalized communities. Her doctoral
thesis looks at the health and well-being of migrant Indian nurses in
New Zealand. She received the Society for Research on Women Research
Award (SROW). In her research projects in New Zealand and India,
she engages with migrants, refugees, women, and minority communities
experiencing marginalization.
Satveer Kaur-Gill is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Dart-
mouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Dartmouth
College. Her research focuses on minority health disparities. Her research
projects broadly include (1) racially discordant patient-provider commu-
nication, (2) telehealth inequities, (3) health inequalities facing subaltern
migrant workers in South East Asia and South Asia, and (4) health
inequalities of people whose self-reported income were in the lowest
income bracket in Singapore. She received her Master of Science (M.Sc.)
in International Public Policy from University College London in 2011
and her Bachelor of Social Science (B.Sc. with Honors) from the National
University of Singapore. She is a 2021 National Communication Associ-
ation, Health Communication Division’s Early Career Award recipient,
2019–2020 US-ASEAN Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a 2016–
2017 Yale Fox Fellow.
Rati Kumar an Assistant Professor at San Diego State University is a crit-
ical health communication scholar with a focus on health inequities and
culturally situated health interventions. Her work draws on the strand
of “health in displacement,” conceptualizing displacement both as spatial
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
displacement induced by voluntary and forced migratory processes, as

well as a meta-level systemic displacement of disenfranchised commu-
nities. Her research focuses on centering the cultural knowledge of
marginalized communities within mainstream health spaces as agents of
structural and policy change. Her recent scholarship focuses on refugees
and migrant workers, and in communities and families affected by mass
incarceration. Drawing on her ethos as a former student-athlete and law
school graduate, she is passionate about action-oriented, community-
based, and policy-focused research.
Indranil Mandal is a Community Researcher with the Center for
Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) based
in West Bengal, India.
Devalina Mookerjee works across research, publishing, and translation in
India. Qualitative empirical work in health and education are her primary
research interests. After a Ph.D. in Communication, from Purdue Univer-
sity, USA, she has over the last two decades participated in research in 14
states in India, investigating subjects such as educational play, behavior,
and understandings of health and hygiene among adults and children,
and providing research input to help design interface for online educa-
tion, among others. Her forthcoming book translates stories of fear by
the Bengali writer Bibhutibhushan to English from the original Bengali
and discusses how narratives of ghost evolve to reflect the culture-specific
understandings of a society, looking at itself.
Asha Rathina Pandi is an Independent Consultant and Research Asso-
ciate with the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and
Evaluation (CARE), NZ. Her research focuses on marginalized popu-
lations in Malaysia, specifically, the intersections of poverty, migrant
workers’ rights, social justice, and policy advocacy.
Yeo Qin-Liang is a Researcher whose academic interests include the
comparative political economy of development, welfare states, civil society
activism, and migrant health. He is also the co-founder of GiftforGood, a
non-profit that facilitates in-kind donations to charities across Singapore.
Md. Mahbubur Rahman is a Ph.D. student at the School of Commu-
nication, Journalism, and Marketing of Massey University, New Zealand.
His primary area of health communication research entails the study of
refugee health. He also works as a Research Assistant at the Center for
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey

University where he engages with refugee and new migrant communities
of New Zealand utilizing Kaupapa Māori theories and Culture-Centered
Approach (CCA) methodologies to develop community-led solutions.
His primary research interests include health communication, migrant
health, refugee health, pharmacy, and medicine. He is also a registered
pharmacist of Bangladesh.
Srividya Ramasubramanian is an Indian-American immigrant who
moved to the USA in 1999 for her Ph.D. at Penn State University. She
is a Presidential Impact Fellow and Professor of Communication at Texas
A&M University. Her scholarship focuses on community-oriented media,
media literacy, race/ethnicity and media, and mindfulness. She is also the
co-founder of Media Rise, a non-profit that brings educators, artists, and
activists together to promote meaningful media for social good. She is
also a musician, visual artist, and poet.
Anthony Ramirez (PhD, Texas A&M University) is an Assistant
Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Downtown.
His research focuses on Latinx and U.S.-Mexico border representation in
popular culture and media.
Shubhabrata Roy set up BIAS because it seemed to him that far
too many essential research questions about India were going unan-
swered across academia and industry. With two decades of experience
in qualitative empirical research, he specializes in consumer behavior,
entrepreneurship, and design thinking, and continues his effort to put
together teams that investigate, and provide nuanced and comprehen-
sive answers to questions in human behavior and decision-making in the
Indian context.
Rohini Sen is an Assistant Professor at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P
Jindal Global University and is pursuing her Ph.D. from the School of
Law, University of Warwick as a Chancellor’s Scholar. Her broad research
interests are Critical Approaches to International Law (CAIL), critical
pedagogy, queer feminist methods and approaches, decolonial and post-
colonial theories, and porous intersections of law and social sciences. Her
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii
current research focuses on (a) critical pedagogy and its dialogical rela-
tionship with the pedagogue and formal and (b) informal barriers to the
workings of Sexual Harassment Committees in Indian Higher Educa-
tion Institutes. When not struggling to be an academic, she spends her
time curating handloom sarees and looking for ways to contaminate the
English language through vernacular praxis.
List of Figures
Fig. 11.1 Poster promoting Hindu-Muslim unity circulated

via digital platforms (Center for Culture-Centered
Approach to Research and Evaluation, CARE) 230
Fig. 11.2 Poster voicing the rights of migrant workers
and demanding employment guarantee 231
xix
CHAPTER 1
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious

Migrants: An Outbreak of Inequality
Satveer Kaur-Gill and Mohan J. Dutta
The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounds the unequal trajectories of infec-

tious diseases globally, coupled with the highly unequal effects of
pandemic responses adopted locally, regionally, and nationally (Bojorquez
et al., 2021; Elers et al., 2021; Habersaat et al., 2020; Rydland et al.,
2022). The patterns of distribution of the burdens of the pandemic
both within nation-states and across nation-states drive home the mate-
riality of the vastly unequal terrains of health and well-being that the
accelerated expansion of extractive capitalism has caused. These inequal-
ities are constituted by almost five decades of aggressive and relentless
pursuit of neoliberal policy-making and are intertwined with inequalities
S. Kaur-Gill (B)
The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School
of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
e-mail: ksatveer@gmail.com
M. J. Dutta
Massey University, Palmerson North, New Zealand
e-mail: m.j.dutta@massey.ac.nz
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_1
2 S. KAUR-GILL AND M. J. DUTTA
in the distribution of wealth, income, and opportunity (Dutta, 2016).

The pursuit of the free market as a panacea, pushed relentlessly by inter-
national financial institutions, has shaped the management of politics,
economics, and society globally, albeit in variegated forms (Brenner et al.,
2010). The zeitgeist of neoliberalism, based on the singular commitment
to promoting the free market, has targeted and re-arranged aspirations,
desires, and imaginations across spaces, fundamentally constituting health
risks at the margins of global economies (Dutta, 2016).
In the process of establishing the free market as the panacea to
global problems that have been propelled by the aggressive pursuit of
the free market, from hunger and poverty to well-being and climate
change, neoliberal reforms have established and perpetuated exploita-
tive labor regimes that thrive on the legitimization of diverse modes of
exploitation (Collins & Rothe, 2019; Chomsky, 1998; Dutta, 2017). The
twin forces of expelling the poor from their livelihood through contin-
ually expanding extractive practices and then incorporating them into
the global networks of production, constitute the exploitative infrastruc-
tures of neoliberal economies. Migration forms a critical and necessary
infrastructure in the neoliberal pursuit of new spaces of extraction, with
discardable migrant bodies, without labor rights and pathways of access to
citizenship-based protections serving as drivers of accelerated growth. The
futuristic registers for smart and sustainable urban organizing are built
on the invisibilization and erasure of hyper-precarious migrants. Even as
global discourses of profitability have turned toward incorporating and
commoditizing sustainability as a rhetorical device, the exploitation of
expendable migrants underpins the architecture continually promoted in
the sustainability narrative.
Through communicative inversions, referring to the turning of materi-
ality on its head via communication processes (Dutta, 2020), the very
problems that have resulted from the aggressive pursuit of neoliberal
reforms have been configured as the targets of neoliberal policy-making.
More neoliberalism and the greater and faster pursuit of the free market
have been posed as the necessary transformations to produce sustain-
able growth, address climate change, and improve population-level health
and well-being. The current neoliberal formations incorporate digital
technologies as catalysts for resource extraction and labor exploitation
(Chakrabarty, 2019; Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018; Grossi & Pianezzi, 2017).
These digital platforms, on the one hand, exploit the labor of hyper-
precarious migrant workers and are located in architectures built through
1 THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND PRECARIOUS MIGRANTS: … 3
worker exploitation, and on the other hand, form the communica-

tive infrastructures for propagating the neoliberal seductions that expel
the poor from the Global South into the neoliberal labor chains. The
narrative structures that hold up the exploitation of migrants in global
labor chains are circulated via communicative inversions, often narrated
and distributed through digital platforms, cultivating images of upward
mobility, opportunity, and sustainability attached to smart urban utopias.
The futuristic “Smart City” and the dreams it weaves perpetuate the
ongoing exploitation of migrants. The production of the futuristic urban
digital infrastructure forms the frontiers of neoliberal expansion, branded
as sustainability. Images of futuristic urban infrastructures and digitally
mediated spaces actively erase the everyday practices of exploitation of
migrants and the erasure of migrant rights.
The persistence of the neoliberal order has historically depended on
its communicative infrastructure, deploying propaganda to uphold the
uncritical celebration of the free market. The communicative construc-
tion of smart, urban, sustainable futures has been organized to draw
in investments, re-organize resources, and deploy accelerated projects of
development sold as emancipatory futures (Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c).
Migration is embedded within this neoliberal ideology and incorporated
as an instrument for creating and promoting profitable spaces for global
capital, forming the very infrastructural basis for the construction of smart
cities. As infrastructures, industries, and technologies have been strate-
gically arranged to serve the agendas of transnational capital, they have
drawn on the continual supply of cheap and disposable labor. In other
words, both extraction and exploitation work hand-in-hand, with migra-
tion playing a critical role in the global circuit of capital. The movement
of cheap, discardable, and exploitable labor into spaces of accelerated
exploitation enables transnational capital to generate the greatest profits,
feeding the networks of investors and shareholders. In contrast, migrant
workers reap the least from the accelerated growth. The perpetuation
of accelerated growth contributes to and draws on deeply exploitative
practices targeting migrants employed in precarious conditions without
labor rights and the right to raise their voices. By keeping resources to a
minimum, such as the cost of migrant wages, practices such as inden-
ture of hiring, poor housing and sanitation, limited access to health
resources, and low occupational safety standards are perpetuated in these
industries. All to maximally extract profits from the labor of low-wage
migrants. During a pandemic, these inequalities are amplified, but also
are rendered visible, depicting how outbreaks manifest unequally for

certain communities and workers at the margins. During the COVID-
19 pandemic, precarious migrant populations faced uneven outbreak
inequalities, coupled with being placed under amplified forms of already
existing surveillance and control. The inequalities related to the COVID-
19 pandemic are reflected in the interpenetrating structures of capitalism,
colonialism, and racism.
This edited collection foregrounds the everyday precarities negotiated
by migrants at the margins of global neoliberal transformation amidst
the pandemic. Drawing from multi-method approaches, the collection
examines the negotiations of COVID-19 within the context of migra-
tion. Offering a corrective to the dominant approach to migration and
global health communication that takes a culturally essentialist approach,
we turn to migrant experiences at the margins employing a struc-
tural analysis. Migration constitutes the context of structural violence in
global neoliberal economies, reflected in the disproportionate burdens
of health risks borne by migrants at the margins. This book attends
to the question, how are migrants experiencing the pandemic amidst
the features of extreme (im)mobility introduced by the lockdown policy
responses across global spaces? Pandemic related extreme (im)mobility
in the context of precarious migrants refers to the structural forma-
tions of the infrastructures of migration, policy responses in response to
COVID-19, placing migrant workers and migrants at the borders under
surveillance, and limiting the movement of migrants in, between, and
across spaces. Migration, dependent upon policies that enable mobilities
across spaces (Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018), is framed within the contexts of
(im)mobility introduced by the lockdown measures and other preventive
responses. Traversing across geographically diverse spaces, both within the
Global South and in the Global North, the essays weave together the
negotiations of migration as the register for making sense of health.
The Relationship Between Outbreak

