Balancing Public Health and Economic Interests Whilst Creating New Opportunities for Labor Migrants

The COVID-19 pandemic unveils structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities in societal structures that we have become to take as ordinary parts of our society. This especially holds true for such structures in the labor market in general (see Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-65355-2_5 by Bekker) and especially for labor migrants, the focus of this chapter. The COVID-19 crisis not only augmented their precarious situation but also enlarged the awareness of the dependency of developed countries on migrant workers and, in some countries, led to a positive response by way of regularization of the migratory status of migrant workers. Apparently, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed that a public health risk generated more impact than academic and grounded research on work and living conditions of migrant workers and the work of organizations fighting for migrant workers’ rights. In this chapter, I will first address how COVID-19 has impacted the position of migrant workers before discussing opportunities created for migrant workers and the way forward.