China's economic downturn has left thousands of migrant workers unemployed. They're pivoting to work in COVID control — and have strong concerns about how they are being treated.
"The reality is that laborers work at the limit of human dignity," Aboubakar Soumahoro tells NPR. He's the subject of a new documentary, The Invisibles, shot at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Even with stringent lockdowns, the coronavirus has spread through migrant communities in some Middle Eastern countries where foreign workers live in cramped quarters.
Pratap Singh Bora is a migrant laborer from Nepal who had to leave his construction job in India and is now living in a relief camp. But there's an upside to this turn of events.
Singapore reported 1,426 new cases on Monday and now has the highest number of reported cases in Southeast Asia. Most of those recently infected are foreign workers staying in cramped dormitories.
Amid a 21-day lockdown to help control the spread of the coronavirus, millions of workers in India's cities have no income, no food — and so are heading back to their villages.
New labor regulations, in which workers without proper documents face prison time, prompted the sudden exodus. It could cause a labor shortage. The government put the law on hold for 120 days.
The children of migrant farm workers are some of the country's poorest, most undereducated and hardest to track down. Programs like one in southern Indiana are working to change that.