and Communicative Inequalities
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected vulnerable populations dispro-
portionately around the globe. Precarious migrants faced unequal health
consequences and threats from the pandemic differently from non-mobile
citizens. The impact of the pandemic on precarious migrants requires
serious attention and interrogation for its disproportionately large effects
on the health and well-being of migrant workers toiling on global labor

chains. The vast inequalities of the pandemic burden are intertwined
with communicative inequalities, reflecting the inequalities in the distri-
bution of communication resources, both resources for information and
resources for voice (Dutta, 2016, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Commu-
nicative inequalities go beyond mapping the distribution patterns of
communication technologies (e.g., access issues) and interrogate how
the distribution of communicative resources is organized. For example,
communicative inequalities ask how preventive health information and
messages are constructed and deployed. How did states manage, direct,
and relay public health messages to the population during a pandemic?
What are the communicative avenues for voice, representation, and
participation by those most disenfranchised during the pandemic? These
questions center our analysis of communicative inequalities and their
relationship to outbreak inequalities.
The precarity facing migrant laborers often refers to the condition
of being casual and disposable from largely fragile working conditions
and is marked by communicative inequality. Precarious migrants, working
in the casual, unorganized, and contract-less sectors, are largely unpro-
tected, working in special economic zones or urban hubs marked as the
sites of unfettered capitalist expansion and therefore outside the ambits
of labor regulations. These spaces, sold as spaces for urban futurism, are
the destination hubs for global capitalist investment, particularly invest-
ments by the technology and financial sectors (Dutta, 2021a). The ease
of flow of capital, projects, investments, and futuristic architectures in
specially designated spaces of futurism is enabled through the authori-
tarian repression of organized labor and criminalization of worker dissent.
Migrant workers remain largely erased from the spaces of urban orga-
nizing, with limited to no access to communicative infrastructures for
structurally-based information, representation, participation, and voice.
The structures of neoliberal capitalism shape communicative inequali-
ties and, in turn, are connected with health inequalities experienced by
migrants.
The jarring health disparities facing precarious migrants have been
documented worldwide. Refugees, migrant domestic and construction
workers, low-wage migrant laborers, and undocumented migrants are
some examples of precarious migrants (Bhopal, 2020; Dutta, 2020,
2021a; Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021; Martuscelli, 2021;
Mookerjee et al., 2021; Nasol & Francisco-Menchavez, 2021; Sanfe-

lici, 2021; Ye, 2021) that faced significant health disparities when the
pandemic unfolded. The precarity of migrants in a pandemic made
evident how the health of migrants is situated in a system of exploita-
tive capitalist structures. Cramped and crowded spaces of rest and living,
overworked, a lack of access to nutritious food, intermittent or poor
wages, and facing digital limitations, precarious migrants are embedded
in an ecological system of structural injustices. These structural injustices
are coupled with an evolving pandemic where public health messages are
arranged via Eurocentric logics on behavior change as individual efforts
through health promotion (Dutta, 2005, 2021b), such as masking up,
sanitizing, and social distancing. These acts are viewed as behavioral
responses to stay safe from infections. Migrant health communication
within the hegemonic framework promotes messages, reducing migrants
to cultural essences and occupying themselves with the design of effec-
tive, culturally sensitive, tailored, and targeted messages. Lopez and Neely
(2021), however, remind us that the health of the racialized body must
be recognized through the lens of society, where the health or illness of
the individual body is very much socially and communicatively configured
to the larger (in)justices in society.
Therefore, these types of health information messages fail to account
for the plight of migrants living in overcrowded spaces, with little mate-
rial resources to access masks, sanitizers, or soaps, and make it impossible
to socially distance themselves. These conditions are all part of the
broader structures of precarity that operate in the context of migrant lives.
Furthermore, during a pandemic, the difficulty for precarious migrants
to access similar material resources to protect themselves from infectious
disease outbreaks compared to the rest of the population is uneven and
unequal. Thus, individual behavior change that relies on the individual
to garner and maintain material resources of health protection fails to
address the disproportionate outbreaks among these population groups,
leaving the structures intact. Moreover, in minimizing the role of the
structure in shaping migrant health at the margins, this body of schol-
arship contributes to the further hyper-precarization and exploitation of
workers. They turn migrant workers into cultural essences constructed
within the ambits of the hegemonic ideology, extract cultural charac-
teristics, and then target these cultural characteristics. Simultaneously,
migrant bodies and responses are turned into data, directed toward the
fine-tuning of effective health messages. Hegemonic health messaging
is complemented by authoritarian strategies of surveillance and disci-

plining targeting migrant workers. The individualized culturalist health
messaging, alongside the technologies of surveillance and discipline, work
together to obfuscate the serious and gross violations of labor and human
rights of migrants at the margins.
In Singapore, for example, migrant construction workers live in
overcrowded dormitories (see Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). These
dormitories house approximately 20 workers in a room, making social
distancing impossible or an irrelevant health measure in the context of
the poor living conditions experienced by migrant workers. Many workers
shared bar soaps, water taps, and restrooms, and had no access to sani-
tizers (Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Therefore, dominant public health
messages that focused on the acquisition of masks, sanitizers, and social
distancing failed to consider the disparities among populations unable
to carry out these behaviors due to the lack of material resources and
the inability to locate spaces for effective social distancing. Public health
messages were not responsive to how migrant infrastructures embedded
in precarity amplify health vulnerabilities in a pandemic (Dutta, 2021c,
2022).
This edited volume, interested in questions of communicative inequal-
ities and the interlinkages to health disparities, will broadly outline
the role of precarious structural conditions, reproducing communicative
inequalities for migrants, bringing attention to a need for structurally
responsive health systems for precarious populations. The role of health
communication is shifted from one of creating techniques for effective
message delivery to health organizing for structural transformation in soli-
darity with the margins (Dutta et al., 2019). When discussing the role
communicative inequalities play in exacerbating precarious conditions for
migrants, this overview chapter seeks to theorize communicative inequal-
ities in the context of outbreak inequalities as a critical conceptual anchor.
The chapter discusses the global context of migrant health and the struc-
tural conditions of (im)mobilities faced by migrants in the margins, tied
to how communicative inequalities contribute to outbreak inequalities.
Entrenched in systems that organize (im)mobilities of migrants (Adey
et al., 2021), we discuss how health messages, health infrastructures, and
health systems have been conditioned for exclusion and exploitation.
Communicative disparities are set up to reflect how migrants faced
outbreak inequalities across the globe during the pandemic. The extreme
risks and infections faced by migrants, including other structural dispar-

ities, will be highlighted in the chapters selected to provide an overview
of the various sections that will draw on their voices in research. In the
backdrop of their ongoing erasure, migrants enact their agency through
their participation in interpretive processes to make sense of the struc-
tures, the everyday negotiations of structures, and the organizing to
challenge the authoritarian repression and technologies of controlling
labor. Worker organizing and worker articulations foreground registers
of resistance as the basis for securing worker health. Moreover, in the
backdrop of the large-scale deployment of digital platforms to disseminate
hate as a strategy for enacting capitalist power and control carried out by
the authoritarian state, migrant worker organizing offers opportunities for
social change.
Precarities as Ecological
Low-skilled migrants worldwide faced significant outbreak inequalities
during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Dutta, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c;
Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021; Mookerjee et al., 2021;
Pandey et al., 2021). Outbreak inequalities are profoundly connected
to how such hyper-precarious work functions in neoliberal societies that
disenfranchise migrant health. Migrants are entrenched in precarious
structures for the benefit of capital (Dutta, 2020). Limiting workers’
access to health systems and infrastructures allows for greater profit extrac-
tion from the bodies of these workers (Dutta, 2017; Dutta & Kaur-Gill,
2018). Kathiravelu (2021) argues that the role of unequal structures
causes far greater vulnerabilities and shocks to migrant populations in a
pandemic, describing this as infrastructural (in)justice faced by precarious
migrant populations. These injustices are institutionally governed, shaping
how institutions distribute resources inequitably during the COVID-19
pandemic (Kathiravelu, 2021).
Precarious employment structures of low-wage migrant workers, such
as construction workers, day laborers, essential front-line workers, and
domestic workers, create conditions in which low-wage migrants are
discursively erased, materially minimized, and disengaged, resulting in
communicative erasures at multiple categories of health needs. The
consequence of absence and access during the COVID-19 pandemic
amplifies the many disparities that migrants face during social crises.
Therefore, when the pandemic occurred, precarious groups such as
migrants were most vulnerable, especially as mobile subjects, removed

from the conditions of mobility to (im)mobility (Adey et al., 2021).
Viswanath et al. (2020) point out that communicative inequalities were
intensified when public health communication messages failed to recog-
nize differences in how health information is accessed, retrieved, and
processed for vulnerable groups, resulting in more significant structural
inequities for marginalized groups. Furthermore, Dutta (2016) notes
that these communicative inequalities need to address communicative
resources geared toward structural access to health and well-being. For
example, in Singapore, the lack of public communication messages that
address the structural contexts of migrant work shaped the vast health
inequalities experienced by migrant construction workers. Typically erased
from mainstream discursive sites, both policy discourses and academic
discourses constituted within the infrastructures of state propaganda,
migrant construction workers were the primary victims of the COVID-19
outbreak by April 2020, facing disproportionate numbers of infections.
Dutta (2021a, 2021b, 2021c) noted the communicative features of
structural violence in global migration, drawing attention to the commu-
nicative inequalities that constitute migrant health. The organizing of
spaces for migrants are riddled in the logic of neoliberalism, with living
spaces for migrants being rendered invisible. Structures of citizenship
are organized to erase the voices of migrants, with low-wage migrant
workers violently cut off from accessing pathways to citizenship. Their
bodies, toiling to build the infrastructure of the city, are to be discarded
after their use. Drawing on the concept “margins of the margins,” Dutta
(2021b) elucidates the complex and intertwined structures of commu-
nicative erasure, tied to the disenfranchisement of migrants from pathways
of citizenship. Citizenship, therefore, is a key resource in the disenfran-
chisement of migrant rights, and in the simultaneous incorporation of
migrants at the “margins of the margins” as hyper-precarious and discard-
able labor in extreme neoliberal formations. Team and Anderson (2020)
described how the pandemic amplified structural vulnerabilities, identi-
fying structural vulnerabilities as social, geographic, and physical systems
that intersect to create conditions that impact the health of those living
in vulnerable conditions. For example, labor conditions of precarious
migrants were connected to crowded and dilapidated housing, job and
food insecurity, and infectious disease transmission, leading to poor health
protections (Dutta, 2021a; Jamil & Dutta, 2021; Kaur-Gill, 2020).
Jamil and Dutta (2021) identified the communicative circulation of

