 who's arising from COVID-19, particularly as they relate to migrant workers and the migration systems around. I'm going to skip some of my opening remarks and go straight to the housekeeping issues. This is really just in terms of how the WebEx platform works. So I'll introduce our speakers in a moment. We'll have all three presentations and then we have one Q&A discussion, including because a lot of the presentations do end up turning into a bit of a dialogue and we can have a very interesting Q&A. Please feel free to send your questions through the chat function, sorry the Q&A function at any time and there we'll be able to access those and if you could indicate who your question is for, whether that's a specific speaker or whether that's to all of the panelists. Now I'll introduce the panelists, we'll have three presentations of around 15-20 minutes each and then we can go into the Q&A discussion. So the first panelist this morning or this afternoon or the evening depending on where you are is Brenda Yow. Brenda is the Raffles Professor of Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore and Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute. She's of course one of the most experienced and widely published Migration Academic in Asia and Brenda will be presenting her paper on temporary migration regimes and their sustainability in times of COVID-19. Then we'll hear from Martin Ruse who is the Chair in Migration Studies and the Deputy Director of the Migration Policy Centre at European University Institute in Florence. You will know that Professor Ruse's research focuses on the economics and the politics of international migration with a strong international comparative dimension. Martin today will be taking us through his co-authored paper on COVID-19's systemic resilience and migrant focus and hopefully time permitting he'll also share with us some of the key takeaways from EUI's recent virtual conference on systemic resilience and migration and we're also very pleased to have Dr Marla Aziz join us who is the Executive Director of the Scala Brini Migration Centre in Manila. She's a sociologist who's long been working on international migration and social change in Asia and Dr Aziz also edits the Asian and Pacific Migration Journal. Marla is joining us today to share with us, she's joining us today to share her analysis of the repatriation of Filipino migrants during the pandemic which stems from her recent paper on the topic in our migration research series. So without further ado and again apologies for the delay I will hand over now to Brenda who will present her paper. Thank you Brenda. Hello from Singapore it's approaching evening and thank you for this opportunity to share some thoughts on temporary migration regimes in pandemic times if you can all see the screen if I could proceed. I think it goes without saying that in pre-COVID times within an era of high mobility temporary labour migration schemes has been expanding and increasingly prevalent sort of globally and pathways to permanency has been narrowing we see that temporary migration has been growing quite fast twice as fast year on year compared to those with permanent visas and of course temporary migration is central to the migration and development discourse where mutual benefits for sending and receiving states are in a sense secured through a managerial approach that ensures on the one hand the transience and non-integration of labour migrants in whole societies and on the other hand the durability of remittance transfers to left behind families in home countries. So in that sense pre-COVID-19 assumptions are that this balancing act between the economic benefits and the social consequences of temporary migration can be held up and managed in order to promote sort of development benefits for all and this particular kind of pathway towards development is predicated on the ease of international travel and the constant churning of migrants across international borders. So of course the curtailment of transnational mobility during pandemic times basically came as a shock and this then provides an opportunity to question the sustainability of temporary migration in the COVID-19 aftermath especially when back and forth mobility just churning a migrants back and forth is now difficult impeded costly and risky. So in the paper basically I discussed some short-term policy measures that were put in place in response to the pandemic but also then examine these short-term fixes that were improvised during this time to see whether there are lessons for longer-term sustainability in the post-COVID times. Of course when post-COVID times will arrive is anyone's guess. So just very briefly run through the short-term policy responses these of course designed largely to meet urgent needs under exceptional circumstances and do not address structural issues that underpin temporary migration schemes. We see as the COVID-19 pandemic spread the some host countries have integrated migrants international plans for virus testing and in some countries including Singapore migrants have been in a sense prioritized for virus testing in order to provide treatment and less means of transmission control. So and a second sort of approach in some countries is to offer welfare support selectively for migrant workers either in cash or in kind assistance to support stranded migrant workers and this is again not always done by the state but sometimes by migrant NGOs. Thirdly, employment support for migrant workers has not really been forthcoming because essentially migrant protection goes against the economic rationale for having trucks in labour in the first place and they're usually at the bottom of their gender for governments struggling with rocketing unemployment rates amongst the more vulnerable citizens. So this is but there are some some extensions of relaxing employment roles regarding changing employers for example so to try to fill a labour migration labour market gaps. And finally we see of course that whilst truck national mobility has in a sense been impeded for most migrant workers for selected migrant workers there's been exceptions made in order to expedite the entry of what's usually called essential workers either for healthcare or for for agricultural purposes. So but for most transient migrant workers trust national mobility is an illusion that's written with all kinds of difficulties and dangers and in this era of low mobility repatriation is slow staggered and out of step with the magnitude of the issue which I'm sure Malah will elaborate more on and migrants find themselves immobilised in incinerary detention camps whilst awaiting repatriation. So these are the sort of short term fixes and of course these short term fixes may or may not in a sense have a longer life to them and beyond the current crisis the uncertainties of the pandemic and persistence of depressed economic conditions may mean that there will be a reduction in demand for migrant workers and borders will increasingly be tightened. So on the there's been quite a bit of discussion about whether this low mobility sort of regime will induce technological progress to fill labour shortages but in many sectors technological innovations are likely to completely automate away the need for migrant workers. So but apart from looking at technology this is also an opportune moment to think about what needs to be changed and for us to set forward to make those kinds of changes that are needed those changes that are overdue structural changes that will hopefully render migration regimes more sustainable and it's to that that I would like to turn to three points to make the first has to do with longer stays and less churn as we saw the closing of borders at the height of the crisis put a stop to this very easy back and forth churning of migrant workers across borders. This is of course highly profitable for the migration brokerage industry and this kind of situation has met that nation states will have to cope with stranded workers and in some cases you see the extension of work permits and contracts and also allowing migrant workers access to job matching. The post COVID-19 context with a reduced volume of labour migration may be more conducive to offering these kinds of longer contracts of and then in a sense sort of less churning across the borders. It would be great if these can be coupled with skills sort of acquisition opportunities as well as clearer employer responsibility for home leave and repatriation. Longer stays I think makes sense because it for the worker it does away with the uncertainty of contract termination it obvious sorts of recurring brokerage fees but it also for the industry and the nation state it may improve labour productivity. So the idea here is that reduced mobility in these kinds of post pandemic times can mean less unproductive churning and more productive migrants and may even reduce the carbon footprint of this kind of budget flights across the borders. My second sort of foray in trying to come up with some kind of suggestion is to look at the kinds of welfare support that sprung up during times of COVID. Of course these were in a sense sometimes knee-jerk reactions under exceptional circumstances and are very limited but and of course these are not targeted and migrant workers in their own right but often to do is safeguarding national interests including curbing the spread of the virus and meeting sort of important labour needs in key sectors of the economy. But as the pandemic shows repatriating excess migrant workers this use and discard kind of framework this kind of logic is no longer nation states are no longer able to perform that speedily and cheaply neither are they able to always contain and segregate migrant workers from whole society. So there is a window opportunity to reframe transit labour not only within the logics of use and discard but also as an integral part of national labour supply to be safeguarded for more sustainable growth and development. So by incorporating migrant workers international safety nets that provide healthcare and income protection this is not just to do with a positive effect on migrant welfare but would be a means of future proving