The forum on the COVID-19 pandemic and international migrant workers: Geographies of (im)mobility and governance challenges

In this forum, we focus on precarious international migrant workers and examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in four middle-income economies in the Global South: Ghana, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Thailand. In this way we consider varying geographies of (im)mobilities, responses, and governance. During the global struggle to cope with the pandemic, the world witnessed that the quality of governance at multiple levels played a crucial role. In these uncertain times, it is imperative that awareness, prevention, and resilience improves. Collectively, the four essays reveal a multitude of challenges. We address important issues such as the relationship between sociocultural factors and digital pandemic governance, the need to improve services and support for female migrants, the complex issue of return migration, the specific challenges associated with sudden and temporary immobility, and the increasingly prevalent status of middle-income economies in the Global South as both sending and receiving countries.