otherness of low-wage migrant workers from Bangladesh living in the
Middle East, hired to be placed outside mainstream spaces for exclusion in
the host country. Through exclusion, communicative, and structural, the
migration infrastructures profit from keeping low-wage migrants voice-
less, isolated, and exploited. Their exclusion leaves them underserved
in various ways, including health outcomes. The documented effects
of the structural violence that impact the bodies of workers are deeply
entrenched in how the employment structures of such work perpetuate
rife inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, Mookerjee
et al. (2021) report how internal migrants in India working in construc-
tion, as day laborers, or as domestic workers, an essential labor force in
the cities, had to return to their villages abruptly. When the COVID-19
outbreak occurred, they were given mere hours to leave, reifying their
status as dispensable workers. The exodus of workers from the cities,
some by foot over long journeys, caused death, sickness, mounting debt,
limited access to health infrastructures, and job insecurity. Workers hailing
from rural villages and towns often took on debt to travel to the city
for work. Thus, the debt amount ballooned for workers without employ-
ment, adding significant stress because of the now compounded debt trap.
Upon return to their villages, they were also stigmatized as virus carriers
during lockdowns, creating cycles of mental health violence tied to work,
community, and social relations.
In the United States, Pandey et al. (2021) examined how migrant
domestic workers faced further exploitation through expanded labor
roles. Workers were found to have greater workloads, with little to no
power to ask for better compensation from the stark power dynamics
concentrated in the hands of employers. This also placed them at further
health precarity with limited health insurance access, despite employers’
heightened dependency on domestic workers while in lockdown (Pandey
et al., 2021). The informality and dispensability of conducting such work
implicate how domestic workers negotiate communicative resources for
better labor and health conditions. Furthermore, accessing and adopting
protective gear for health safety were absent, leaving workers between
difficult choices to protect themselves or facing intermittent job loss and
income. When studying precarious migrants, the environment of hire
in which they are situated informs where poor health indicators occur.
The connection between labor and health informs health outcomes.
The connection between the macro narratives of economic and mate-

rial precarity to the micro levels of how their health inequalities are
experienced reflects the ecological cycle of health vulnerabilities for
migrants.
Similarly, in Malaysia, there are approximately 3.5 million migrants, of
which an estimated 1.3 million are irregular migrants. They constitute
refugees and asylum seekers, with irregular migrants often conducting
domestic, construction, manufacturing, and agricultural work in Malaysia.
Somiah (2022) details the ecological precarity of irregular migrants in
Sabah, Malaysia. Stigmatized as social threats, their status as irregular
migrants constituted their experiences in the host country as subjects
for hyper-surveillance, often raided, interrogated, and threatened by state
officials and agents. Somiah (2021) posit that the processes through
which migrants are documented in Sabah, such as their illegal status, rein-
force their threatening presence as unmanageable and, therefore, prob-
lematic. During the early onset of the outbreak in 2020, undocumented
irregular migrants were subjected intensively to hyper-surveillance. State
officials actively raided these communities under the guise of medical
surveillance, eventually deporting this population group. Wahab (2020)
reported that these very detention centers became active COVID-19 clus-
ters due to the neglected, crowded, cramped, and unhygienic conditions.
To add, precarious migrants in Malaysia were confronted with job losses
from the irregularity of their work, resulting in issues of hunger and food
insecurity. In addition, literacy issues left migrants without the informa-
tion required on preventative health behaviors and COVID-19-related
information. These factors later led to extreme health disparities faced by
undocumented migrants in the country (Wahab, 2020).
Jamil and Dutta (2021) studied the social media discourses of
Bangladeshi migrant workers, identifying how interconnected disparities
were experienced by precarious migrant workers during the pandemic.
Once again, the precarity of low-skilled migration leaves workers at
risk of job insecurity, mental health violence, and mounting debt.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic made these insecurities even more
complex. The responsibility of performing low-skilled migrant work such
as domestic and construction work meant being left unemployed during
the pandemic, leaving workers facing job insecurity and causing mental
anguish. Workers were also ushered into groups for testing procedures,
with workers cramped into living arrangements that made them more
prone to outbreaks. Jamil and Dutta’s (2021) study indicated serious
labor and health violations and abuses of Bangladeshi workers residing

in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. This included workers being
crammed into rooms or living spaces or rendered homeless during the
pandemic. The interconnectedness of the lived experiences of precarious
migrants during the pandemic requires a global response that accounts
for the migration infrastructures that keep workers in a constant state of
marginalization. Migrant infrastructures refer to the interconnected phys-
ical, digital, and organizational structures that account for migrant lives,
labor, and health, made up of policies, resources, roles, and processes
(Leurs, 2019). The absence or erasure from communicative resources,
both resources for voice and information resources, are part of how the
migrant infrastructures keep migrants in the margins of the host country.
Several chapters in this book will discuss these interconnections in
the context of COVID-19 infections that resulted in jarring health
inequalities for migrants.
Health Information
Communicative erasures are marked by how migrant workers are
excluded from health infrastructures. Erased from mainstream health
organizing, workers are left without resources to organize for them-
selves and seek out health information they require during the pandemic.
Being discursively and socially erased from mainstream society can mean
facing minimal consideration from national COVID-19 health policies
and procedures. In India, the sweeping lockdowns by the government
added to the poor health of precarious migrants in the city (Mookerjee
et al., 2021). In Singapore, the rife outbreak inequality of COVID-19
infections felt by migrant construction workers during the pandemic was
reinforced by poor living conditions and weak structural mechanisms to
protect labor conditions. Within the context of their minimization and
elimination, workers were initially absent from COVID-19 response plans
(Chan & Kuan, 2020), causing confusion, chaos, and further vulnerabili-
ties for exploited workers. Communicative erasures and exclusions directly
impact the health consequences of precarious migrants, who, for example,
were suddenly expelled out of cities in India with little consequences for
their health rights.
When conducting in-depth interviews through various digital tools
with migrant construction workers, one of us noted the ways in which
the workers shared the lack of response and deliberate ignorance of
their employers to implement measures to protect workers. During an

interview via a Facebook Messenger call, Shabir shared:
Yeah, yesterday I so many times I tell him, I don’t want to go tomorrow

work because my nearest room, already positive, but they don’t want to
listen. They tell me, you okay you stay whatever we take decision, after
we inform you. Already I come to work, my room, all people come to
work.” Despite the chaos within their dormitory settings regarding the
separation of infected workers from noninfected workers, workers were
told to continue working at construction sites.
Health information resources and messages were severely lacking for

migrant workers causing confusion, fear, and chaos. An activist physician
in Singapore who provided translation services for health information to
Bangladeshi migrant workers revealed the organic and evolving nature
of medical translation work, amid the staggering number of COVID-19
infections that rose among migrant construction workers in April 2020.
She shared how misinformation added to the morale of workers.
…when the workers are told that they are being quarantined, just quar-
antined, because they don’t have just nothing, just quarantined, they start
crying because they think they’re going to die. That’s the amount of fear
in the workers right now. And the amount of misinformation, I would say,
which is why [name of translator] would have a kind of a group to create
like a COVID fact sheet at a certain point
Being excluded meant being left out of dominant public health commu-
nication messages. Public health communication messages did not
include tailored messages for migrant workers. Furthermore, public
health communication messages in Singapore started to distinguish “two
curves,” listing infections among migrant construction workers sepa-
rately from the local population. These strategies of “othering” workers
also meant “othering” them from COVID-19 health communication
messages, leaving civil society organizations in the initial stages of the
outbreak scrambling to bridge these information gaps (Chan & Kuan,
2020; Yuen et al., 2021). Shared by another migrant worker activist in
Singapore regarding strategies for organizing,
…when we recognized that COVID would have a serious disproportionate

impact on our migrant community…we put out a mailing list… to compile
a list of the needs of different groups…and initiatives put in place to meet

these needs…with this compilation… we were able then able to branch
out into organizing some form of a response.
Workers interviewed during the early periods of the outbreak shared

how infected workers were sharing resources such as water coolers, toilets,
and charging facilities with non-infected workers due to the limited
dormitory infrastructures and the cramped conditions of these living
sites. Furthermore, the precarization of migrant construction work in
Singapore meant having to make difficult decisions between not getting
paid for missing work or risking getting infected by continuing work on
construction sites. In Singapore, migrant workers revealed fears of wage
theft from their employers, and cycles of debt traps that would follow
as stressors. The movement restrictions they faced during the pandemic
also meant worrying about remitting salaries to their families back home.
The extreme neoliberalism at work in authoritarian states, such as Singa-
pore, Malaysia, UAE, and Qatar, in the hiring and managing low-wage
workers have grave implications for worker health and mental health.
Dutta (2020) defines this phenomenon of extreme neoliberalism “as
the ideology of the free market implemented by an authoritarian state
through technologies of violence” (p. 2), where the authoritarian state
manages workers for exclusion. Through exclusion and repression that
pathologizes organizing and resistance across civil society as problem-
atic, the differential management and treatment of workers is legitimized
through the hegemonic narrative of “Asian values” as opposed to a
human rights framework (Koh et al., 2017).
Some dormitory operators isolated infected workers in locked rooms
without their phone charges, creating a communicative vacuum and
therefore, perpetuating the conditions of extreme (im)mobility. As a
result, workers could not access information on the steps being taken, the
rapid changes being implemented in the dormitories, and the commu-
nicative infrastructures that would point them to the necessary resources
for prevention. Civil society groups, activists, and NGOs began trans-
lating health information messages to migrant workers when they were
spotlighted as “health threats” in Singapore (Ye, 2021). Salient here is
the role of academic expertise in the erasure of the violence experienced
by low-wage migrant workers, with an architecture of expertise estab-
lished in such regimes to whitewash oppressive state-capitalist practices in
worker exploitation. For instance, the everyday reality of sometimes more
than 20 workers living in conditions in a room pre-pandemic with “no

limits on the maximum number of beds allowed per room” reported by
the mainstream media (Phua, 2020, para 17) is communicatively inverted
by minimizing structurally-centered discourses, downplaying or keeping
absent the precarity of their migration status and structural conditions,
employing a cultural deficit analysis to advocate for hygiene specific inter-
ventions for migrant workers, and propping up the state for nimble
pandemic management without interrogating the socio-political context
of precarious migration infrastructures (e.g., O’Lwin, 2022; Yip et al.,
2021).
State messages reported on mainstream news scold critiques centered
on a structural analysis of migrant conditions, challenging reports of
discrimination against workers. In one such article, a state spokesperson
suggested that free access to vaccinations for migrant workers and the
continued payment of their wages during quarantines were acts of benev-
olence shown by the state, “We also made sure our migrant workers
continued to be paid even when the country was under lockdown and
they were unable to work. How many countries did this?” (Lim, 2022,
para 4). Here we see neoliberal authoritarianism is communicatively
perpetuated through expertise, the work of expertise erasing the strug-
gles of precarious migrants while at the same time upholding the rhetoric
of smart pandemic management by the state.
Digital Spaces
Digital platforms reproduce and magnify communicative inequalities,
making up the frontiers of transnational technology capital. On the one
hand, these digital platforms are held up by extractive and exploitative
processes; on the other hand, they perpetuate these processes to create
ever-expanding architectures of profiteering. The placing of bodies of the
hyper-precarious classes under surveillance, they are exploited as discard-
able and enslaved labor, perpetuating ongoing practices of colonization
through incorporation of their bodies as data to produce new zones of
risk. These risks are disproportionately borne by the hyper-precarious
classes, without access to laying claims to justice. Digital platforms perpet-
uate and reproduce hate that is often directed at migrants at the margins.
Over the past decade, digital platforms have been integral to the acceler-
ated circulation of hate narratives, drawing on the virality of the platform
architecture that is further exacerbated by the affective arousal created by
hate. Much of this hate has been directed at Muslims, who form large
proportions of the migrant underclasses, expelled from their spaces of
livelihood by imperial invasions such as Operation Iraqi Freedom and
the US war in Afghanistan. Islamophobic hate across white supremacist
and Hindutva ecosystems has been amplified manifold on digital plat-
forms, disproportionately directed toward migrants. The narrative of the
migrating Muslim other magnified through digital platforms shaped the
Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.
An entire ecosystem of expertise is mobilized to erase and whitewash
the exploitation, unseeing the exploitative systems, and holding up digital
platforms as emancipatory resources. In the literature on migration and
digital spaces, migrants are depicted as empowered through digital tech-
nologies (see., Chib & Aricat, 2017; Lim et al., 2015; O’Lwin, 2022),
obfuscating the systemic exploitation that constitutes the migrant experi-
ence in the context of the architectures that support digital technologies.
For instance, digital technologies are conceptualized as tools for migrants
to seek empowerment, with digital platforms narrated as technologies
enabling financial mobility through job opportunities. Moreover, digital
technologies are constructed uncritically as resources for establishing
emotional bonds across spaces. In scholarship on digital technologies and
health communication for migrants, technologies are constructed as tools
to disseminate top-down health information.
The pandemic violently disrupted the carefully crafted narratives that
anchor this literature, rendering visible the violence that is scripted into
the organizing of migrant work. It rendered visible the practices of
extreme exploitation that form the architectures of urban spaces projected
as digital hubs, digital architectures, and smart cities where digital plat-
forms are innovated upon, incorporated into exchange logics, and drawn
upon to catalyze exchange. The negotiations of health by discardable and
hyper-precarious migrant workers amidst the lack of access to fundamental
resources of health and well-being are exacerbated by the pandemic,
with COVID-19 infections finding their accelerated pathways through
the overcrowded dormitory rooms housing low-wage migrant workers
(Dutta, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Workers have long expressed these
poor housing conditions and the lack of access to decent food as funda-
mental sources of risks to their health and well-being (Dutta, 2017).
These voices have either been historically repressed or overshadowed by
state propaganda.
The pandemic outbreaks are then responded to with state narra-

tives that articulate the inability to foresee and prevent the outbreaks
while continuing to place workers under surveillance and disciplinary
control. Amidst the surveillance, including surveillance on digital plat-
forms, workers seek resistance strategies, articulating the violence of the
infrastructures that house them (Dutta, 2020). Even as their partici-
pation on digital platforms is monitored and they are threatened for
voicing their everyday struggles, workers seek out strategies for docu-
menting the poor infrastructures and sharing video-based accounts on
digital platforms (Kaur-Gill, 2022). Resistance via digital infrastructures
is negotiated amidst the structures of surveillance and discipline, often
amidst the risks of being deported for voicing their struggles amidst
COVID-19. Similarly, the infrastructure of Islamophobic hate mobilized
on digital platforms is resisted through organizing at the margins, often
connected through digital platforms.
Vaccines
As the pandemic continued in the years 2020 and 2021, the develop-
ment of vaccines became a critical point of change in the management
of the pandemic globally. Vaccine development and distribution would
impact how countries alter public health, social and travel health poli-
cies. However, as vaccines developed, it became apparent that equitable
distribution was not a forefront consideration by nations with access. Two
concepts would be critical in discussions about vaccine distribution during
the pandemic, vaccine inequality (Yamin, 2022), and vaccine apartheid
(Harman et al., 2021). Vaccine inequality refers to the lack of vaccina-
tion access among different population groups within a society that would
impact the health outcomes variedly in a society. This inequality of vaccine
distribution is a critical aspect of how migrants, particularly precarious
migrants across nation-states, would suffer greater health vulnerabilities
with differentiated access to vaccines.
Vaccine apartheid refers to vaccination unavailability in many coun-
tries in the Global South impacting how resource-poor countries would
manage the pandemic, with differing outcomes in pandemic manage-
ment compared to high-income economies because of vaccine inequal-
ities (Harman et al., 2021). Again, precarious migrants in the Global
South would bear some of the most unequal burdens of COVID-
19 vaccine distribution. Harman et al. (2021) argue that low-income
countries face stark differences in vaccine access, reflecting how global

health systems are “driven by a capitalist, philanthropic model (p. 2)”
that operates through the colonial logics of temporary, donor-driven
models. The unethical guarding of vaccine technology via the premise of
intellectual rights made vaccine development and access for low-income
countries dependent on a donor-driven model. This leaves vulnerable
populations with even more significant health inequalities undergirded
by structural injustices through the inequitable distribution of resources.
For example, Rouw et al. (2021) reported that by the first quarter of
2021, high-income countries had enough vaccine resources to vaccinate
their populations twice, while low-income countries could only cover
a third of their populations. These stark differences in vaccine access
have serious implications for those most precarious such as undocu-
mented migrant workers in low-income countries. Various editorials by
public health researchers have precisely indicated that at-risk populations
include undocumented migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and low-wage
migrants in low-income countries where there remains a struggle with
adequate vaccinations (Mukumbang, 2020; Teerawattananon et al., 2021;
Waterman, 2021).
Precarious migrants were burdened with vaccine inequalities from
multiple perspectives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, free vacci-
nation rollouts were a double-edged policy for migrants. For
example, migrants in Malaysia feared navigating vaccination centers,
stemming from previous raids and arrests of undocumented workers when
the lockdowns (movement control order) were announced (Steven et al.,
2021). Similarly, workers in Singapore who face neglected and poor labor
conditions and severe outbreak inequality could access vaccines seam-
lessly with vaccinations made available to migrant workers. West et al.
(2021) embarked on a study to understand vaccine hesitancy among
return Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers. The study revealed that
vaccine hesitancy was higher among migrant workers that faced immigra-
tion vulnerabilities such as undocumented status and perception of the
threat of COVID-19 at places of employment. The ecological precarity
of the pandemic on migrants shared a relationship with how the political
economy of the migration infrastructure of precarious work is managed.
Therefore, they must be closely examined when discussing the health
effects and outcomes of migrants during the pandemic.
Health Equity and Precarious Migrants

The overarching impact on migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic
across global urban infrastructures requires scholarly interrogation that
exposes pandemic responses from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The
deep inequalities that make up lives and livelihoods are rendered visible by
the pandemic brought to the fore of communicative registers. The health
of hyper-precarious migrant workers often erased through the propaganda
infrastructures of neoliberal capitalism is placed on the public discursive
register.
In this edited collection, we bring together various theoretical and
methodological chapters that unpack the devastating and dispropor-
tionate impact the COVID-19 outbreak has had on the lives of migrants
around the globe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Liem et al. (2020)
called on experts to pay attention to the health of migrants (specifi-
cally international migrants) who remain at the margins of health access,
infrastructures, and resources due to the absence of planning for them.
The thousands of migrants stranded during COVID-19 lockdowns, with
limited structural provisions (food, transport, lodging, health services)
that caused deaths not from COVID-19 infections, but from policy
responses during the COVID-19 pandemic, created devastating conse-
quences for this population throughout the world (Pulla, 2020). The
communicative erasures in pandemic response are traced in their impact
on migrant bodies through narratives in these chapters. This series
brings together chapters that discuss expulsions, displacements, invisi-
bility, erasures, and racist policies that are connected to telling us about
health inequalities and disparities for migrants globally.
Rati Kumar’s chapter opens with a critical discussion on the role
that COVID-19 policies played in constraining the rights of precarious
migrants. Through a comparative analysis of the laws of the United
States and India, Kumar’s chapter exposes the endangering of the rights
of precarious migrants, such as undocumented workers, through the
enactment of COVID-19 policies.
The precarization of migrants is constituted amidst the global circu-
lation of hate on digital platforms targeting migrants. Gogoi and Sen’s
chapter addresses the racist experiences of Muslim migrants in Assam.
Portrayed as the “other,” migrants are framed as threats to the purity of
the culture. The pandemic witnessed the global rise of Islamophobia, with
#CoronoJihaad tropes surfacing, framing precarious Muslim migrants as
terrorists intentionally deploying COVID-19 for biowarfare. The global

rise of Islamophobia further catalyzed populist anti-migrant political
climates, complementing the ongoing exploitation of migrants. Hate
directed toward migrants was multiplied on digital platforms, converging
across far-right spaces globally. Note, for instance, the flows of the #Coro-
naJihaad narrative from white supremacist spaces to Hindutva spaces on
digital platforms. The chapter by Dutta, Mandal, and Baskey centers
how local communities in India build spaces for migrant solidarities,
with migrant workers organizing to challenge and resist Islamophobia
disseminated by Hindutva. Community ownership of communicative
infrastructures foregrounds the capitalist processes of exploitation and
the messages of hate disseminated by the capitalist-political class. Worker
agency crafts working-class solidarity as the basis for challenging the
cultural constructions of Hindutva that circulate Islamophobia.
Kaur-Gill, Hassan and Yeo’s chapter discusses how the already
(im)mobile lives of low-wage migrant workers were made even more
precarious from COVID-19 policies that were specifically imposed on
migrant workers for an extended period in Singapore. Migrant work-
ers’ experiences of the pandemic were especially marked by extreme
(im)mobility from excessive medical surveillance, impacting their mental
health and well-being. Mental health narratives point to the structural
conditions of labor, differentiated measures of COVID-19, and hyper
medical surveillance of the bodies of migrant construction workers as
key mental health stressors. Similarly, Pandi’s chapter surfaces intersec-
tional inequalities that impact the health outcomes of Indonesian migrant
domestic workers working and residing in Malaysia during the pandemic.
Mookerjee, Jayan and Dutta, and Dutta and Rahman’s chapters tackle the
complex and nested precarities of subaltern migrants in South Asia during
the pandemic; absent from fundamental communicative claims to human
and health rights, subaltern migrants and refugees suffer violent pandemic
stressors. Analyzing their health violence, adopting a culture-centered
lens, Mookerjee and Roy highlight the thrice-marginalizing practices of
reverse migration on the subaltern migrants in India during the pandemic.
Jayan and Dutta and Dutta and Rahman’s chapters bring into focus
how communicative inequalities are deeply rooted in the nested precari-
ties facing refugees and their health during the pandemic. Separately, Yeo,
Kaur-Gill, and Hassan outline the use of digital ethnography to collect
data with precarious migrants during social crises. The chapter documents
the process of collecting data from precarious migrants digitally and the
digital tools used to facilitate in-depth interviews, memos, and observa-

tions. In a concluding chapter, Ramasubramaniam and Ramirez propose
arts-activism as a communication intervention, proposing the curation
of healing and coping interventions for migrants through arts-focused
therapy. Each of these chapters connects health vulnerabilities to commu-
nicative inequalities, detailing the ecological nature of precarity and
(im)mobility of migrant bodies worldwide, hidden, displaced, expulsed,
ignored, and erased from the platforms of communication. These chapters
attend to how dominant pandemic communication, leaves out, displaces,
or violently inverts communication to mark the migrant body for erasure
and invisibility. Health promotion for migrants, therefore, must respond
to the structural and ecological precarities that connect to migrant lives
to the health vulnerabilities they face.
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CHAPTER 2
The Role of Contemporary Neoliberal