the economy against the crippling effects of other pandemics and other crises to come. And the third and last sort of issue that I wanted to bring up is integrating migrants as a safeguard against xenophobia. So this is a time of stalled mobility and we see that migrants and particularly temporary migrants become easy targets for vilification and blame. This is why is this so this is often exacerbated by the fact that these migrants are very little social capital and to claim a place in whole society and also because they're supposed to be temporary. So their visible presence whether in the form of migrant enclaves, gathering grounds, hot spots and so forth become an issue because they no longer can be quickly excised or easily segregated from whole society as their supposedly temporary status suggests. So to turn this around I mean one way of looking at this is to look for opportunities to build social ties and cohesion between migrants and citizens rather than to fall back on the current measures of separation and containment. By investing in social resilience by building these ties of interdependence, reducing workplace inequalities, hierarchies, racial stereotypes and countering sort of racializing discourse with this active promotion of a sense of common humanity that did pop up in many societies during times of COVID. And of course looking for innovative design, urban designs, provision of communal services and facilities that bring people together in order to avoid sharply desegregated migrant communities may be the way to go in order to safeguard against xenophobia. And so to conclude I think the main point I wanted to make is that the COVID-19 has really undermined assumptions that back and forth mobility across international borders can be sustained at low cost. This constant churn of migrants is something that's fundamental to the temporary migration scheme and this is no longer sustainable. So there's a need to revisit the structural dimensions of temporary migration. So I'm not in a sense proposing an end to temporary migration but a call to establish contract-based migration on more sustainable grounds. And for government policies that can incentivize these kinds of desirable structural change and I've discussed three forms longer stays whilst investing in raising migrants productivity, secondly incorporating migrants into national safety nets to future proof against crisis and thirdly social integration to safeguard against xenophobia. So of course this also requires going beyond the nation state to think about international and regional cooperation amongst sending and receiving states and perhaps thinking around the ideas of transnational labour citizenship that's characterised by the portability of benefits and services and the enforcement of baseline labour rights would be something that we need to revisit. And in the words of the United Nations that crisis has forced us to confront this choice, go back to the world we knew before or deal decisively with those issues that make us all unnecessarily vulnerable to this and future crisis. So what I've hoped to have done in this short presentation is show that we can build on the momentum of short-term policy responses that were developed in a time of crisis to move temporary migration regime to more sustainable and equitable basis in the longer term that would be indeed one of the decisive steps forwards. Thank you very much. Excellent thanks so much Brenda. That was a wonderful introduction and a wonderful analysis in on this particular topic and drawing on the acute kind of situation that we all saw play out in regards to the start of COVID and what it means for the longer term and especially around the aspect where we have created a system in so many different parts of the world where high mobility is embedded within migration systems and that's a key message. And it was a beautiful segue actually to Martin's presentation because you very clearly introduced the topic of resilience and systemic resilience within a lot of systems. Of course I had a couple of questions so I'm thinking along especially your body of work your reflections on on gender and also the sectoral kind of aspect but I know Martin will with Bertman going into the sectoral aspects and we'll come back to you to get some reflections on the gender dimensions as well. So now let's hand over to Martin. I will just mention too that I misspoke I don't know which platform I thought I was on but please put your questions in the chat. I think the Q&A is not working for this webinar as I've been advised by my team sorry about that but if you can put your questions in the chat and then we can get to those in the Q&A session. So thank you again Brenda and now I'll hand over to Martin. Thank you very much Mari and IOM for inviting me to participate in this discussion today. I'm going to share my screen. So the the remarks I'm giving today are based on a short note that Bridget Anders in Fridtisch-Perschland I prepared for the IOM a few months ago and that we have in the meanwhile reworked into a longer working paper you can see the reference here and in fact we built a whole project around it on migrants and systemic resilience and as Mari mentioned I think the three talks today are very complimentary in the sense that I think we're all talking in one way or another about a window of opportunity for doing things differently and better because of COVID and after COVID and Brenda spoke about the needs to change the way we think about temporary migration programs make some policy changes and what I want to talk about is the role that migrants could play in promoting what we call systemic resilience. So what do we mean by that? Well since the outbreak of the pandemic we have heard a lot about the need to protect essential services, essential economic goods and services such as health services, social care, food and agriculture for example and we've also heard of course that migrants often represent significant shares of the workforce in these sectors across countries. There are differences across countries in the shares of migrants but generally migrants often play a big role and we have had an apparent appreciation of of of the contributions that migrants make you know Europe for example in the UK we have had the clapping for essential workers including migrants and so I think that raises the question whether there is a moment now where systemic resilience or trying to protect these essential services becomes a new policy goal in migration policymaking and broader policymaking and whether that provides an opportunity to rethink more generally how we think about the impacts of migration and how we design migration policies. So the starting point is of course that we have had quite a lot of research and big debates about the roles that migrant workers can play in addressing labour and skills shortages and I will talk about that in a minute and you know are migrants needed or not to fill shortages in certain sectors in the health sector, in agriculture, in construction and so on. But now I think there is this new question about the role that migrant workers can play in shaping the resilience of some of these essential services during COVID but also of course to potential similar future shocks and we are of course quite sure that there will be future shocks that we'll have to deal with so thinking about systemic resilience I think is really unavoidable. So how does the employment of migrants affect the resilience of some of these essential services the provision of these essential goods and services and how does that vary across different countries and what can we learn from what's happening now also for future policies and I think what that requires us to do is want to think about that question is really to integrate the research and the debates that we've had on labour migration and shortages with the largely separate work that has been going on about systemic resilience and that work has been happening in other disciplines studying the environment or even engineering so I think there are insights that we can take from some of these other fields and bring into the analysis of migration and migration policies and really the I suppose the case I want to make is today that if we take systemic resilience seriously as I think we should then I think there is a case for rethinking how we assess the impacts of migration and also re rethinking how we design migration and wider public policies. So briefly what do we know already and this will be familiar to many to many people so so a key challenge of course if labour immigration policymaking is to assess to link labour immigration to the needs of the domestic labour market and of course these needs skills needs and labour needs tend to be quite contested and why is that well because there is no universally accepted definition of skills typically labour immigration policies systems make a difference between high skills and low skills I have rarely met an employer who says that the workers are low skilled there are different types of skills credentialized hard skills or soft skills that particular employer demands and preferences so I think it can be quite hard to draw the line between different skill levels similarly there's no universal definition of shortages so when an employer says there's a shortage we need migrant workers for the care sector and of course we have to ask a lot of question of what causes that shortage what's the role of wages and conditions is the short does the shortage exist because wages are low and conditions are poor and you know a simple kind of a simple minded economist response would be well what about letting wages rise can wages rise and will that reduce shortages the other point of course that we know from research and has been heavily discussed in many countries is that what's the you know what's the optimal policy response to a shortage immigration is often one response it's often a desirable response but it might not be the only response there might be other responses such as rising wages such as mechanization or computerization offshoring training more domestic workers I'm not suggesting that these alternatives exist in all sectors but the fundamental point I'm trying to make is that just because there's a shortage doesn't mean there's an automatic immediate need for migrant workers and we do know that some of these shortages arise because of the larger institutions and policies in a particular country that have nothing to do with immigration so for example a poor training system if you have a poor training system in say the construction sector then you're likely to develop shortages of considerably skilled construction workers so in that case the shortage has nothing to do with immigration in a sense but the shortage is because of a failure of another policy in this case training policy or you if you have housing policies that don't don't enable domestic workers to live in certain areas then you might have shortages of workers in those areas so we call this kind of system effects we know that and the final point I want to briefly make about this on this review what we know already is that of course if you want to address the question is there a need for migrant workers should we have more or less of labor immigration I mean these are deeply political questions in a way there's no one because they're alternative responses we're weighing up different interests so whether it's better to let wages rise to have immigration or often distributional issues so there's a politics of labor and skill shortages so if we now bring into this kind of traditional way of thinking about things the idea of resilience what does that do well I'll just be very brief on this but resilience what do we mean by resilience well you have an economic system that is or you have a socioeconomic system that experiences a shock so the performance of that system will decline however you measure it but it's not only about the total impact of course we're not only concerned about that but we also concerned about the recovery time and the shape of the recovery so the shaded area here in this chart will give you an idea that's the area in a way that we're trying to to minimize how quickly are we getting back how quickly are we recovering to the previous path and again I'm going to be very brief but two two features of flexible of resilient systems are flexibility and what people often call social capital or or networks so what flexibility means very simply is that there are ways of rearranging production of doing things in a flexible way so you reduce the dependence on the status on the status quo what social capital of networks mean is that if you have processes that are very well networked if if one small part of the network doesn't perform you might be able to replace the functions through other parts of the network networks also mean information sharing having a common purpose and providing practical mutual support so the question then is how can migration of migrants contribute to resilient systems well I think the question then becomes is how do migrants relate to flexibility and how do migrants relate to social capital or or networks now briefly just if you think about this idea of systemic resilience as a policy goal what might that mean for not only the analysis of migration but also for the regulation of labor migration policies there's just four ideas here I think one change that that would need to happen is that we shift our attention from focusing on the role of migrants in specific occupations or sectors to transnational systems typically when we talk about the need for migrant workers we have very specific occupations in mind so you know nurses doctors construction workers IT workers is in this particular occasion of occupation is there a shortage you know why does the shortage exist is there a need for migrant workers but I think we when you think about resilience I think you have to think much more broadly why well because we're talking about systems that provide a particular service so for example if you have a food system that is fairly reliant on imports of particular foods and global food chains it's no good just thinking about the role of migrants in producing food in a particular country you need to think about migrants along the whole global supply chain so it's not only about migrants in one country it's migrants working along the supply chain across different countries so I think there's an opportunity again to connect debates across different countries when you think about resilience the other point I suppose this is a bit more speculative is that if you think about resilience it might become less important to be so focused on protecting the employment of citizens we know that in a lot of labour immigration policies what's really important what's driving the debate is this this political need to protect the employment of citizens of course that will always be important but when you think about resilience in a way especially resilience to crisis arguably the overarching goal here is to make sure that the service is protected and that the essential service continues so I think there's an opportunity to think about more broadly about how can that be achieved through all kinds of different workers not only domestic workers now there's an obvious need to think to move on from thinking from the short term to the longer term migration policy making is often driven by short term considerations about efficient safe distribution who benefits who loses in the short term whereas resilience obviously requires us to think to think longer term and if you take resilience seriously as a policy goal I think we have to talk about the new politics of labour immigration again I'm not suggesting that all these things will happen but I do think there are opportunities now to rethink for example how we deal with what is typically known as lower skilled labour migration we know politically this is often considered very difficult to open up to migration for for lower skilled employment but again in this crisis we have shown with this renewed emphasis or with this new emphasis on resilience a lot of migrants a lot of workers in so-called lower skilled jobs are absolutely critical to ensuring resilience so does that open up an opportunity for reforming lower skilled labour immigration policies and thinking differently about the rights of migrant workers not only in high skilled but also in lower skilled lower skilled occupations briefly and I'll finish up with this I think there's an important policy debate to be had and and I personally think that because crisis and shocks are going to be with us for some time and there might be different future shocks I think thinking about resilience is really important in addition to the traditional concerns about efficiency and distribution now whether or not that happens politically is of course a separate question but I think that research can also try to contribute to highlighting the importance of this issue and to highlighting the links between the employment of migrants and resilience of systems and so here here are three types of research I think that that could be done and that kind of could be a new research agenda I mean one question is how do migrants and citizens compare in terms of their effects on resilience within given systems so by that I mean within the current institutional structure so within the current system for example of providing social care in a particular country you know what's the difference between migrants and citizens in terms of their flexibility and in terms of their in terms of their networks I think that is one interesting question what one could ask but we should also compare the migrants roles across different systems because there might be different responses to the question how can you make the system more resilient with regard to migration again one one response is to say well we change our migration policies because for example we appreciate the role the migrants play in particular sectors they need to be given more rights in order to make sure they can fully contribute to resilience so you change your kind of label mix for example or the rights of existing workers but another response might be to say well we have to switch systems you know we have to it's no good just thinking about how our workers in general are treated and about our migration policies we need to think about the larger institutions we think about how food production is organized we think about how we protect global supply chains so we can think about switching for example from a social care system that is reliant on minimum wage labor to one that is that has a more regulated labor market and pays workers better and migrants again can play different roles across these different systems and I think a third question that that's very important that particularly I suppose for political scientists as well is to understand the choices and determinants of resilient strategies across different systems so we know that again I'll come back to social care system we know social care is organized very differently in the UK in Sweden and in different countries outside Europe how do these systems respond to the COVID crisis what are the choices that they make are they responding in terms of changing them the labor policies their protections for migrants their migration policies or are they changing in terms of the broader the broader systems the broader characteristics of their systems so I just want to end by saying I think this kind of analysis and this kind of debate that we have in mind is obviously related to debates about restrictions of migrants and low-skilled jobs and about exploitation of migrants and low-skilled jobs but I do think it goes beyond that so this is not just about saying highlighting that migrants are often exploited and that we need to think much more seriously about what that that means for migrants themselves I think that is important I think it's highlighting what does that mean what do those conditions also mean for the resilience of the larger system so I think individual resilience migrants resilience is obviously related in important ways to systemic resilience so I think there are clear complementarities here and there could be also trade-offs something that is in the interest of systemic resilience might sometimes not be the interest of individual workers especially if we argue that we need to use migration in order to make the system more flexible but I think that's a very important window of opportunity now to discuss these systems these issues very explicitly now and again to think whether it is not time to rethink how we assess the impacts of migration and migration policies if you want to read more about this as Mari mentioned we do have a project around all of this it's called Migres Hub I'd encourage you to look at our website and look at some of the papers there thank you great thank you very much Martin I've got quite a few questions coming through so we'll be able to pose those a little bit a little bit later I think you know part of bringing together both what Brenda and you have been saying and then we will turn to Myla to look at a very specific issue in regards to systems and the degree of resilience that has been displayed is that we have seen some flexibility within systems but it goes straight to the heart of policy deliberations and policy responses because those have been highly variable so we've seen very quite different degrees of flexibility within immigration systems also in regards to repatriation efforts also in regard to regularization and the release of migrants for example from immigration detention very kind of granular kind of visa processing and visa programming flexibilities and so forth and so the question really is how do we not just kind of return to as Brenda mentioned not just return to what we had before but understand some of the risks in systems understand some of the systemic areas where we can shift to improve both the you know the the rights of migrants and their underlying needs as well as their contributions to societies in order to ensure that we're bolstering systems in the right places we know that we won't this is not the last you know pandemic that's pretty clear and quite a few people have been saying this for a long time human interactions and environmental issues mean that we will be likely to be facing more zoonotic coronaviruses in the future so we know that and there are other challenges as again as Brenda highlighted earlier in regards to carbon emissions and a whole range of issues related to technology so we'll get into that in a moment but now let's turn to Marla and thank you again to Martin but now we'll turn to Marla to really look at some a very important aspects are always important but has been highlighted as being extremely important in terms of migrants rights as well as safeguarding kind of entire systems and that is the repatriation of migrant workers I know that it's a fast-moving area and a fast-moving kind of space Marla so we really appreciate your kind of your paper but also the update in terms of what's actually happening on the ground at the moment so thank you very much Marla I'll turn to you I think you're muted for inviting me to be part of this forum and I'll try my best first of all where is it a moment just here earlier okay okay sorry about this is it showing up yep that's great thank you all right yes okay thanks very much again and I'd like to thank Brenda and Martin for the very stimulating presentations I almost forgot about my own part but as Mary mentioned the the presentation that I'll make is based on the experience of the Philippines in repatriating Philippine migrant workers in this time of the pandemic I'm grateful for this opportunity because it does give me a chance to update what what what was contained in the policy brief that was written way back in June and was eventually published I think late July or August and indeed a lot of developments and changes have taken place and also I'd like to mention at the very outset that when I wrote that paper sorry way back in June there was not yet a lot of discussion about the integration programs and services because they were not yet introduced around the time it was towards the latter part of June and July when reintegration programs and services began also to take a lot of prominence in discussions here in the Philippines so in that paper what I tried to do was actually to I tried to examine the repatriation process because that was one of the immediate responses of the Philippine government in extending support to migrant workers located in different destinations and also to examine the challenges that were met that were encountered in this particular pandemic the Philippines of course has experienced repatriating and providing assistance to migrant workers that had been placed in crisis situations in the past but of course there are many things that are very unprecedented about this particular crisis and also as part of the reflection that Mary that Mary also challenged us earlier is also to look at some of the emerging practices and indeed there are some silver linings I think even in this very difficult situation so first of all in terms of updates let me just provide some data the most recently available data that are available now from the different government agencies and let me start inside the context by introducing this data coming from the Department of Labor and Employment as of October 23 and as of this particular date close to 500,000 overseas Filipino workers have lost their jobs or were unable to return to work because the workplaces that they were in had stopped operations so actually this estimate is already an improvement but this estimate has already been updated from an earlier one of 300,000 that the Department of Labor was using in the early part of the repatriation process out of the total of this close to 500,000 OFWs who have been displaced already some 260,000 have been repatriated back to the Philippines another 131,000 are awaiting repatriation and another 100,000 opted to remain overseas the third category of workers Filipino workers who opted to remain overseas this is not something that is very unusual because even in past crises there would always be a certain number and share of Filipino migrant workers would choose to stay put and and just wait out the situation and even on the deployment side we also had experiences before that even in very difficult times even in times of conflict people would still choose to go because they think that there's something better out there so again let me share with you the data coming from the overseas workers welfare administration and this is as of October 28 2020 and as you can see there there are differences in the numbers concerning how many people have actually been repatriated in the Philippines I will show you another figure later that is quite different and part of the differences and part of the discrepancies has something to do with the different definitions of the overseas Filipino population that is covered by these estimates so I'd like to highlight the numbers that are presented in the first half of the slide and that is the number that suggests that already as of October 28 some 275,000 overseas Filipino migrant overseas Filipino Filipino workers have returned to their home regions okay so that's that that's quite a very substantial number because normally under normal circumstances when we think of return migration in non-pandemic in non-pandemic times the numbers are much less known in fact this whole idea of how many have actually returned to the Philippines even under normal circumstances that's the kind of information that we still continue to to look into okay so let me just also share with you this data coming from the Department of Foreign Affairs and this is as of November 8th okay and as you can see the figure there is a bit lower but what they are both what they both share what they are both consistent in is that when we have to categorize the overseas Filipino workers who have returned of course there's a larger share of the land-based migrant workers compared to the sea-based migrant workers in the early part of the repatriation process up to about the early part of June there were more sea-based workers who were repatriated compared to the land-based workers and that particular profile reflected the closure of cruise ship liners which employ a large number of Filipino workers but of course after that then what we are seeing now is really a reflection of the real proportion of land-based to sea-based workers all right and then in terms of the COVID-19 cases among Filipinos abroad there's some 11,000 total confirmed cases and out of the total some 7,456 have already recovered and were discharged and the number of deaths have reached 828 and this is data coming from 81 countries for which reports are available let me turn now to the repatriation framework and policies of the Philippines as Brenda mentioned in her presentation the dominant form of migration in the region is temporary labor migration and because of that this idea of return to the kind of migrant workers returning to their countries of origin is something that is given and is something that is structural so in in the Philippines the governance of temporary labor migration is structured therefore around three major phases okay so before migration so what are the programs and services that are provided to workers before they leave for overseas employment the second phase would be the on-site programs and services what are the programs and services that are provided to OFWs while they are abroad and the final one is of course upon their return to the Philippines now these three phase governance of labor migration is very much reflected in the migrant workers and overseas Filipinos act of 1995 which is like the first law in the Asian region particularly in countries of origin which has a specific purpose the purpose of promoting the rights and protection of Filipino migrant workers and other overseas Filipinos so this particular law was amended in 2010 known as the Republic Act R.A. 122 okay so the Philippines has established as a fairly well established framework and policies concerning return migration and under return migration there's also the anticipation that there would be emergency types or crisis types of return and and this is also something that has been born out of the experience out of the country's experience of more than four decades of massive labor migration and so actually the if you would take a look at the dates the migrant workers and overseas Filipinos act of 1995 came four years later after the Gulf War of 1991 so the particular experience that we had in the Gulf War of 1990-91 which required the Philippine government to provide protection to overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East which hosts the largest concentration of Filipino migrant workers this has informed the practices and the policies as well as the designation of institutions in the Philippines on how to address crisis situation how to develop preparedness and also responsiveness when these difficult situations come up so among the lessons that we learned from that particular experience is the need for Philippine foreign missions to act as one to act as one coordinated body and also the importance of a contingency plan not only on the part of the Philippine embassies and Philippine consulates but also in requiring foreign employers particularly those companies that hire large numbers of Filipino workers and our experience also in the Gulf War of 1990-91 also highlighted and showed to us the role of Filipino communities as partners in these very difficult times so these experiences have really informed the law the migrant workers and overseas Filipinos act as well as policies and practices that came later that's why in the law there are specific provisions in anticipation of emergency types of repatriation and specifically this concerns the following the first one is designating the overseas workers welfare administration or OWA as the agency that is responsible for repatriation that it will be coordinated with the department of foreign affairs there's also the provision of having an emergency repatriation fund and this was increased later under the amended RA-122 and the Kwan country team approach which proved very useful during the Gulf War of 1990-91 that is also part of the law from around 2011 onwards there were further developments there were other policies and practices that also came up because also other challenges came up along the way as well there was the war in Libya there was the war in Syria there were the health scares verse 12 and so forth and so this led to other other elaboration of what has been in place for some time so as I mentioned the standard one of the standard operating practices is to require employers foreign employers of the Philippine workers to have an evacuation plan and this is one of the this is one of the requirements that they have to submit for their for their request for Filipino workers to be approved and then the Philippines also developed the four level alert system when something happens when there's a crisis whether it is a natural disaster or a conflict related type of situation it does not necessarily mean it does not necessarily mean that there will be mandatory repatriation so the first level of the four level alert system is simply to encourage the Filipino communities to to be mindful of their circumstances and of the and of the developments and it is only at alert level number four that there's going to be mandatory repatriation to be undertaken by the Philippine government and over the years this idea that the repatriation process will also have to integrate other programs and services have also have also been reflected in other developments like in the assist well program which sees an integrated approach to repatriation by incorporating welfare employment legal and livelihood services as well and then also over the years especially around 2014 2015 and 2016 several government agencies mostly those that are the migration related agencies have formulated joint manual of operations whether in terms of providing assistance to migrant workers and overseas Filipinos or in terms of medical repatriation so that there would be a coordinated approach to the to the challenges that come up during this pandemic of course the repatriation process was made a lot more difficult due to various factors in fact the population of overseas Filipino workers that the Philippine government has to attend to has to be has to be sub-categorized into various groups you have the situation of stranded workers you have the situation of workers who have been displaced you also have the situation of stranded workers in the Philippines and this would include workers who just came home for a vacation but were unable to return to resume their work overseas because of international flights and of course the whole process was also very much affected by the various travel restrictions that were put in place by different countries around March beginning around March and not only that the travel restrictions also applied internally as well so the transfer of repatriated Filipino workers from Manila to their hometowns and to their home provinces and home communities also posed one of one of the major challenges particularly early on in the repatriation experience so what the pandemic required therefore it really called for a whole of government approach so in previous crisis it was largely the migration related agencies that were working together but this time the migration agencies had to work with other agencies that they did not have working relationship with before okay so at the top of the whole situation is the so-called interagency task force on emerging infectious diseases so this was activated early on and this is actually a body that was established in an executive order way back in 2014 because of the various health scares that we experience not only here in the Philippines but also globally so the intent was really on how to monitor as well as how to contain the spread of epidemics particularly in the Philippines so the repatriation efforts as well as assistance that were provided to OFWs required coordination and synergies with different institutions so just to mention a few for example in the past when there was a repatriation process government agencies like the overseas workers welfare administration did not have to deal with the Bureau of Fire Protection they did not have to deal with the armed forces of the Philippines but because of the many processes that are involved beginning with the arrival of OFWs through the SWAP testing and then to transporting them to different transporting them to different hotels and accommodations in Metro Manila all of these details have to be figured out and they have to be coordinated with these other agencies as well the assistance that was provided we can we can probably divide them into two major parts the first one is the immediate assistance and this consisted of a one-time cash assistance of 200 dollars for about the equivalent of 10 000 pesos to affected OFWs on site those based abroad and to those who had been repatriated and of course as I mentioned earlier earlier the repatriation of OFWs was also part of the immediate assistance but it is also an ongoing process and in this regard in terms of the repatriation assistance provided OFWs this consisted of the key the key elements would consist of the following organizing charter flights particularly in selected destinations a whole array of airport assistance upon the arrivals of overseas Filipino workers three COVID-19 testing assistance during quarantine so while they were doing the 14-day quarantine particularly in the first three or four months the overseas workers well for administration shouldered the hotel accommodations as well as in providing them with food packs and hygiene packs as well and also part of the services that were provided during the quarantine period were health services as well as counseling services because of course various instances when returning and the OFWs Filipino workers had psychological issues to deal with and what I'd also like to mention about the repatriation assistance in the Philippines is that it also applied to the repatriation of human remains actually this last one this came up in June and this is in response also to the requests of many of many families that they would like to have the human remains of their loved ones repatriated to the Philippines so that they could say a proper goodbye to their family members what is interesting what is important to highlight also is that around the latter part of June and starting from around July we already see the introduction of various reintegration support and assistance specifically tailored for those who have returned from the pandemic so for example the overseas workers welfare administration they already have existing reintegration programs and services under non-pandemic times but during this pandemic period they also developed additional support programs just to cite one example in addition to the scholarship programs that they normally offer in normal times they introduce what is known as project ease so it's actually a one-time educational assistance that is provided to the children of OFWs college age children of OFWs so that they can continue with their studies and then I think what is very significant to note here is that other government agencies also develop programs that that are focused on helping repatriated OFWs so just to cite one example the department of agriculture they offered easy loan term programs for OFWs who have been repatriated and also the department of trade and industry offered easy loan term programs as well so in a sense this also addresses one of the needs that were expressed by repatriated OFWs that to the extent possible they would also like to have assistance in terms of having capital so that they can start a business for their reintegration process so I just like to end with a few emerging good practices what I see as some of the silver lines I think I already mentioned that the whole of government approach has been very evident in this pandemic and hopefully this whole of government approach will also continue even in the post pandemic times you know hopefully and actually we could also expand this to suggest that it's not only the whole of government approach but really a whole of society approach that would also have spaces for the contributions and participation of non-government actors and institutions like civil society organizations and of course the participation of migrants themselves a very important silver lining is really the adoption of ICT solutions in a way the pandemic probably has forced a number of government agencies to adopt technological solutions to some of the problems that we have that the challenges that we encountered during this pandemic so there was virtually all government agencies in the migration family they started using online platforms and social media to provide information particularly information and also other the delivery of other programs like counseling who affected OFWs and their families a very important development is the introduction of OASIS so this is the OFW assistance information system that was introduced by the Department of Labor and Employment in June of this year and what this does is really to provide a more integrated database so that from the time that the OFWs register while they are still in the countries of destination to the time that they arrive here in the Philippines information on their arrival and information on their needs where they will be billeted and so forth can be gathered and I see this as something that has the potential also of being a good database so that later on other reintegration programs and services can be fine too so it's possible to have to return to this database and to use this in order to follow up what has happened to the repatriated OFWs as well as to offer them more streamlined programs and services and also part of the social media presence is organizing town hall meetings in online forms so that they're able to reach OFWs in different destinations and I would also like to say that it's not only the government agencies that are using them but also NGOs and also migrants are using them to air their concerns their grievances as well as their expressions of thanks when their needs are addressed. What we have seen so far is that it seems that when it comes to repatriation processes a lot of this is really undertaken by countries of origin like the Philippines and also thinking a little bit beyond it would be good to also consider a beyond national approach look at the challenges posed by the pandemic. I'm also quite happy to note that very recently in the meeting that we just had last week it's good to find out that in the 13th ASEAN forum on migrant labor there is actually a specific topic that is devoted to addressing the issues on how to support migrant workers in this time of the pandemic and it is something that will be discussed by the ASEAN as a community but I think it's also important to consider pandemic scenarios in some of the existing tools that we have and one of them is the MICIC initiative which has which published the guidelines to protect migrants in countries experiencing conflict or this or natural disaster so I think it will be important to also consider what could happen and just be sensitive and especially because we have already our experience now perhaps it could also inform future editions of the guidelines to take pandemic situations into account and of course I'm also very hopeful that the issue of the post-pandemic migration scenarios would be discussed in the global compact for migration as well as in the global compact for refugees and I end with that thank you. Thank you very much indeed Mala for that very kind of detailed and comprehensive as well historical run through in terms of the Philippines response both to the pandemic and and where it's coming I think it highlights your presentation highlights you know points made both by Martin and Brenda one in particular comes to mind and that is in terms of you know successfully resilience of systems learning adapting and the flexibility is particularly important and you've really demonstrated that in the Philippines context that has been that capability has been built over a number of years from other crises and then has been built upon even in real time during this pandemic which was great to see nice that you ended actually on the GCM because we do have a question for all panelists in regards to what I would package because we've got several questions there but what I would package as kind of multilateral agreements and even treaty so you mentioned for example the MIKIC initiative that was a state led process finalized in 2016 and the guidelines released it was in response to what I would call a more localized process event and that was particularly 2011 Libya but of course it has much wider applicability in some respects MIKIC even though it has fantastic guidelines and good ideas for response and preparedness has been a little bit like many systems and many initiatives overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what we're dealing with in 2019 so we sort of have to keep that in mind but the questions that I've got coming through from our attendees really go to how do you think this pandemic will impact and affect both the implementation of the global contacts for safe orderly regular migration and the GCR the global contacts on refugees as well as we've got one question in relation to the migrant worker convention so keep that in mind too and I also even though it hasn't come up as a question just highlight your point Marla in regard to ASEAN and how ASEAN is taking on this issue in the context of the deliberation so we're not just looking really at the global level we are looking at regional forums we're looking at RTPs as well so I will hand over first to Brenda and then if we can go to Martin and to Marla thanks. Those are such wide-ranging questions one doesn't really know where to start I guess if I start at a sort of more fundamental level in a sense temporary migrants are nobody's child I mean in the politics of migration and labour and with the growing sort of economic nationalism that we see around the world they really have very few people people or stakeholders who are interested in their welfare right so what I do see is that this particular pandemic basically offers us a window opportunity as has already been said because things cannot really go on as before and why not to me the most fundamental issue is that cheap and easy trust national mobility is no longer possible you can't assume that anymore and temporary migration schemes and movements of people I mean is very much predicated on that so it is in the interest of nation states as well as migrants to rethink how to deal with migrant labour issues in era of stalled mobility or low mobility right I mean and to in a sense the various global original compacts and alliances can go I think there needs to be a fresh rethink I mean we more or less needs to go back to the drawing boards to in a sense rethink what it's going to be like because one of the most fundamental assumptions to do with trust national mobility is no longer something that we can depend on I mean I think others might have more specific things to say but that's that's my sense that I mean in our same for example there's all been discussions about how to in a sense improve trust national skilled mobility across borders that's been an issue and but that's not going to be in a sense as feasible in a time of stalled mobility yeah I'll pass on to Martin or Mala Mala yes thank you I will also try I think actually yes let me let me just build on what Brenda has mentioned earlier Brenda's point that cheap and easy labour migration can't go on much longer and shouldn't go on much longer actually my fear is that I think migration is really going to be costly and I base that on what I see for example here in the Philippines the underground realities you know like migrants have to when they apply for work and then before they leave for their countries of destination they have to go through a series of swap testing and while there are guidelines on who should be paying what what the underground realities also tell us is that for the most part these costs are also passed on to migrants actually that's one of my personal concerns that when migration becomes very costly I'm just I'm just afraid that the cost will not necessarily be borne by the employers the cost will not necessarily be borne by the private recruitment agencies but it will simply pass on to migrants and so in the sense I think that's why I'm I'm sort of thinking that we really need to have a discussion on this because if it's going to be costly and if health screening and health surveillance is also going to be part of migration policies and there are costs that are involved how are these responsibilities going to be distributed and who shoulders what so I I'm hoping my my my mention about the global compact for migration and also the global compact on refugees I think I was expressing also more of an aspirational idea because in a sense I think it's also really quite challenging to discuss the many many issues that have to be that have to be figured out and stretched out but nonetheless perhaps one one one step is that maybe it would be it would be useful if the GCM or if the GCR could hold a special special meeting special forum specifically also on the pandemic our experience here in the region is that actually there had been a regional review of the implementation of the GCM but it's like the pandemic has been put in a you know just it's acknowledged that it is happening but then it would require a different a different discussion so so I think it's time to be useful to organize a GCM that's very focused on this particular issue because there are many things that countries of origin countries of transit and countries of destination have to figure out ASEAN I think there are small steps that are being undertaken I'm quite the I'm quite encouraged that the the the ongoing ASEAN forum on migrant labor is paying attention to the issue of supporting migrant workers in the time of the pandemic but of course I'm I'm also quite realistic I know that most of the discussions will also be more will be less binding so on the one hand yes there are small steps towards it but we also need to have more binding binding agreements to move and to commit thank you Marla I'll hand over to Martin and also Martin we've got a couple of questions to refer you which do go to this issue particularly in terms of your presentation how that actually the use of multilateral forums can assist or can actually create tensions when you're looking at those global supply chains and the transnational kind of approach that you outlined in your presentation so it's a slight nuance I think to the to the more general question thanks yeah thank you on the global compact I mean one thing that the global compact does is is to kind of highlight certain frameworks for certain processes how we think about labor migration and and it sets out certain goals and of course one of the things it does say is that you know countries should should should think about the need for migrant workers also at different skill levels and of course in a way the the response immediately is well yes we agree that we need to do that but how and there has been there has been a lot of debate certainly in in high-income countries about how you do needs tests and how how you do these things so I think similarly I think in the implementation of the global compact I think that could be an important role for that could be it could be very important to bring this issue of systemic resilience just onto the table and say look when you think about labor migration is this now an additional consideration that actually opens the door for doing things a little bit differently and and if you say okay we only let's assume we agree that migrants can play a role in affecting systemic resilience what does that mean for policymaking so to kind of put put in place a certain framework for thinking about things in a structured way just to give you an example so we could say well you know we could have a policy that's strategic that is strategic a migration policy that provides easier access for migrants to particular types of sectors because we think that these are strategic importance for example because they're essential sectors one question immediately is well how do you pick those sectors I mean some sectors will be straightforward health care but there'll be lots of other employers who will want to come in and say our jobs are strategic too our jobs are essential so I think it would be very helpful to have a common framework for how you think about these things just like we've we're beginning to have a framework for how we think about shortages and immigration policy responses and I think an international forum can play a role in that and similarly the whole debate about migrant rights and migrant rights protections and you know what's in the global compact about you know letting migrants change employers and all of that the consequences of that I think what the focus on resilience does is the shine a light on the consequences of some of these restrictions of individual rights for larger issues such as resilience but these issues are of direct importance to host communities so therefore I think there's a chance that politically they might be taken seriously so I think again global compact it might be should pick up or the implementation should pick up some of those those issues but I think it could be quite productive to do that in terms of you know beginning to think more seriously about lower skilled migrants migrants rights and also linking migration to other policy issues and similar with regard to global supply chains I mean most countries you know we have an aspiration that we say we have kind of common policy making but in practice many countries very much focus on themselves and their own interests but I think when you know if you take systemic resilience seriously it does make you think about what's happening in other countries so you know again if you rely on medical gloves imports from Malaysia being produced mainly using migrant workers then you know suddenly other countries also European countries will take an interest in I don't know employment conditions of migrants producing medical gloves in Malaysia that are then being imported so again I think this I mean this might be naive but I do think that politically there might be a change because it changes some of the equations for some of the host countries the rich host countries but maybe in the past used to very much focus on their own interests in policy making and saying look if we're interested in in resilience of some of these services we do need to think much more carefully about what's happening in other countries and about working together with some of these other countries and again a global forum like the GCM could be very good venue for having some of these conversations. Yes thanks Martin and we're certainly out we are seeing that to some degree we've got a few questions coming through in regards to how the pandemic has really highlighted in a very sort of clear way some of the global inequalities and here we're talking about not just between states which of course is an issue but also the inequalities within societies and as I think all speakers have mentioned the essential workers many of whom in certain sectors and in certain countries are migrant workers and some are even undocumented migrant workers who have no recourse to any social protection mechanisms but they are nevertheless still performing some essential tasks in societies who are in crisis so we've got these sort of conundrums and these contradictions and quite a few sort of policy and operational sort of tensions. I wanted to quickly go back and I am very aware that we're way over time and I also have a lot of questions in the chat coming through but I really wanted to go back to something that I highlighted earlier and ask all the panelists to really provide their reflections on the gender dimensions because again it is something that we are seeing being highlighted in terms of a long term issue that has been built up over a number of years and is being really being highlighted in terms of the impacts that it can be quite different in different environments in different sectors so reflections on what it's really shown us but also what it shows we need to be doing better in terms of recovering and having responses coming through and there was quite a few questions related to which is central to any discussion on labour migration systems is international remittances and as we know we've seen the projected decline of international remittances that has been revised by the World Bank to be not so bleak but also we have seen not just changes in remittances and remittance patterns and declines but we've seen the shift from informal remittance channels to formal remittance channels including through the use of expanded ICT services and so forth so if I can leave those two questions for you in terms of some of your insights in terms of what you've been seeing and your analysis in those two areas and also what that might mean for future systems and future partnerships and collaborations so we'll go to Brenda first thanks again so many interesting questions I mean and so little time to discuss but I guess let me let me sort of take the gender question because I have been working on migrant domestic workers for quite some time now and what we do see which is not surprising is that in terms of the pandemic it affects many women quite differently because for many of the migrant women who are migrant workers work in the care sector or in the domestic sphere and immobility of lockdowns basically mean that they are often further immobilized as supposed to just in a sense being sort of sequestered within the nation-state as stranded migrants they're also further sort of immobilized within the home space and this has been associated with increasing levels of domestic violence I mean as sort of everybody sort of gets into each other's way within home space so that has been I think an issue that is of growing concern and we need to think about the way that we think about domestic work and so I mean personally I mean being in a sense confined to home space with children and so forth I mean means that your sense of a self and space really needs sort of extension and it basically makes me more empathetic to people who have to in a sense work at home women who have to work at home as there's space of work so it has no separation of 24-7 of work and home so these are some issues I think do require further attention what can we do about it maybe I'll pass on to the others for their comments first yeah thanks Brenda I'm over to you Mala you know in the previous crisis we learned particularly in the you know experience experience here in Asia that domestic work is one of the sheltered sectors in the previous crisis of course they were economic crisis they were not a pandemic but nonetheless we did not see a lot of displacement of domestic workers which at the time I think one of the lessons learned that I remember is that that tells us that domestic work care work is very important because it's whether we're talking about good or bad times whatever happens with our economies then you know care work is something that has to be done and and in that sense it's a relatively sheltered type of work but of course even then our concerns were and it also applies to our concerns now is that under what conditions are they working yes they may not be losing their jobs they are they may not be displaced they may not be among the large numbers of people who are repatriated to their home countries but what are the conditions of work that they experience during this pandemic so in the regard I think in countries of destination there also has to be a lot more attention and also a lot more sensitivity to the conditions of work of migrant workers who are still very much around what we are seeing now I think there's also some kind of an intersection with the sector of work that people are in so for instance in the case of and I'm speaking for example taking the Philippines as an example generally deployment levels are very down okay for most types of work except for healthcare and in fact that's a rather controversial policy issue in the Philippines at the moment and the other the other sector that's where there's some level of deployment and and demand is the case of seafarers on merchant vessels okay when we talk about the seabase sector in the past well the seabase sector in the Philippines was very much driven by the rise in the demand for cruise ship personnel and it was it is a sector that had a lot of women but because the cruise ship industry is very down okay so we see a lot of women in the seabase sector losing their jobs so I think we also have to recognize gender in relation also to other variables like the sector of the economy that they're working in because now at the moment one of the so-called bright areas or positive bright areas in the sense that there is some demand for for Philippine workers is actually in the sector of seafarer people working in the seabase sector that are employed in foreign vessels and we know also that this is one sector that has been recognized by the international labor organization and also by the international community as essential workers and I guess I'd also like to cite this as an example of how the the global community came together to allow for some lifting of travel restrictions so that there would be so that seafarers could be allowed to work and to change crew change crews because it's something that's very essential to their to their well-being as well. In terms of the repatriation experience and reintegration experience I think that's one thing that would be good to research would be a very good research topic what happens to men and women who have returned to their home countries and whether there are any gender differences in how they are able to access supports and programs and services and also how they are able or not able to rebuild their lives once they are back in their home country so I think I don't have a clear answer to that but I think it's one research question that can be explored further. Excellent thank you very much Malin couldn't agree more also in terms of the second question that asked in regards to remittances I would say the same thing because we have seen different sort of gender dimensions occurring in regards to remittance receipts people who are in destination countries then also the use of remittances in origin countries along gender lines. I will now hand over to Martin I'm conscious that we are now within the kind of like the 90 minute zone we've just crossed over that we do still have quite a few people online so I will ask the panelists if we finish this question and I'll let Martin speak in a moment I will then just do one more quick round in case there are some burning issues that you really want to add to the discussion into the webinar so first over to Martin and then I can go back to you and Marla thanks. Yeah thanks I'll just try to brief a small addition on the point of inequality which is an important one now of course what we see now the pandemic has shown a light on inequality within countries but I think importantly it's also raised the question of you know what do we really value in our society so it raises quite a big question about work and the future of work we talk about essential workers and we see that a lot of them are poorly paid and work in very precarious employment conditions so you know we see a lot of praise a lot of clapping but obviously the question is well you know what about paying them more or raising the appreciation of the level that the social worth that we typically assign to this kind of work and there's a lot of unpaid work in the household which is now incredibly important during the pandemic so I think you know what we also need is a real rethink about you know what are the important job what is important work what is socially important and how does it need to be renumerate you know what kind of pay does need to go along with that and this debate is not only about migrants but about all workers of course so it's not only about migrants doing essential work but about all workers and in some cases you know when we think about resilience the answer might be well yes there should be more protections for migrants and there should be more open immigration policies but there might also be other cases where a strengthening of an employment condition say through for example also mechanization might actually lead to less to fewer workers being employed and then also to potentially less migration or a less employment of migrant workers in particular taught jobs that is also possible but the point I'm trying to make is that this is really about all workers and about migrants and and I think this debate about what's important in society more generally it's really important now thank you very much Martin couldn't agree more it certainly came up in in the conference earlier this week that EUI held now last words Brenda I'll hand over to you just to see if you have any kind of burning issues or comments you'd like to make I think I just have one one comment I mean the pandemic has really shown a light on issues that we in the past could in a sense seep under the carpet of economic nationalism and ignore them and it's also provoked many divergent views so I guess to end on a more optimistic note I think there is a groundswell of empathy and care and awareness of the essential role of migrant workers alongside the xenophobia the racism and so forth I mean I'm in a sense very taken by the fact that the term essential worker has come into currency it is part of the vocabulary and and it's quite a elastic category I mean healthcare workers of course agricultural workers but also sort of includes the cleaners you know I mean as people become more aware that these are essential services that happens underground in the in the migrant dominated economy that citizens are not so aware of so again to be optimistic I think there is this groundswell of empathy and awareness that we can tap on and use as a energizing moment a galvanizing moment to move forward to more sustainable systems yeah I will just stop there great thank you very much to this note for you to end on there too Marla just wanted to see if you wanted to say any last words for my part I would just like to share I guess two questions that I have for myself and also I think I'd like to share with everybody like in the in the in the experience of the Philippines one question that has crossed my mind is that would this be the end of labor migration and could this be something and could this experience really force us and compel us to look for solutions and look for other strategies for strategies other than labor migration as in terms of our development pathway and also in terms of generating employment prospects but the other question that was also that was also that that also crossed my mind based on Brenda's presentation is could could this pandemic also point us to a way that perhaps it is also time for countries of destination to consider a pathway for residents so I'll end with great thank you very much I can see two webinar titles out of those very good questions we could spend probably a whole workshop actually just on each as we know especially in regards to we didn't even get to it but the issues in relation to technology and automation which Brenda of course raised and we are seeing this in certain sectors which to me raises a whole range of other kind of like issues and questions including some of the the arguments that have put forward for you know further automation in the agricultural sector is the discussion about how you know machines can't get viruses well well actually we've seen a rise in you know cybercrime and machines can get viruses and they can be very damaging as well to Martin last word Martin I just want to offer you the floor in case there are some final comments that you would like to make no just well just to thank you again for organizing this because I suppose if a mental question when we think about COVID and migration is and how we deal with it is is are we treating it as an issue that's that we put in a box and that's kind of sitting on the side and then everything else that we were doing before just continues or are we moving it to the center and kind of recognize that actually no even you know when we have vaccines we're not just going to go back to to normal and and I suppose I'm one of those who says that we should really think move it to the center and even for initiatives like the global compact it's it's probably not going to be business as usual going forward I think there are really some fundamental structural questions that need to be asked about all these things even when when the kind of immediate emergency declines now so so I think this is really very good that I am and and you guys are are encouraging this kind of discussion thank you very much and that is the fantastic kind of segway to really mention the papers that all three panelists have actually written and we've published in recent weeks and months and that goes to the transformation of migration and mobility and we are really looking at how the pandemic is likely to or we want to help reshape aspects the negative aspects in regards to migration and mobility going forward what it also shows I think today's discussion has been super interesting but it's also showing how even those papers as Mahler's mentioned very clearly but also relates to Brenda's and also to yours too Martin is that we need to be keeping a watching brief on this so we will be coming back to our high-level advisors on migration research to engage further on the topic to assess what the current situation is how we've seen policies evolve how we've seen operational responses evolve and what that then means for the future of migration and mobility in in the years to come I think the second wave has highlighted you know this the severity of the kind of the shock we're out of the first acute phase but we're still not even 12 months really into into the pandemic and we know that notwithstanding the vaccine hopefully fingers crossed coming coming through soon that there will be long-term systemic challenges that we will need to be facing together so thank you again and thank you to our attendees our resilient attendees who engaged it came but online joins the discussion I'm sorry that we didn't get to all of the questions but I did try and cover the main issue that we're coming through multiple questions and we look forward to seeing you online for the next webinar thank you again so much