#futurs

What does the COVID-19 crisis mean for #aspiring_migrants who are planning to leave home?

In late April 2020, I decided to document the experiences of aspiring nurse migrants from the Philippines, where the government had imposed a one-month quarantine in many parts of the country. With two colleagues based in Manila, we recruited interviewees through Facebook, and then spoke to Filipino nurses “stranded” in different provinces within the Philippines – all with pending contracts in the UK, Singapore, Germany, and Saudi Arabia.

Initially, we thought that our project would help paint a broader picture of how #COVID-19 creates an “unprecedented” form of immobility for health workers (to borrow the language of so many news reports and pundits in the media). True enough, our interviewees’ stories were marked with the loss of time, money, and opportunity.

Lost time, money, opportunity

Most striking was the case of Mabel in Cebu City. Mabel began to worry about her impending deployment to the UK when the Philippine government cancelled all domestic trips to Manila, where her international flight was scheduled to depart. Her Manila-based agency tried to rebook her flight to leave from Cebu to the UK. Unfortunately, the agency had taken Mabel’s passport when processing her papers, which is a common practice among migration agencies, and there was no courier service that could deliver it to her in time. Eventually, Mabel’s British employers put her contract on hold because the UK had gone on lockdown as well.

As nurses grapple with disrupted plans, recruitment agencies offer limited support. Joshua, a nurse from IloIlo, flew to Manila with all his belongings, only to find out that his next flight to Singapore was postponed indefinitely. His agent refunded his placement fee but provided no advice on what to do next. “All they said was, ‘Umuwi ka nalang’ (Just go home),” Joshua recalled. “I told them that I’m already here. I resigned from my job…Don’t tell me to go home.” With 10 other nurses, Joshua asked the agency to appeal for financial assistance from their employer in Singapore. “We signed a contract. Aren’t we their employees already?” They received no response from either party.

Mabel and Joshua’s futile efforts to get through the closing of both internal and international borders reflects the unique circumstances of the pandemic. However, as we spoke to more interviewees about their interrupted migration journeys, I couldn’t help but wonder: how different is pandemic-related immobility from the other forms of immobility that aspiring nurse migrants have faced in the past?

Pandemic as just another form of immobility?

Again, Mabel’s story is illuminating. Even before she applied to the UK, Mabel was no stranger to cancelled opportunities. In 2015, she applied to work as a nurse in Manitoba, Canada. Yet, after passing the necessary exams, Mabel was told that Manitoba’s policies had changed and her work experiences were no longer regarded to be good enough for immigration. Still hoping for a chance to leave, Mabel applied to an employer in Quebec instead, devoting two years to learn French and prepare for the language exam. However, once again, her application was withdrawn because recruiters decided to prioritize nurses with “more experience.”

One might argue that the barriers to mobility caused by the pandemic is incomparable to the setbacks created by shifting immigration policies. However, in thinking through Mabel’s story and that of our other interviewees, it seems that the emotional distress experienced in both cases are not all that different.

As migration scholars now reflect more deeply on questions of immobility, it might be useful to consider how the experiences of immobility are differentiated. Immobility is not a single thing. How does a virus alter aspiring migrants’ perception about their inability to leave the country? As noted in a previous blog post from Xiao Ma, the COVID-19 pandemic may bring about new regimes of immobility, different from the immigration regimes that have blocked nurses’ plans in the past. It might also lead to more intense moral judgments on those who do eventually leave.

April, a nurse bound for Saudi Arabia, recounted a conversation with a neighbor who found out that she was a “stranded” nurse. Instead of commiserating, the neighbor told April, “Dito ka nalang muna. Kailangan ka ng Pilipinas” (Well you should stay here first. Your country needs you). April said she felt a mixture of annoyance and pity. “I feel sorry for Filipino patients. I do want to serve…But I also need to provide for my family.”

Now, my collaborators and I realized that our ongoing research must also work to differentiate pandemic-related immobility from the barriers that nurse migrants have faced in the past. For our interviewees, the pandemic seems more unpredictable and limits the options they can take. For now, all of our interviewees have been resigned to waiting at home, in the hope of borders opening up once again.

Immobility among migration scholars

More broadly, perhaps this is also a time to reflect on our own immobility as scholars whose travels for field work and conferences have been put on hold. Having the university shut down and international activity frozen is truly unprecedented. However, in some ways, many scholars have long experienced other forms of immobility as well.

While the COVID-19 crisis had forced me to cancel two conferences in the last two months, one of my Manila-based collaborators has never attended an academic event beyond Asia because his applications for tourist visas have always been rejected (twice by the Canadian embassy, once by the US embassy). Another friend, a Filipino PhD student, had to wait two months for approval to conduct research in Lebanon, prompting her to write a “back-up proposal” for her dissertation in case her visa application was declined.

Browsing through social media, it is interesting for me to observe an increasing number of American and British scholars ruminating on their current “immobility.” Living in this moment of pandemic, I can understand that it is tempting to think of our current constraints as exceptional. However, we also need to pause and consider how immobility is not a new experience for many others.

#immobilité #Philippines #infirmières #migrations #fermeture_des_frontières #travailleurs_étrangers #futurs_migrants

@sinehebdo —> nouveau mot

#aspiring_migrants (qui peut ressembler un peu à #candidats_à_l'émigration qu’on a déjà, mais c’est pas tout à fait cela quand même... #futurs_migrants ?)
#vocabulaire #mots #terminologie #agences #contrat #travail #coronavirus #stranded #blocage

Les chercheurs distinguent les personnes qui asiprent à migrer, c’est-à-dire qui déclare la volonté de partir, des personnes qui ont entamé des démarches effectives pour partir au cours des dernières semaines (demande de visa, envoi de CV, demande d’un crédit bancaire, etc.). Les enquêtes montrent que la différence entre les deux groupes est quantitativement très importante.