Government Policies in the Erosion
of Migrant Labor Rights During
the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Examination
of Executive, Legislative and Judicial Trends
in India and the United States
Rati Kumar
Over the past half century, the confluence of neoliberal state struc-
tures and global movements of labor have progressively worsened the
health precarities experienced by low-wage migrant workers. The extent
of these health inequities was put on stark display during the COVID-19
pandemic, with the denial of basic health capacities for migrant workers
during a global health emergency. In this chapter, I examine the progres-
sion of anti-labor executive, legislative and judicial actions leading up to,
R. Kumar (B)
School of Communication, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA
e-mail: rkumar@sdsu.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
S. Kaur-Gill and M. J. Dutta (eds.), Migrants and the COVID-19
Pandemic, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7384-0_2
28 R. KUMAR
and emerging from the pandemic, in the neoliberal nation-states of India

and the United States and their contribution to the curated invisibility of
migrant workers. Specifically, I analyze the intersection of socio-politically
entrenched discriminations of caste, class and citizenship suffered by
inter-state migrant workers in India and undocumented workers in the
United States, and the communicative inversions deployed by state struc-
tures to erode migrant labor rights. Legislation such as the Inter-State
Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 in India is revealed to be an ineffectual
protection for low-wage contract labor, with concurrent labor law consol-
idation exploiting the pandemic lens to eliminate basic health and human
rights protections. In the United States, restrictions on undocumented
migrant labor organizing, emerging from cases such as Hoffman Plastics
vs. NLRB Compound and Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
are exposed as systemic precursors to human rights abuses of workers
during the pandemic; denying them safe working conditions, COVID-19
testing and the ability to quarantine if infected. Thus, under the guise of
economic recovery from the pandemic, in both countries, the essential
worker designation is a structurally fabricated communicative inversion,
directed against low-wage migrant workers for accelerating deregulation
and sustaining the neoliberal project.
Labor rights and collective action over the last half century have been
systematically targeted by globalized capitalism, with neoliberal nation-
states strategically mutating capitalist accumulation with existing class,
race and caste disparities. Founded upon an extractive logic, these nation-
states maximize the exploitation of labor and erase the voices of low-wage
workers at the socioeconomic margins. In the context of migrant labor,
this erasure is supported through executive, legislative and legal actions,
communicatively and materially erasing the rights of those considered
second-class or non-citizens, while accelerating their incorporation as
cheap, transient labor in the marketplace. This curated invisibility of
migrant bodies renders workers visible in the marketplace of labor, but
invisible for systemic health and human rights protections. This a la
carte extraction from communities of migrant laborers was overtly mani-
fest during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues
to highlight the health inequities wrought by the systemic silencing of
communities at the foundation of the neoliberal project.
2 THE ROLE OF CONTEMPORARY NEOLIBERAL … 29
The pandemic exposed the strategic rhetoric and legislation behind the
designation of certain labor as essential, with corporations and govern-
ments using this as justification for further endangering the bodies of
low-wage workers on the frontlines of supply chains.
Significant attention has been paid to the health inequities suffered by
migrant labor, domestic and international, ranging from the psychoso-
cial, physical and economic (Adhikary et al., 2011; Castaldo et al., 2012;
Hargreaves et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2012) to their health experiences
amid precarities induced by neoliberal governmentality (Dutta & Jamil,
2013; Dutta & Kaur-Gill, 2018). Drawing on this scholarship, I examine
the erasure of health and human rights of inter-state migrant workers
in India and undocumented immigrant workers in the United States
through a government policy lens. More specifically, through landmark
executive, legislative and judicial actions leading up to, and emerging
from the first wave of the pandemic, I analyze the consistent erosion of
these rights in both countries alongside the rise of nationalistic neolib-
eralism. For example, in India, the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act
(1979), designed to protect the nearly 40 million inter-state migrants
across India, falls woefully short of protecting informal workers, often at
the sociopolitical margins as Dalits, Adivasis or religious minorities. While
the letter of the law offers occupational health and safety protections,
this Act fails in terms of any substantive health protections for transient
workers. This in combination with the newly consolidated labor codes
by the legislature and deregulation of labor laws during the pandemic
have created untenable hardships for transient workers. In the United
States, COVID-19 highlights the inhumane health inequities suffered by
undocumented foreign immigrant labor, serving in numerous frontline
industries including manufacturing, farm work, construction, healthcare,
food processing and service, among others. Theoretically, US federal and
state laws have provisions for the protection of undocumented immi-
grants, but chilling Supreme Court judgments such as Hoffman Plastics
Compound v. National Labor Relations Board (2002), general anti-labor
judgments in cases involving Ernst & Young LLP, Epic Systems Corpora-
tion and Murphy Oil USA, Inc. (2018) and the Immigration Reform &
Control Act (1986) have created barriers to labor unionizing and visi-
bility of undocumented immigrants (UI) for legal protections. On the
whole, neither country substantively expanded access to basic health
capacities for its migrant/immigrant laborers, resulting in consequent lack
of healthcare access during the pandemic in the form of unemployment
30 R. KUMAR
benefits, cash subsidies, health insurance coverage for COVID-19 testing,

or paid sick leave. All of these systemic blockades embody the strategies
of neoliberal governments and industry to keep workers invisible for any
safety-net health protections while ensuring their visibility as a marker of
business-friendliness and market stability.
Caste Inequities and the Informal

Labor Market in India
In India, this invisibility of migrant labor during the pandemic intersects
with the existing social inequities in terms of caste discrimination and
Hindu majoritarianism. Epitomized by a lack of “employment security,
work security and social security” (National Commission on Enterprises
in the Unorganized Sector, 2008), there are nearly 139 million migrant
workers in India (Sharma, 2017). While labor migration can be across
castes, Dalits (Untouchables or Scheduled Caste), Adivasis (Scheduled
Tribes) or religious minorities tend to be subject to the worst working
conditions, as low-wage and contract-based inter-state migrant workers
(Breman, 1996; Guérin, 2013; Jain & Sharma, 2019; Srivastava & Jha,
2016). Despite being large contributors to the economy, their voice “as
a legitimate constituency has been largely absent from the public policy
space” (Rao et al., 2020, sp. 1640), due to their inability to vote in
their migrated states, and their erasure from policy discourse as socially
discriminated groups (Deshingkar & Akter, 2009).
Characterized by low levels of education and no financial assets, these
transient, daily-wage networks are occupied by construction, domestic,
maintenance and sanitation workers, rag-pickers, rickshaw pullers, beedi
makers, brick kiln laborers, farm workers and textile industry laborers
often from underdeveloped states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan,
Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. Dalits, Adivasis and religious
minorities in India historically have poorer health outcomes compared to
upper-caste Hindus. These effects may be so entrenched that even class
mobility does not necessarily shift health outcomes on the scale that it
does for upper-caste Hindus (Uddin et al., 2020). Pre-pandemic it was
amply demonstrated how low-wage migrants’ poor health outcomes were
tied to “socially and culturally indenturing forces” (Chatterjee, 2006),
at the minoritized intersection of low-caste and rural-urban migrants.
As Adivasis or Dalits, traditionally barred from infrastructural access to
basic health capacities (Dutta, 2008) such as food, shelter, health services
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CHAPITRE VI
SUR LA PIERRE BRUNE
Ce fut seulement plus tard que je pus me rendre compte de la

