The Other Face of Globalization

The episode of Covid-19 pandemic has obviously uncovered the other substance of globalization, especially with regards to worldwide traveler laborers. Combination of worldwide work market made an extension for the minimized individuals of agricultural nations to profit by the globalization cycle through getting to business abroad. Simultaneously, globalization has likewise presented work transients to incredible weaknesses including dangerous circumstances. The Covid-19 emergency has unprecedentedly affected the worldwide exchange and business, yet it is the traveler laborers who have borne the cost more excessively than some other gathering, be it public labor force or residents of a nation. 

During the entire time of this emergency, travelers have been serving in fundamental bleeding edge occupations, for example, medical care, transport, development, horticulture and food preparing ventures in various objective nations. Absence of security of these laborers is undeniable from the way that the spread of Covid-19 has been disproportionally higher among the traveler networks; passing rate is additionally the most elevated among them. In a significant number of the Gulf and other Arab nations, South East Asian or even a portion of the European nations during the long periods of March, April, and even May, travelers were seen on streets, shopping zones and other public places urgently searching for food and asylum. At times, managers relinquished them, and in different occurrences, government specialists were occupied with capturing them on the guise that they were in sporadic status. Exploiting the pandemic, a considerable lot of these nations even expelled them. 

Bangladeshi travelers beat the rundown when it came to contaminated people or individuals who were in sheer need of help. Reports have noticed that by July 2020, in excess of 70,000 Bangladeshis were tainted in 186 nations. By December 27, exactly 2,330 Bangladeshi transients had surrendered to Covid-19 of every 21 nations (Prothom Alo, 28/12/2020). In Singapore, Bangladeshis established practically 50% of the travelers contaminated with Covid-19. One-fourth of the individuals who passed on in Saudi Arabia because of Covid-19 are Bangladeshis. Out of the 328 who kicked the bucket because of Covid-19 in the UAE, 122 were Bangladeshis. Alongside Gulf and other Arab nations, Bangladeshi transients were spending their days in intense appetite in European nations, for example, Spain, Italy or Portugal too. The nations of objective disregarded their duty of dealing with its traveler labor force to the degree that Bangladesh government needed to put together food and medication for Bangladeshis in various pieces of the world. This has been regardless of the way that different worldwide regulating structures and norms, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Global Compact for Migration, and Guidelines for Migrants in Countries in Crisis—maintain that during an emergency circumstance, it is the duty of the objective nations to take care of the travelers independent of their lawful status. 

Nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE pronounced Covid-19 testing free for all transients regardless of their lawful sculptures. Actually, Abdul, who kicked the bucket in July because of mind stroke, had educated his family before he died that he had all the manifestations of Covid-19 yet was concerned to make sure about treatment because of his sporadic status. Numerous travelers like Abdul could possibly have been tainted by the infection, however died without treatment due to their dread of capture and removal. Travelers in sporadic status or those holding alleged free visas for all useful purposes stayed outside the domain of medical services that these nations should give them. 

A review of BCSM and RMMRU on persuasively returned travelers shows that about a third of these transients dwelling in 17 nations lost their positions. Another 40% remained somewhat utilized with a re-arranged lower wage, and the lay on free visa couldn't get business. Without work or admittance to pay, Fazar Ali took cash from home to endure. Prior to getting back to Bangladesh from Kuwait, Selim was making due by spending his investment funds that he had created in the course of the most recent one year to pay for his visa reestablishment. In this current unregulated globalization system, Bangladeshis like Fazar and Selim are the ones who have been financing the economies of the objective nations. 

The weakness of female travelers has drawn out a mind boggling measurement of transients' weaknesses during emergency circumstances. Under ordinary conditions, live-in female homegrown laborers endure much more difficulty contrasted with those laborers who remain outside. Coronavirus, in any case, shows that work misfortune is practically non-existent among the live-in female homegrown specialists. In any case, in numerous occasions, they needed to consent to deferred installment of wages. With all individuals remaining at home for the greater part of the day, their outstanding burden had expanded complex. Investigation of their work by the businesses just as disappointment of the businesses showed in physical and obnoxious attacks. Cleaners, producing laborers or live-out homegrown specialists might not have experienced comparative physical and obnoxious attacks, however they lost their positions either completely or halfway. Their sheer endurance in objective nations was in question. 

From early April, the administrations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Maldives began haggling with Bangladesh government to reclaim its residents who were working in their nations in unpredictable status. They likewise pushed exonerating a portion of the sentenced Bangladeshi travelers if the public authority brought them back. Capturing and confining travelers under the guise of exacting usage of lockdown and drives against sporadic transients were a portion of the procedures utilized by the administrations of objective nations to oust the laborers. Casually dressed individuals from law implementing offices got Bangladeshi laborers from before their homes, strip malls, streets, food slows down, and put them into detainment camps and afterward extradited them to Bangladesh. Shafique, one such specialist, stayed in one sets of garments in a detainment camp for 28 days. With profound pain, he said he had cleaned up wearing a plastic parcel! 

As per the Migrant Forum in Asia, the year 2020 has likewise seen a huge number of dollars of compensation burglary. Mohon Ali used to be paid a little bit of his compensation and the remainder of the compensation used to be cleared toward the year's end. Because of his capture and subjective return, he was unable to get his installment from his manager. He gave up Tk 500,000 of his well deserved pay in UAE. 

The encounters of the Bangladeshi travelers in 2020 exhibit that infringement of the privileges of laborers is vital to the cycle of the current type of globalization. Coronavirus has basically uncovered that reality. In that sense, there has been little change since the hour of the Great Depression of the 1930s, or from the hours of oil emergency in 1973. As during the Asian monetary emergency of 1997 and the worldwide monetary emergency of 2009 and 2010, transients are as yet being utilized as the wellbeing valve to pad the negative results of the emergency. 

Tragically in this age, work accepting nations can even now pull off presenting travelers to extraordinary wellbeing hazards, keeping them adequately outside the medical services and other social security nets, and expelling them without regarding their employment agreements or clearing their due wages and different qualifications. The degree of conversation that occurred in the new past on the difficulties of accomplishing the Sustainable Development Goals or those of Global Compact for Migration with regards to Covid-19 doesn't coordinate the degree of conversation that is needed on the powerlessness of existing worldwide guidelines in guaranteeing the assurance of minimized transients in emergency circumstances. The circumstance of travelers in objective nations during this emergency warrants a significant examination of the principles of the game by all gatherings for rethinking the standards and norms of globalization. 

Tasneem Siddiqui is Professor of Political Science, University of Dhaka, and establishing Chair of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU).