Abstract
A global outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) has profoundly escalated social, political, economic, and cultural disparities, particularly among the marginalized migrants of the global South, who historically remained key sufferers from such disparities. Approximately 8 million, such workers from Bangladesh, migrated from their homelands to work in neighboring countries, specifically in Southeast Asia and in the Middle East, and also contribute significantly to their country’s economy. As many of the migrant workers work on temporary visas, scholars have expressed concerns about their physical and psychological health such as joblessness, mortality, abuses, daunting stress, and inhabitable living environment. Embracing the theoretical frameworks of critical–cultural communication, this article explores two research questions: (1) What are the emerging narratives of experiencing realities and disparities among the Bangladeshi migrants at the margins? (2) How the migrants negotiated and worked on overcoming the adversities? In doing so, we have closely examined 85 Facebook Pages (number of subscribers: 10,000-1 million), dedicated to issues of Bangladeshi migrant workers to qualitatively analyze emerging mediated discourses (textual, visual, and audiovisual). Our analysis reveals several aspects, including, (1) impact of job insecurities on migrants and their families, (2) living conditions of and abuses on migrants works, (3) negotiations of mental stress by the marginalized migrants, and (4) how community support helps the migrants to survive during the pandemic.
Highlights
A global outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) has profoundly escalated social, political, economic, and cultural disparities, among the marginalized migrants of the global South, who historically remained key sufferers from such disparities
Scholars have noted that the pandemic exacerbated their disparities, in terms of health and well-being, which resulted in inordinate precarity for the marginalized migrant workers (Mia & Griffiths, 2020)
In terms of number of people, Bangladeshi migrants are sixth largest in the globe (Weeraratne, 2020); approximately 8 million workers, migrated from their homeland to work in neighboring countries, in the Southeast Asia (e.g., Singapore and Malaysia) and in the Middle East
Summary
A global outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) has profoundly escalated social, political, economic, and cultural disparities, among the marginalized migrants of the global South, who historically remained key sufferers from such disparities. In terms of number of people, Bangladeshi migrants are sixth largest in the globe (Weeraratne, 2020); approximately 8 million workers, migrated from their homeland to work in neighboring countries, in the Southeast Asia (e.g., Singapore and Malaysia) and in the Middle East (e.g., in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar; Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment, and Training, 2020). In various Asian countries, in the Middle Eastern countries, there is a massive demand for migrant workers; a large number of foreign workers migrate every year to chase their dreams to improve their domestic economy and quality of life (Weeraratne, 2020). Grounded in the critical–cultural communication framework, this article engages with the Bangladeshi migrant workers’ articulations of disparities, and their negotiations with the adversities, as shared by them in digital spaces ( in Facebook)
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