durée de cette léthargie. Quand je m’en éveillai pour la première
fois, il me parut également possible qu’elle se fût poursuivie pendant
des mois ou pendant une heure. Les événements qui l’avaient
précédée étaient si vagues et si extraordinaires que je ne trouvai
d’abord en eux nul point où rattacher mes sensations et mes
pensées présentes.
La seule impression précise que j’eus fut que ce sommeil aurait
encore pu se prolonger longtemps, que c’était accidentellement et
non par suite de ma satiété qu’il avait pris fin. Je pensai à de
lointaines aubes de mon enfance où un domestique ayant besoin
d’entrer dans ma chambre allait et venait un instant en atténuant
soigneusement le bruit de ses pas ; quand le silence redevenait
absolu, je m’apercevais soudain que mes yeux étaient ouverts… Il
avait dû se passer quelque chose d’analogue. Je me rappelle m’être
levé en sursaut, avoir regardé avec effarement tout autour de moi :
Ceintras ronflait, calé dans un coin de la chambre de chauffe, le
buste droit, les jambes étendues, les mains jointes, la bouche
ouverte et le front creusé d’une ride : un sommeil pénible et qu’on
devinait peuplé de cauchemars. Par les hublots entraient des flots
de lumière violette : il faisait « jour ».
Puis ce fut une terrible angoisse : où étions-nous ? Qu’était
devenu le ballon livré à lui-même pendant le temps peut-être long
qu’avait duré l’inconscience de ses pilotes ? J’ouvris la porte… Le
ballon reposait sur le sol, sur ce sol du Pôle où, la veille, nous
n’avions pas osé atterrir. Dominant mon appréhension je descendis,
fis le tour de la machine et un examen sommaire m’assura que nul
organe n’avait souffert, le moteur s’était arrêté uniquement faute
d’essence ; l’enveloppe semblait un peu flasque, mais cela n’était
rien et, sitôt que le moteur serait remis en marche, il suffirait d’ouvrir
le robinet d’air chaud pour reprendre notre vol.
Je me disposais à aller réveiller Ceintras et à l’avertir lorsqu’un
fait me frappa auquel je n’avais tout d’abord pas pris garde : le
ballon reposait sur ses amortisseurs d’une manière aussi stable que
s’il avait été attaché par de nombreuses et solides amarres ; je
remarquai alors que nous avions atterri sur une longue pierre
rectangulaire et brune et que les amortisseurs y adhéraient
irrésistiblement ; on aurait dit qu’ils y étaient soudés ; pourtant, étant
donnée la quantité d’hydrogène qui, visiblement, existait encore
dans l’enveloppe, la force ascensionnelle ne pouvait être de
beaucoup inférieure à la force d’inertie représentée par le poids brut
de l’appareil ; par conséquent un très léger effort aurait dû suffire
pour déplacer ou soulever le ballon ; mais ce fut en vain que je
voulus le faire, de la main d’abord, puis en utilisant comme levier le
canon de ma carabine que j’avais emportée par prudence.
Au bout de quelques minutes, il me parut évident que cette
adhérence du ballon à la pierre et l’obstacle mystérieux qui la veille
avait entravé notre marche étaient en relation immédiate. Et j’eus
dès lors le sentiment très net d’une intelligence cachée qui nous
avait longuement épiés, pris au piège et qui dès cet instant nous
dominait.
Nous n’étions pas seuls. Preuve tangible, irréfutable, le haut
disque de métal brillait d’un éclat terne à quelques mètres de moi.
J’entendis soudain, dans les épais fourrés de cactus et de fougères,
un bruit qui me fit monter le cœur à la gorge… J’épaulai mon arme
et m’avançai en tremblant : de nouveau les feuilles s’agitèrent à dix
mètres environ sur ma gauche. Le coup partit presque malgré
moi !… Plus rien… Puis je m’aperçus que ma peur avait créé des
fantômes et que dans les brusques frémissements des fourrés le
vent seul avait été pour quelque chose ; il venait de se lever et
arrivait de la banquise en bouffées glaciales qui, dans la tiédeur du
Pôle, me piquaient par instant au visage et aux mains comme
l’eussent fait de menus et lancinants coups de couteaux.
Ceintras, au bruit de la détonation, apparut sur la galerie. Je
courus à lui et le mis au courant de tout ce que j’avais constaté
depuis mon réveil. Il se contenta de hocher la tête et ne répondit
pas ; il semblait parfaitement ahuri. Alors je lui demandai en affectant
l’air le plus détaché et le plus tranquille du monde :
— As-tu bien dormi ?
Il me parut chercher péniblement des mots :
— Mal, très mal… C’est une chose étrange… je me souviens
d’avoir subi jadis une opération pour laquelle on fut obligé
d’employer le chloroforme…
— Eh bien ?
— Eh bien, j’ai eu cette nuit l’impression d’un sommeil analogue
à celui où l’on tombe sous l’influence du chloroforme, d’un sommeil
qui accable odieusement et durant lequel, si profond soit-il, on garde
toujours une lueur de conscience pour se rendre compte qu’on est
un esclave…
— On est comme entravé, ligoté par mille chaînes, on fait des
efforts désespérés pour les rompre et l’on sait pourtant qu’il n’y a
qu’à attendre le bon vouloir d’un maître…
— C’est cela ; et puis, pour comble, des cauchemars affreux se
sont abattus sur moi…
— Quels cauchemars ?
— Comment te dire ? il me semblait que je tombais lentement
dans quelque abîme sous-marin, au milieu de pieuvres
gigantesques, et je sentais par instant contre ma peau le frôlement
de leurs tentacules…
Il se recueillit une minute, puis :
— J’ai peut-être tort, dit-il, de parler de cauchemar : cela
ressemblait moins à une chose rêvée qu’à une sensation réelle
perçue dans une demi-conscience.
Je ne pus me garder d’un frisson ; les paroles de Ceintras
avaient illuminé tout à coup en moi un souvenir obscur et, à présent,
j’étais à peu près sûr de m’être débattu quelques instants
auparavant dans un cauchemar qui ressemblait au sien…
Seulement les pieuvres y avaient été remplacées par des chauves-
souris ou des vampires. La coïncidence était tout au moins étrange
et si de part et d’autre les rêves n’avaient reposé sur rien de réel, il
fallait conclure à un cas de télépathie. Mais une conclusion plus
logique et plus effrayante s’imposait, à savoir que des êtres vivants,
hôtes de ces régions, des êtres d’une intelligence et d’une puissance
qui dès cet instant m’apparaissaient prodigieuses, nous avaient
attirés jusqu’à eux en utilisant par des procédés qui m’échappaient
une énorme force magnétique ; puis, désireux de nous observer, ils
s’étaient approchés de nous durant notre sommeil : un sommeil
qu’ils avaient peut-être provoqué artificiellement.
Allais-je faire part à Ceintras du point où venaient d’aboutir mes
inductions ?… J’eus pitié de lui. Il s’était laissé tomber sur un rocher
et ses yeux vacillants et vagues se fixaient en deçà ou au delà des
objets qu’ils regardaient ; son attitude trahissait un accablement
infini ; j’avais l’impression très nette d’assister à une effrayante
agonie morale, et je tentai de faire appel à son initiative dans l’espoir
de le remonter, de le remettre en possession de lui-même :
— Que comptes-tu faire ? lui demandai-je.
— Je ne sais pas, je vais voir…
Il fit quelques pas, s’avança vers le ballon et sauta sur la pierre
brune où les amortisseurs adhéraient. Je le vis alors s’agiter, se
balancer comme pour prendre son élan et retomber gauchement sur
ses mains sans que ses pieds eussent bougé d’un centimètre. Je
m’élançai à son secours.
— N’approche pas, pour Dieu ! n’approche pas, s’écria-t-il en
hurlant comme une bête prise au piège.
Mais j’étais déjà sur la pierre où je continuais comme je l’avais
fait auparavant à pouvoir aller et venir sans encombre. Ceintras, lui,
était aussi incapable d’y faire un pas que si ses pieds y eussent été
du premier coup inexorablement rivés.
— Est-ce que tu souffres ? fis-je en essayant vainement de le
dégager.
— Non, évidemment non, mais ils vont venir, à présent, et
s’emparer de moi… Sauve-toi, au plus vite ; seulement, de grâce,
tue-moi avant de partir, ne me laisse pas tomber vivant entre leurs
mains… un coup de carabine… là… entre les deux yeux… fais
vite !…
— Tu parles comme un fou, répondis-je en haussant les épaules.
Et puis, tiens ! essaye de te déchausser, je crois que cela m’évitera
de te donner la mort.
Il obéit sans comprendre encore et son trouble seul l’empêcha de
tirer facilement ses pieds hors de ses souliers délacés.
— Emporte-moi, s’écria-t-il ensuite, ne me laisse pas toucher le
sol puisque leur damné sortilège ne semble pas avoir prise sur toi…
J’éclatai de rire :
— Tu peux être tranquille : le sortilège n’avait prise que sur tes
souliers, probablement parce que leurs semelles étaient ferrées…
On connaît à présent suffisamment Ceintras pour ne pas trouver
extraordinaire que l’heureuse issue de cette aventure l’ait fait passer
d’un excès de découragement à une joie exagérée et en tous cas
intempestive… Quant à sa confiance dans l’avenir, qu’il manifesta
aussitôt à grand renfort de gestes et d’éclats de voix, elle eût
réconforté le plus abattu des mortels, si ce mortel n’avait vécu
depuis près d’un an dans l’intimité du pauvre diable…
— Un aimant !… Ils voulaient nous attraper à l’aide d’un aimant !
Ils s’imaginaient que nous en ignorions les propriétés… Au fait, ils
doivent être encore plus effrayés que nous : pourquoi se
cacheraient-ils s’il en était autrement ? Est-ce que je me cache,
moi ? Est-ce que je me cache ? Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Qu’ils se montrent donc
un peu ! Je les attends… Je me promets de leur faire passer pour
longtemps l’envie de nous jouer de vilains tours.
Je crus bon de réfréner légèrement cet enthousiasme :
— Mais, dis donc, le ballon ?… comment comptes-tu le tirer de
là ?
Ceintras n’était pas embarrassé pour si peu.
— Le ballon… Ah ! oui !… Eh bien, nous déboulonnerons les
amortisseurs, et pffft !… Le ballon délesté fera un petit bond d’un
millier de mètres dans l’atmosphère… Qu’ils viennent nous y
chercher… Ils pourront garder les amortisseurs en souvenir de nous,
ainsi que ma paire de souliers !… Nous en serons quittes pour ne
plus atterrir jusqu’à notre retour ou pour n’atterrir qu’avec une
extrême prudence… Tiens ! parlons d’autre chose : j’ai faim.
Cuisinier, à tes fourneaux !
Le repas fut abondant, bien arrosé et fort gai. Lorsqu’une cause
de tristesse ou de peur persiste un peu plus de vingt-quatre heures,
il est inévitable qu’une détente se produise dans l’esprit de ceux qui
subissent cette tristesse ou cette peur. Nous apportâmes à manger,
à boire et à deviser un entrain qui n’avait rien de factice, qui n’était
nullement dû au désir plus ou moins conscient de nous étourdir,
mais qui venait du fond le plus sincère de nous-mêmes… Nous nous
étions à moitié accoutumés à l’étrange paysage, nous ne pensions
plus à nous inquiéter des mystères qui nous entouraient et, dans la
clarté violette du Pôle, confortablement installés sur les fougères,
auprès du fleuve couleur d’argent bruni, nous débouchions du
champagne avec autant de plaisir que nous eussions pu le faire au
bord de la Seine ou de l’Oise, sous un ciel limpide et léger d’Ile-de-
France.
Réconfortés moralement et physiquement, nous résolûmes d’un
commun accord d’aller à la découverte.
CHAPITRE VII
CEINTRAS ÉGARE SON OMBRE ET SA RAISON
Nous longeâmes le fleuve sur une distance d’un demi-mille

