The Coronavirus Crisis and Migration: Inequalities, Discrimination, Resistance

Deriving from multiple ecological-social causes, the novel coronavirus and, subsequently, the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected all spheres of societies of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered and amplified an economic crisis that existed before the health crisis. The combination of the two crises into a double “ecological-­healthcare” and “socio-economic” crisis has had multiple consequences for everyone on the economic, social, political, and cultural level; however, it has affected social classes, workers, genders, and territories in different ways, deepening social inequalities and worsening the social conditions of disadvantaged social groups: among the most affected social groups, we find migrants.

The purpose of this special issue is to critically analyze the relationship between the coronavirus crisis and migration, with particular attention to the condition of migrants in the global health crisis, new inequalities, discrimination, and their forms of resistance. Since international migration and the pandemic are two global phenomena, this special issue could only have a global look and approach at their intertwining. The articles consider, on the one hand, several national contexts across the world and, on the other, analyze the different dimensions of the relationship between the coronavirus crisis and migration globally.