Alinda P. Mema
The coming of Covid 19 saw the disease being declared a global pandemic and thus disrupting day to day life for most people. Restrictions across countries have been imposed to curb the spread of the disease and some of these measures have led to people having to close shop or be let go from their jobs due multiple factors such as reduced cash flow or simply their businesses not being considered ‘essential’ enough during the pandemic.
People need to be fed, safe and healthy. Therefore the determination as to which business is essential or which workers are essential in most cases has been on the basis of which sectors, departments or individuals the country cannot absolutely do without. This means that their work cannot be done from home and their roles are necessary in the running of the country!
According to reported definitions and estimates, approximately 31% of employed working-age individuals are key (Essential) workers in the EU, although this share varies widely across Europe, from over 40% in Denmark and France to just above 10% in Bulgaria and Slovenia. On average, 13% of key workers are immigrants in the EU.
The largest five categories of key workers in the EU are teaching professionals, skilled agricultural workers, science and engineering associate professionals, personal care workers plus cleaners and helpers.
Since natives are by far the most numerous group, their distribution across key occupations closely resembles the overall distribution however, statistics reveal that given the overall population of migrants, majority are in fact employed in now what has been termed as key sectors. The majority being low skilled workers.
For long low skilled workers have provided much needed services to European economies but have often times been shunned and this has evidently been translated into strict immigration polices set out by most of these countries which mostly favor highly skilled immigrants.
To add more salt to injury, there has been growing tension towards enacting tighter immigration policies stirred up by some political groups within Europe by generally grouping and then tainting the image of immigrants on account of few bad apples. This strategy has often been used as a tool to highlight the supposed downside of having immigrants.
This has to a certain extent affected the ability of immigrants to fully integrate into society with reports of some groups of immigrants, for fear of negative reactions towards their presence, resorting to hide or restrict themselves to their work and home environments in order not to arouse panic from the native population with their ‘overwhelming’ presence.
Despite all that, given the present numbers of immigrant workers involved in key roles during this pandemic as earlier mentioned, their undeniable contribution has caused some European countries to reconsider some of their immigration policies.
Italy, for instance, is currently discussing the possibility of granting an amnesty for undocumented immigrants, mixing the concern about labour shortages in the agricultural and personal care sectors with the willingness to provide these workers with some form of social and health protection. Portugal has announced that it will grant temporary residence permits to all asylum seekers who had their application still pending. And Sweden has announced a 12-month extension to several labour market integration programs allowing migrants whose subsidies would expire in the near future to remain employed.
Hopefully the above events are the beginning of a new approach towards immigrants within Europe that will eventually be translated into better policies that will not only favor high skilled migrants but low skilled immigrants too.
“Putting a spotlight on the contribution of immigrant workers with special emphasis on low skilled immigrants during this pandemic is aimed at hopefully continuing to reduce the resistance towards immigration and immigrants in general by demonstrating that despite not being natives, they have embraced their host countries as their own and are willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary to get through dark times as a nation and this includes their lives.”
Alinda .P. Mema
References
- Immigrant key workers in Europe: The COVID-19 response that comes from abroad Francesco Fasani 05 May 2020
- IZA Policy Paper No. 155: Immigrant Key Workers: Their Contribution to Europe’s COVID-19 Response Francesco Fasani, Jacopo Mazza
- Populism and Immigration June 8, 2018 Workshop | Stanford University