Lorenzo Piccoli talks about nationality as a basis for discrimination during pandemic

Most countries provide different degrees of access to social rights based on the nationality and immigration status of the recipient. In times of emergency, faced with the need to ensure public safety and constrained by resource scarcity, do governments use these criteria for discrimination in the provision of welfare? The public health emergency has certainly exacerbated the exclusion of certain groups of immigrants from public services, but some governments have adopted innovative measures to broaden social inclusion. From this perspective, the public health emergency has also provided a window of opportunity for implementing new policies that can potentially improve the situation of immigrants.

The distribution of rights during emergencies

Measures introduced to respond to emergencies can further the exclusion of communities that have less voice or power; but may also facilitate the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups. During the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in Spain, for example, many Portuguese workers had to return to Portugal without any medical assistance from Spanish public officials. By contrast, the American Civil War (1861-1865) functioned as catalyst for the expansion of citizenship to African Americans. The general point is that governments can leverage emergency situations to extend or contract rights that are attached to different statuses.

Which of these dynamics, ‘greater inclusiveness’ towards immigrants or ‘greater restrictiveness’, do we observe during the COVID-19 pandemic?

This is a part of a blog post published by Lorenzo Piccoli.