Migration and Inequalities in the Face of COVID-19: Economic, Political and Social Context in Mexico and The United States

Our world changed drastically on February 11th 2020 when the World Health Organization announced the name of the new coronavirus disease as COVID-19, and the pandemic was later considered the greatest challenge we have faced since World War II. Although we have started to experience social life in various new ways, the impacts that it will bring are still unknown. In recent years, migration had already undergone different transformations globally, and more changes are expected. How will populations on the move and migrant populations live in the following years post-COVID, and how different actors will respond to these changes, is yet to be seen. The Seminar Migration, Inequality and Public Policies at El Colegio de México has worked over the last three years on better understanding the different dimensions of inequality associated to migration, and how public policy mediates these processes. Facing this new context, we decided to generate an academic discussion, albeit accessible to the general public, to apprise how COVID-19 will impact different dimensions of migration processes, and reflect on what would be needed to address these effects. In order to ponder these questions, we brought together the perspectives of a series of binational experts from the academia, the public, social and private sectors, who deliver, on the one hand, a discussion about the economic, political and social context, and on the other, considerations on specific vulnerable mobile populations, as well as of support networks, and implications for policy aimed at diminishing the negative effects of the pandemic. We hope that these two issues of our series Notes on Migration and Inequalities will constitute a frame of reference to inform about the current situation and generate proposals that will transcend this contingency