Demanding migrant/immigrant labor in the coronavirus crisis: critical perspectives for social work practice

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 laid bare how migrant and immigrant workers are “essential workers” in the critical industries of agriculture/farming, meat production, restaurants/hospitality and health care in the United States. In this article, we discuss this demand for migrant labor and implications for social work. We argue that a labor-focused framework as critical perspective would complement the rights-based, participatory frameworks that inform social work scholarship and practice with immigrants, together accounting for systemic racism, global and national inequality, and discrimination embedded in immigration and social policies and forms of practice. In the first place, by recognizing how non-immigrants and immigrants are inextricably linked through structural means of production and consumption, social workers would develop deeper empathy toward immigrant clients and communities, leading to interactions that are empowering and affirming, and thus effective. Direct practice interventions would be richly informed, as practitioners account for immigrants’ work environment, such as difficult work conditions, low wages and lack of benefits, that often impact clients and families. A labor-focused perspective also points to areas of social work advocacy and meso/macro practice, those focusing on workers’ rights and immigration policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Pandemic
• coronavirus
• immigration
• migration
• immigration
• social work practice with immigrants and refugees
• labor
• employment
• migrant labor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This article uses the term “im/migrant” to denote both “migrant” and “immigrant” and refers to each term specifically as applicable. Conventionally, a migrant is someone who is temporarily in a host country for work or other reasons (i.e., seasonal farm workers, IT temp workers at Google, visiting scholars), while an immigrant is someone who was/is pursuing a legal process of adjusting status as permanent resident (i.e., first generation). However, these distinctions are dynamic and nuanced, rather than static legal definitions. Some migrants may be in immigration processes or may intend/aim to immigrate in the future, while some immigrants (i.e., undocumented) may be residing or intend to reside permanently without means for legal immigration processes. Definitions aside, the labor-focused perspective we discuss in this article applies to both migrants and immigrants, in varying aspects.