Nouveau mot ajouté à la discussion sur le #vocabulaire pour décrire #migrants et #réfugiés, là :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/414225

#collapsologie

On avait déjà eu ça :

World wine production just hit a 56-year low. That’s not even the worst part.
Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post, le 27 octobre 2017
►https://seenthis.net/messages/640409

Global wine production plummeted to an almost six-decade low this year — and that isn’t even the worst news.

Thanks to the ravages of climate change, experts say that these sorts of bad harvests, once considered historic, will likely grow more common in the future.

This week, the International Organization of Vine and Wine, a Paris-based scientific and technical group, announced that production would fall by roughly 3 billion bottles this year, a drop of more than 8 percent from 2016 and the lowest level seen since 1961. The losses were driven by a trio of extreme weather events in Italy, France and Spain; the most-affected regions include those that produce Bordeaux, Rioja and Chianti.

Autre lien sur le WaPo est en paywall :
▻https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/24/global-wine-production-predicted-to-slump-to-50-year-low

Si seulement ça pouvait permettre une prise de conscience... On ne va même pas pouvoir se bourrer la gueule pendant la fin du monde !

#vin #bière

On l’ajoute à la troisième compilation :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/680147

#effondrement #collapsologie #catastrophe #fin_du_monde #it_has_begun #Anthropocène #capitalocène

Article de vulgarisation :

Study : Decreases in Global Beer Supply Due to Extreme Drought, Heat
KTVN, le 15 octobre 2018
▻http://www.ktvn.com/story/39287703/study-decreases-in-global-beer-supply-due-to-extreme-drought-heat

A new study says climate change may leave people crying in their costlier beer.

The international study says bouts of extreme heat waves and drought will cut production of barley, a key ingredient of beer.

When that happens, beer prices on average could double. In countries like Ireland, prices could triple.

Previous studies have detailed how chocolate, coffee and wine will be made scarcer and more expensive because of human-caused climate change.

Steve Davis of the University of California, Irvine, says the beer research was partly done to drive home the not-that-palatable message that climate change is messing with all sorts of aspects of our daily lives.

donc aussi #chocolat et #café

#histoire #prospective

Qu’une société se dote d’oracles et de devins en tous genres n’est en soi pas un problème. Le problème, en revanche, c’est notre manière de faire de la prospective, qui délimite les horizons possibles et finit par enfermer le futur. Le futur devrait être un terrain d’expérimentations, le lieu de réalisations d’alternatives, un foyer de contre-cultures, pas une banale et tiède continuation du système actuel. Pire : on ridiculise volontiers les alternatives, on exclut de la table des négociations au nom de la sauvegarde de l’intégrité du “cercle de la raison”. Sous couvert de “pragmatisme”, on fait du TINA – “There is no alternative” – de Thatcher la seule et unique ligne de conduite de notre présent et de notre futur.
Face à ce présent continué qui essaie de se faire passer pour l’avenir, il nous faut agir. Construire des discours capables de porter de nouveaux imaginaires, de désencastrer le futur, et de libérer nos capacités d’actions. L’hégémonie du TINA a aplati nos lectures du futur : il s’agit de leur redonner de la densité.
Il est temps d’arrêter de faire de la prospective pour commencer à faire de l’histoire.

#effondrement #collapsologie #catastrophe #fin_du_monde #it_has_begun #Anthropocène #capitalocène

Ajouter aux compilation :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/499739
►https://seenthis.net/messages/524060

Tu as oublié le lien :

Peter Frase : « On ne peut pas tout résoudre par des bricolages technos »
Ewen Chardronnet, Makery, le 1 août 2017
▻http://www.makery.info/2017/08/01/peter-frase-on-ne-peut-pas-tout-resoudre-par-des-bricolages-technos

à rajouter aux compilations :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/499739
►https://seenthis.net/messages/524060

#effondrement #collapsologie #catastrophe #fin_du_monde #it_has_begun #Anthropocène #capitalocène
#Peter_Frase #automatisation #post-capitalisme #optimisme #pessimisme

1) Le premier scénario, optimiste, intitulé « socialisme », tient compte des ressources raréfiées et de l’impératif du changement climatique et planifie la conversion écologique des marchés et l’introduction d’un revenu universel.
2) Le second scénario imagine une société qui aurait trouvé une source d’énergie propre illimitée permettant un « communisme » de l’automatisation généralisée, une société post-travail, post-raréfaction, post-carbone.
3) Le troisième scénario, dit « de la rente », envisage un modèle social-libéral d’une société rentière. L’énergie propre existe en abondance mais les techniques pour la produire sont « monopolisées par les élites ». En dehors d’une oligarchie possédante, la vaste majorité de la population paie des loyers (appartement, voiture, fournisseur d’accès internet, téléphone, etc.). L’automatisation crée du chômage et le revenu universel ne peut apporter seul la solution.
4) Enfin, son dernier scénario, l’« exterminisme », est le plus inquiétant. Les riches se barricadent dans une société où les robots font tout pour eux, pendant que les pauvres sont relégués derrière un mur, dans des prisons ou des camps de réfugiés, quand ils ne sont tout simplement pas laissés pour morts dans un climat de plus en plus invivable. L’élite nie à dessein le changement climatique, allant jusqu’à considérer qu’il existe une population surplus de l’humanité dont il faut se débarrasser.