THE IMAGES AND SCENARIOS OF GLOBAL MIGRATION AND COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has fundamentally distorted global human mobility. Due to the important health and
economic implications of this pandemic, the situation could be residual after the pandemic and thus
new normal world could be designed. The new normal policies have a long-term impact on migrant
workers and travellers. COVID-19 has been compared with the Spanish Flu in 1918. Global
migration during the wake of World War 1st was different than the current pandemic in 2020. The
present scenario is likely to have lasting migration implications long after people, the economy
bounces back and the health system. Human mobility has various forms such as short-term
migration for economic betterment, long-term migration for permanent settlement in a highly
developed country etc. Airplanes, trains, are also forms of mobility that was more accessible over
the past century. The role of media currently is another form of human mobility through which the
desire and ability to move accelerated to some points that it has pervaded even the remotest spread
of the globe. The global economy is another form through which people decide to migrate. The
choice is either individual for innovation such as economic migration, or migration for poor
circumstances decided by the family. Global migration from India to Australia, China to Canada is
an integral part of globalization. Globalization opens the neoliberal economy, the open border in the
name of border diplomacy and makes migration easier than before. The scenarios are now changing
than before the pandemic. Unprecedented travel and mobility limits now have short- and long-term
consequences. The objective and the outcome of the paper is to find out-migration scenarios during
the humanistic devastation. The methodology of the paper writing is through documentary analysis.
The feature question is how does COVID-19 impact immigrants and refugees worldwide?