The COVID-19 pandemic has brought our globalized and fast-paced world to a significant halt, among other things chilling travel and migration. Airplanes now fly carrying few if any passengers, crops sit unharvested due to a lack of seasonal workers, and refugees in the process of resettlement are caught in a state of limbo. Around the world, the effects of closed borders, national lockdowns, and other restrictions on human mobility are more evident than ever.

Global travel for tourists, business professionals, and migrants is at a historic low. Eerily empty airport terminals reflect the 96 percent drop in U.S. airline travel that has occurred due to border restrictions, stay-at-home orders, and fear of exposure. With an International Air Transport Association survey finding that 40 percent of recent travelers are planning to wait at least six months until after the virus is contained to resume flying, the future of the travel industry, which generates $2.6 trillion in economic output and supports 15.8 million jobs in the United States alone, is on shaky ground.  

The restriction of travel has in turn affected humanitarian operations such as refugee resettlement. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have temporarily suspended resettlement, due to airline logistical concerns, border restrictions, and the risk of infection. While nearly 64,000 refugees were offered resettlement through UNHCR in 2019, that total represented just 4.5 percent of the estimated 1.4 million refugees in urgent need of resettlement.

In the European Union, where freedom of movement is a cornerstone of the European project, travel restrictions, lockdowns, and worker resistance to travel in an uncertain period are posing major headaches for agricultural producers and health-care operations, as MPI Europe’s Monica Andriescu explores in a new Migration Information Source article out today—which is celebrated as Labour Day in Europe and other parts of the world. Each spring, hundreds of thousands of eastern European and northern African workers migrate to farms in western Europe for the harvest. This year due to border closures and concerns about leaving home countries where the pandemic is less severe, labor shortages abound, to the dismay of farming associations that have sounded the alarm. France and Germany began recruiting campaigns to attract domestic workers, but as the Telegraph reported this week, farm work is not always so appealing: Of 50,000 British workers who expressed an interest in picking fruits and vegetables, just 112 actually took the jobs on offer. As a result, workarounds are being created, such as chartering planes to fly in Eastern European seasonal farm workers. International labor mobility is centered on matching labor supply to demand as a mechanism to sort out inefficiencies in national labor markets. But does this always work out so neatly? And who reaps the benefits and who bears the costs? Andriescu takes on these questions in her article.

As the pandemic has reordered life around the world, raising questions about global supply chains, who is an “essential” worker, safety nets, and so much more, it remains to be seen how deep and lasting the effects will prove to be on human mobility.

Best regards,

Editor, Migration Information Source