environ. Le silence était si grand que le bruit de nos pas et le
clapotement de l’eau semblaient suffire à remplir le ciel.
Quel était ce fleuve ? d’où venait-il ? où allait-il ?… Autant de
questions que nous nous posions vaguement et que nous étions, du
reste, parfaitement incapables de résoudre. Quand nous regardions
derrière nous, il paraissait, là-bas, très loin, après des lieues et des
lieues de plaine, sortir de la brume et probablement de la banquise ;
en face, à cent mètres en aval, il s’évanouissait derrière une arête
de rochers bleuâtres, abrupts et déchiquetés, le seul accident qui
rompît la monotonie de l’immensité plate…
Comme si ces rochers avaient abrité les plantes de quelque
chose qui, partout ailleurs, les eût empêchées de s’élever librement,
les végétations, à leur base, devenaient peu à peu arborescentes. A
notre approche, des oiselets, qui perchaient dans cette sorte de
bocage, prirent leur vol avec des pépiements aigus dans la direction
des rochers, puis firent un brusque détour et passèrent en tourbillon
au-dessus de nos têtes. Ils avaient de longs becs, des ailes azurées
et ne différaient guère de nos martins-pêcheurs.
Nous atteignîmes le sommet de la colline par une rampe de rocs
éboulés qui surplombaient les eaux mêmes du fleuve et, de là, nous
pûmes contempler le panorama polaire. De circulaires murailles de
brumes le limitaient sur tous les points et formaient les parois
diaphanes d’un immense vase dans lequel la clarté violette eût
bouillonné comme une liqueur. Elle se diluait au fluide
atmosphérique dans des proportions qui devaient, pour d’obscures
raisons, varier selon les lieux et les heures, car, lorsque le vent
soufflait avec quelque violence, on voyait véritablement bouger l’air.
La colline, abrupte du côté par lequel nous étions arrivés, rejoignait
la plaine, devant nous en pente douce, et longtemps, le fleuve
coulait entre de hautes falaises argileuses et bleues. A notre droite,
dans une échancrure de la muraille brumeuse, l’œil terne du soleil
avait l’air de s’ouvrir avec indifférence, sur ce pays qui n’était pas
son domaine. Çà et là, jalonnant l’immensité de la plaine et du
plateau, étaient dressés des disques pareils à celui que j’avais vu le
soir même de notre arrivée au Pôle.
Tournant le dos au fleuve, nous poursuivîmes notre excursion en
restant à mi-pente de la colline. De bizarres fleurs aux calices
charnus et contournés poussaient dans les anfractuosités du sol.
Puis, sous l’auvent d’un éboulis branlant, nous découvrîmes une
étroite caverne, ouverte comme une plaie dans la chair rocheuse du
coteau ; de petits cris brefs et perçants s’en échappèrent à notre
passage ; je m’arrêtai, indécis, interrogeant Ceintras du regard ; mais
celui-ci, que son entrain et son énergie n’avaient pas abandonné
encore, s’avança résolument et me dit :
— Il faut entrer.
Je le suivis, et je constatai avec stupéfaction que dans ce couloir
aux parois tortueuses il faisait aussi clair qu’au dehors : la lumière
violette, en s’y répandant, pénétrait dans les moindres recoins,
chassant l’ombre de partout. Les cris, dans le fond, redoublèrent au
bruit de nos pas ; puis ce furent d’éperdus battements d’ailes et des
bêtes passèrent au-dessus de nos têtes en les frôlant ; je dis « des
bêtes » parce que je fus, dans le premier moment, incapable de leur
donner un nom plus précis.
Brusquement, d’un coup de crosse, Ceintras en abattit une qui
restait encore accrochée à la voûte de la caverne. Elle pouvait avoir
vingt centimètres de longueur, sa tête ressemblait à celle d’un
serpent, mais la gueule était plus épaisse et plus large ; les ailes
étaient constituées par des membranes de couleur verdâtre, et me
parurent, pour le reste, analogues à celles de nos chauves-souris.
— C’est un chéiroptère d’espèce inconnue, m’écriai-je.
— Non, répondit simplement Ceintras en palpant l’animal.
— Pourtant, l’aspect général… et ces ailes…
— Ces ailes ne sont nullement des ailes de chauves-souris.
Regarde : elles ne sont pas soutenues par les quatre doigts, mais
seulement par le doigt extérieur, qui est démesurément allongé ; les
autres ne servent à la bête que pour se suspendre… Puis les
membres antérieurs sont plus grands, la tête est plus développée, la
mâchoire cornée et garnie d’une multitude de dents aiguës… et
puis… et puis, ça n’a pas de poil… ni poils ni plumes… Alors…
— Quoi ?
Sans répondre il fouilla dans ses poches, y prit un couteau, ouvrit
fébrilement le corps de l’animal, en sortit le cœur et le coupa.
— C’est bien cela : deux oreillettes et un seul ventricule : un
reptile !
— Un reptile qui vole ?
— Certainement, fit-il un peu pâle… Il y en a déjà eu…
— Quand cela ?
— Il y a des milliers et des milliers d’années. Celui-ci appartient à
une espèce qu’on croyait disparue, et, si mes souvenirs ne me
trompent pas, c’est tout bonnement un ptérodactyle que j’ai entre les
mains…
Ce nom scientifique me rappela des souvenirs de collège ; je
revis les animaux monstrueux des vieux âges dont les figures, sur
les manuels de paléontologie, avaient frappé si fort mon imagination.
Et je m’écriai :
— C’est enthousiasmant, c’est magnifique ! Il faut en attraper de
vivants et les emporter avec nous.
Ceintras s’était assis sur une pierre. Tenant toujours la bestiole
éventrée et sanglante à la main, il regardait droit devant lui, dans le
vague. Le bruit de mes paroles le fit sursauter.
— Les emporter… Où donc les emporter ? demanda-t-il.
— Mais… dans le ballon. Qu’est-ce que cette idée a
d’extraordinaire ?
Il secoua la tête, fit un geste vague et, d’une voix étrange :
— On ne peut pas empêcher ce qui a été d’être encore,
murmura-t-il comme en s’adressant à lui-même… Ce qui a été se
cache, mais existe encore quelque part… Et quelquefois on le
rencontre, on le trouve… Mais alors c’est que soi-même on a été, et
on ne peut plus revenir vers ce qui est ; car ce qui est ne
communique pas avec ce qui a été… ou bien c’est si loin, si loin qu’il
faudrait des siècles, des siècles, plus que des siècles pour en
revenir…
— Qu’est-ce que tu racontes ? interrompis-je avec anxiété.
Il tressaillit ; puis ses yeux perdirent leur fixité nébuleuse ; il se
redressa, se ressaisit et me dit en affectant de rire :
— Ce que je racontais ? Des choses qui chantaient dans ma tête,
des bêtises !… mais ne nous éternisons pas là-dessous.
Je pensai qu’il avait voulu se rendre intéressant, ou se moquer
de moi, et je ne jugeai pas utile d’insister. Après avoir vainement
cherché d’autres ptérodactyles, — ils n’avaient pas cru devoir rester
dans la caverne à notre disposition, — nous regagnâmes la sortie.
Soudain Ceintras, qui marchait un peu devant moi, s’arrêta,
regarda de tous les côtés et s’écria dans un grand geste de folie et
de désespoir :
— Mon ombre ! Où est mon ombre ?
La question me parut si saugrenue que je restai un instant ahuri
et incapable de rien répondre. Puis, jetant les yeux sur le sol, je
m’aperçus que ni l’ombre de Ceintras ni la mienne ne se projetaient
nulle part ; les objets étaient aussi éclairés en haut qu’en bas, à
droite qu’à gauche… Et, jusque-là, nous ne nous étions pas rendu
compte que c’était cette absence absolue d’ombres qui, plus encore
que la coloration de la lumière diffuse dans l’atmosphère, donnait au
paysage son caractère de rêve, d’impossibilité, tout au moins
d’étrangeté hallucinante.
— Mon ombre ! Où est mon ombre ? hurlait toujours Ceintras en
se tournant dans tous les sens.
Je crus qu’il continuait à plaisanter et, pour mettre fin à cette
comédie énervante :
— En voilà assez ! lui dis-je. Une fois admis que cette lumière ne
vient d’aucune source précise et qu’elle est une propriété de l’air en
cet endroit de la terre, il est tout naturel qu’elle soit partout, comme
l’air, et qu’il n’y ait d’ombre nulle part.
Il baissa la tête comme un enfant pris en faute et, après s’être
recueilli un instant, répondit sur un ton d’humilité presque honteuse :
— Ne fais pas attention… j’étais comme accablé, dans celle
caverne ; j’ai mal à la tête, et c’est très pénible de penser… presque
aussi pénible que de se mouvoir.
— Le fait est, avouai-je, qu’il me semble avoir moi aussi des
membres de plomb.
Après que nous eûmes fait quelques pas, cette impression de
lourdeur s’atténua un peu. Nous rejoignîmes le cours du fleuve et
descendîmes sur la berge, au pied même de la colline. Alors
Ceintras s’agenouilla, et penché sur l’eau comme une bête but à
longues gorgées.
— C’est tout de même de l’eau, dit-il en se relevant ; seulement il
ne fait pas bon s’y mirer, nous avons d’effrayants visages.
Et comme je m’informais de sa santé :
— Ça va beaucoup mieux, répondit-il. Mais il y a loin d’ici au
ballon, je suis un peu fatigué encore… Arrêtons-nous une minute,
veux-tu ?
Nous nous assîmes côte à côte, les pieds pendant au-dessus de
l’eau. Et, durant quelque temps, chacun de nous s’absorba en lui-
même.
— Vois-tu, dis-je ensuite à Ceintras qui, le menton dans les
mains, paraissait réfléchir, ce paysage me rappelle ceux que je
dessinais, quand j’étais gamin, pour me distraire : dans mes
peintures tout était plat et au même plan, parce que je ne savais pas
les ombrer.
— Oui, répondit-il, ce n’est que par l’ombre que nous pouvons
percevoir le relief… Je me souviens à présent que, tout à l’heure,
nous n’avons découvert la colline que quand nous nous sommes
trouvés à sa base… Nous ne distinguons dans ce paysage que les
différences de couleurs et cela nous trouble… et il nous est bien
difficile de nous rendre compte… Aussi, a-t-on idée de ça ? une
damnée lumière qui arrive de partout !…
Encore quelques minutes de silence. Ceintras reprit :
— Il y a une impression dont je ne puis me défendre : malgré
moi, en considérant ce qui nous entoure, je pense à quelque chose
d’artificiel, de truqué ; cette lumière me rappelle celle que les
machinistes de nos théâtres font ruisseler à flots sur certains décors
de féeries… Ici aussi il doit y avoir des machinistes, disposant
d’énormes forces magnétiques ou électriques, maîtres d’un fluide qui
peut rendre l’air lumineux et l’échauffer jusqu’à une température
clémente… Voilà ! seulement ils manquent totalement de sens
artistique… Eux non plus ne savent pas ombrer !… Et c’est
désagréable, même fatigant, très fatigant…
— Est-ce que tu souffres ? lui demandai-je, inquiet de son air de
lassitude.
— Non, fit-il ; seulement, je te l’ai déjà dit, cette lumière me gêne
pour penser ; il me semble qu’elle pénètre en moi, qu’elle désagrège
et éparpille toutes mes idées ; je suis obligé de faire effort pour les
tenir réunies. Et pourtant je voudrais pouvoir penser, j’ai besoin de
penser pour essayer de découvrir ce qu’ils sont.
Il s’animait, et bientôt sa volubilité devint telle qu’il me fut
impossible de placer un mot.
— Oui, qu’est-ce qu’ils sont ? Où peuvent-ils bien se cacher ?
Pas une maison, pas un édifice… Et pourtant ils existent
indubitablement : ces disques de métal, l’entravement mystérieux de
notre ballon… Dis donc, peut-être qu’ils sont invisibles ?…
Je haussai les épaules. Il se leva, fit quelques pas le long du
fleuve, et, soudain, poussa un cri :
— Viens voir : une porte !…
J’accourus. Ceintras me désigna du doigt une plaque de métal
enchâssée dans un enfoncement de la falaise rocheuse. Stupéfait,
je frappai machinalement trois coups contre la plaque ; l’écho du son
sembla retentir à l’infini dans les profondeurs de la terre.
— C’est creux, fis-je en baissant instinctivement la voix.
— Une porte !… C’est une porte ! s’écria Ceintras, et c’est sous la
terre qu’ils ont leur domicile. Voilà pourquoi nous ne les apercevions
nulle part !
— Si on rentrait ? proposai-je.
— Diable ! fit-il avec un léger mouvement de recul, cela me
semble un peu téméraire.
— Je n’en disconviens pas, répondis-je, Cependant, ces hommes
du Pôle sont intelligents, civilisés… Il n’y a que des créatures
raisonnables pour façonner les métaux, asservir les forces de la
nature… Et des créatures raisonnables, comme ils sont et comme
nous sommes, doivent toujours finir par s’entendre…
— Mais…
— Laisse-moi parler. Il n’y a pas d’hésitation possible. Notre
ballon est cloué au sol par leur volonté. Il faudra tôt ou tard, — et le
plus tôt sera le mieux — les aborder, même s’ils se dérobent… Lier
commerce avec eux, parvenir à nous en faire comprendre, obtenir
notre délivrance, c’est la meilleure ligne de conduite à suivre ; c’est
même, si tu veux savoir toute ma pensée, là-dessus que je fonde
mon unique espoir de sortir d’ici.
— Soit, je te suivrai, dit Ceintras après quelques secondes de
réflexion ; mais il faut d’abord ouvrir la porte.
— Cela ne sera pas difficile : je ne vois ni loquet, ni serrure ; les
voleurs ne doivent pas être à craindre, dans ce pays-ci !
Or, malgré tous nos efforts, la porte ne s’ouvrit pas. Elle adhérait
irrésistiblement à son châssis métallique. Cette fois, instruits par de
précédentes expériences, nous comprîmes vite ce qu’il en était : le
peuple du Pôle usait de courants magnétiques en guise de serrures
et de clefs !
— Qu’est-ce que tu veux, dit Ceintras qui avait essayé d’ouvrir la
porte avec ardeur dès l’instant où il avait compris que c’était
impossible, qu’est-ce que tu veux ! nous sommes bien forcés de
remettre à plus tard l’exécution de tes projets…
Il ne paraissait pas en être autrement affecté. Il s’assit, se remit
debout, fit encore quelques pas en sifflotant, puis finalement
s’étendit de tout son long, à plat ventre, devant la porte. Moi,
cependant, assis à quelques pas de lui, j’échafaudais divers plans
ingénieux, audacieux, mais un peu vagues : il fallait nous emparer
d’un de ces hommes qui mettaient une insistance désagréable à
nous avoir pour hôtes et le garder comme otage pour obliger les
autres à se rendre à nos désirs. Comment parviendrions-nous à
mettre la main sur lui, c’était une question que je jugeais superflu
d’approfondir pour l’heure… Une nouvelle exclamation de Ceintras
vint me tirer de ces rêveries :
— Ces empreintes… regarde ces empreintes dans l’argile !
— Il y en a partout, dis-je en me baissant. Mais comment se fait-il
que nous ne nous en soyons pas aperçus plus tôt ?
— C’est sans doute à cause de cette lumière, de cette maudite
lumière, grommela Ceintras.
L’argile moite et souple avait nettement gardé la trace des pas
d’un animal. Çà et là on voyait aussi des sillons comme en eussent
pu laisser derrière elles des queues traînantes. Plus loin, dans une
éclaboussure boueuse, s’était moulé partiellement le corps d’une de
ces bêtes qui avait dû tomber là ou s’étendre de toute sa longueur.
— Qu’est-ce que cela peut bien être ? demandai-je à Ceintras.
— Un pas ici, un autre là, dit-il en observant attentivement le
sol… cela m’a tout l’air d’une trace de bipède, du plutôt d’un animal
qui utilise uniquement pour marcher ses membres postérieurs et sa
queue : quelque chose comme un kanguroo… Cependant cette
empreinte en forme de feuilles de lierre… Je crois me rappeler…
Attends… Mais oui ! C’est tout à fait semblable, en plus petit, aux
empreintes fossiles que nous possédons de l’iguanodon…
— L’iguanodon ?
— Oui, encore un monstre des vieux âges ! Nous avons fait, en
venant ici, un saut formidable dans le passé… Des lambeaux de la
période crétacée sont, en ce pays, restés vivants ; d’antiques
espèces s’y sont perpétuées depuis des milliers de siècles !
— Mais, dis-je, puisque la vie paraît, en cette partie isolée de la
terre, avoir suivi son cours d’une façon autre que partout ailleurs,
l’homme lui-même ne se serait-il pas conformé à la loi générale ?
Qui sait si nous ne sommes pas séparés de ces hommes du Pôle
par un abîme infiniment profond ?
— Oui, peut-être… peut-être qu’ils ont, en effet, évolué dans un
autre sens et qu’il y a quelques différences entre eux et nous. Ils
vivent sous la terre : ils doivent être petits, plus petits que toi et moi,
et difformes et laids… Je les imagine assez bien sous les traits des
gnomes des légendes, comme des nains industrieux et subtils qui
forgeraient merveilleusement les métaux et construiraient des
machines inouïes au fond de leurs souterrains. Qui peut prévoir les
prodiges que le sol recèle au-dessous de nous ?
— Mais alors, ces traces d’animaux devant une des portes de
leur demeure ?
— Un troupeau qui, le pâturage terminé, sera rentré dans les
cavernes avec eux.
— Un troupeau d’iguanodons, et d’iguanodons domestiques ?
Voilà qui vaudrait le voyage… si nous étions bien sûrs de jamais
revenir pour le raconter. Seulement, j’ai beau chercher, je ne vois
nulle empreinte de pied humain parmi les autres…
— Cette ouverture n’est sans doute que celle des bergeries et,
comme ces animaux sont domestiques, ils doivent rentrer seuls au
bercail, par accoutumance…
— Ou sur un appel qu’on leur crie…
— Il se peut. Mais, après tout, je n’en sais rien et, ces inductions,
tu peux les faire aussi bien que moi-même. Quant aux habitants du
Pôle, ce sont peut-être tout simplement des gens qui ne diffèrent pas
plus de nous qu’un Peau-Rouge ou un Esquimau.
— Comment expliques-tu, alors, qu’ils ne se montrent pas ? S’ils
préparaient contre nous, sous terre, quelque terrible machination ?…
— C’est peu probable. Ils doivent plutôt être effrayés par ces
visiteurs qui tombent du ciel.
— Et le ciel est si peu clément au-dessus de leurs têtes qu’ils ne
doivent pas en attendre grand’chose de bon. Si l’homme a pris
l’habitude d’y loger ses meilleurs espérances c’est que de là lui
viennent la lumière, la chaleur… Mais ici !…
— Certainement. Et nous sommes sans doute, comme je te l’ai
déjà dit, beaucoup plus grands qu’eux… Qui sait ? Ils vont peut-être
nous adorer comme des Dieux puissants et redoutables…
Dans des phrases comme celle-ci, je retrouvai bien mon
Ceintras… Mais, lorsque l’heure nous parut arrivée de regagner le
ballon et que nous nous fûmes remis en marche,
d’incompréhensibles bizarreries se glissèrent peu à peu dans ses
moindres paroles, surtout aux moments où, après avoir parlé de
nouveau « de saut formidable dans le passé, de milliers et de milliers
de siècles », il recommençait à se lancer dans des théories
nébuleuses et interminables sur le passé et sur le présent, sur ce qui
avait été et ce qui était… A la fin, je ne comprenais véritablement
plus rien à ses discours. Je mis cela sur le compte de ma fatigue.
Nous atteignîmes enfin le ballon. Une épouvantable surprise
nous y attendait : les organes essentiels du moteur avaient été
déboulonnés avec une dextérité merveilleuse et emportés…
Ceintras me regarda, regarda la place vide, chancela et resta
une minute sans parler ; puis, très calme, il s’écria en haussant les
épaules :
— Cela n’a aucune importance !
— Mais, malheureux, comment comptes-tu repartir, à présent ?
— Nous reviendrons à pied. Ou bien, si tu as peur de te fatiguer
en marchant, je fabriquerai un traîneau… Et j’y attellerai des
iguanodons… Hein ? Qu’est-ce que tu en penses ? Ce sera
splendide, ce retour !
Il se dandinait, les mains dans les poches et regardait devant lui
en souriant béatement. Je crus inutile de lui répondre : cette fois,
j’avais compris…
CHAPITRE VIII
LA FACE AURÉOLÉE D’ÉTOILES
Étendu sur la couchette, au fond de la cabine, Ceintras

chantonna longtemps, sans prendre davantage garde à ma
présence que si je n’avais pas existé ; puis des silences de plus en
plus longs ponctuèrent sa monotone mélopée, sa voix devint plus
faible et plus lente, ses paupières papillotèrent et, bientôt, à la
régularité bruyante de sa respiration, je me rendis compte qu’il
dormait.
Alors l’horreur de ma situation m’apparut avec une impitoyable
netteté. Séparé de la patrie humaine par d’infranchissables
obstacles, exilé, à peu près sans espoir de retour, dans un pays de
cauchemar, condamné à la perpétuelle inquiétude d’un peuple
mystérieux, plein de ressources et probablement hostile, exposé à
ses incompréhensibles embûches, j’étais en outre privé, à présent
que mon compagnon venait de sombrer dans la démence, du seul
être sur lequel j’aurais pu m’appuyer…
Et la nuit polaire allait revenir ! Bientôt la clarté violette
s’évanouirait, et ce serait la lutte inutile contre l’irrésistible sommeil.
Étais-je destiné à m’en réveiller, cette fois ? S’il était vrai que les
habitants du Pôle nous redoutaient, ne profiteraient-ils pas de notre
impuissance pour nous immoler, ou, — hypothèse plus horrible
encore, — pour nous enchaîner et nous transporter au fond de leurs
demeures souterraines. Et quels supplices nous y attendraient ?
Telles étaient à présent mes pensées. Je me laissai aller à un
découragement morne et bientôt je sentis de grosses larmes
ruisseler le long de mes joues.
Mes nerfs, détraqués par tant d’émotions successives, étaient à
bout de ressort. Je défaillais de fatigue, peut-être aussi de faim, et je
compris soudain que j’allais m’évanouir. Alors, utilisant tout ce qui
me restait d’énergie, je me levai en chancelant et me versai un
grand verre de cognac que je bus d’un trait. Immédiatement, mon
sang courut avec plus de chaleur et de vivacité dans mes veines :
« C’est le seul moyen de reprendre un peu de courage, pensai-je… »
Et, coup sur coup, je bus deux autres lampées.
Ensuite, il me parut que mon sort n’était pas si atroce que je me
l’étais imaginé tout d’abord. Sous l’effet stimulant de l’alcool, de
nouvelles pensées, plus optimistes, se firent jour dans la confusion
de mon esprit, et la crise de désespoir que je venais de traverser ne
me sembla plus que la conséquence d’un trouble cérébral ou d’une
faiblesse physique… La disparition du moteur ? Mais, à moins que la
cruauté des hommes ne fût proportionnelle à leur puissance, il était
probable que le peuple du Pôle consentirait à nous le restituer tôt ou
tard. Sans doute, étant données mes faibles connaissances
mécaniques, il me serait difficile de remettre le ballon en état de
marche et de le diriger convenablement ; mais la folie de Ceintras
était-elle définitive ? Je me rappelai que de tout temps je l’avais jugé
moi-même quelque peu déséquilibré, et, certes, dans les récents
événements, il y avait bien de quoi désorienter et troubler
momentanément l’esprit le plus sain… Enfin, à supposer qu’il me fût
désormais impossible de quitter ce pays, — dussé-je même y
trouver la mort avant l’heure, — valait-il la peine, après tout, de m’en
attrister outre mesure ? Existait-il pour moi aucune raison sérieuse
de tenir à retourner un jour dans ma patrie, à vivre de nouveau au
milieu d’une civilisation familière ? Y avais-je jamais su trouver autre
chose que de l’ennui, de l’écœurement et du dégoût ? Mieux valait,
en somme, jouir sans arrière-pensée du plaisir de voir mon unique
souhait exaucé, et affronter l’aventure en homme qui n’a rien à y
perdre.
Cependant, çà et là, des irisations vertes commençaient à
ondoyer sur le manteau violet du jour polaire. Bientôt elles le
sillonnèrent horizontalement, de plus en plus étendues, de plus en
plus nombreuses, et ce crépuscule de proche en proche se
transformait en nuit avec une incroyable rapidité. Déjà je sentais,
comme la veille, une sorte de vertige s’emparer de moi, un voile
couvrir mon esprit, mes paupières vaciller. « Non ! pas cela, pas
cela ! » m’écriai-je comme si j’avais eu affaire à des ennemis
conscients… Et, comprenant que j’allais encore devenir l’esclave de
la peur, je me remis à boire, en attendant la nuit…
Elle vint et, accroupi dans le coin le plus reculé de la cabine, il
me parut qu’elle allait m’atteindre comme la massue d’un chasseur
s’abat sur une bête traquée. Mes membres s’étaient alourdis, le
moindre mouvement me semblait exiger un effort énorme d’énergie
et de volonté ; mais à ma grande surprise mon cerveau restait lucide
et, dès cet instant, j’eus le pressentiment que le sommeil
magnétique ne s’emparerait pas complètement de moi. Avait-il
moins de prise sur mes nerfs qui l’avaient déjà subi une fois ? Était-
ce une heureuse conséquence de l’alcool absorbé ? Ces deux
explications se présentèrent à mon esprit, mais, à ce moment, je
jugeai superflu de donner la préférence à l’une d’elles.
J’avais chaud et l’air s’était raréfié dans la cabine
hermétiquement close. J’ouvris le hublot ; des bouffées de fraîcheur
arrivèrent du dehors ; la petite sensation d’étouffement qui toute la
journée m’avait étreint la gorge disparut bientôt ; mes poumons se
dilatèrent plus librement et je respirai avec délice cet air qui, en
perdant sa coloration, avait repris sa pureté légère et fluide. Le
paysage du Pôle, pour la première fois, se montrait à moi éclairé
seulement par un vague et lointain soleil. A cela près que mes yeux
déroutés par ces brusques variations de clarté percevaient les
étoiles durant le jour polaire, — au sens humain et habituel du mot,
— je me retrouvai sur la Terre, j’étais chez moi. Au-dessous du
hamac où je venais de m’étendre, Ceintras dormait, d’un sommeil

Migrants and The Covid 19 Pandemic Communication Inequality and Transformation Satveer Kaur Gill Full Chapter

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Migrants and The Covid 19 Pandemic Communication Inequality and Transformation Satveer Kaur Gill Full Chapter

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Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic:

Communication, Inequality, and

ISBN 978-981-19-7383-3 ISBN 978-981-19-7384-0 (eBook)

Cover image: © Julio Etchart

This edited book collection highlights applied communication research

limitedly marks and groups the experiences of migrants from a gaze of

Singapore, Singapore Satveer Kaur-Gill

1 The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Migrants:

6 Extreme (Im)mobility and Mental Health Inequalities:

Pankaj Baskey is an Indigenous (Santali) Community Researcher with

displacement induced by voluntary and forced migratory processes, as

Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey

Fig. 11.1 Poster promoting Hindu-Muslim unity circulated

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious

Satveer Kaur-Gill and Mohan J. Dutta

The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounds the unequal trajectories of infec-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

in the distribution of wealth, income, and opportunity (Dutta, 2016).

worker exploitation, and on the other hand, form the communica-

are rendered visible, depicting how outbreaks manifest unequally for

The Relationship Between Outbreak

on the health and well-being of migrant workers toiling on global labor

Mookerjee et al., 2021; Nasol & Francisco-Menchavez, 2021; Sanfe-

is complemented by authoritarian strategies of surveillance and disci-

risks and infections faced by migrants, including other structural dispar-

migrants were most vulnerable, especially as mobile subjects, removed

Jamil and Dutta (2021) identified the communicative circulation of

The connection between the macro narratives of economic and mate-

labor and health violations and abuses of Bangladeshi workers residing

their employers to implement measures to protect workers. During an

Yeah, yesterday I so many times I tell him, I don’t want to go tomorrow

Health information resources and messages were severely lacking for

…when we recognized that COVID would have a serious disproportionate

a list of the needs of different groups…and initiatives put in place to meet

Workers interviewed during the early periods of the outbreak shared

than 20 workers living in conditions in a room pre-pandemic with “no

The pandemic outbreaks are then responded to with state narra-

countries face stark differences in vaccine access, reflecting how global

Health Equity and Precarious Migrants

terrorists intentionally deploying COVID-19 for biowarfare. The global

digital tools used to facilitate in-depth interviews, memos, and observa-

Dutta, M. J. (2016). Neoliberal health organizing: Communication, meaning,

The Role of Contemporary Neoliberal

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

and emerging from the pandemic, in the neoliberal nation-states of India

benefits, cash subsidies, health insurance coverage for COVID-19 testing,

Caste Inequities and the Informal

Ce fut seulement plus tard que je pus me rendre compte de la

Nous longeâmes le fleuve sur une distance d’un demi-mille

Étendu sur la couchette, au fond de la cabine, Ceintras

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