COVID-19’s impact on migration
Table 1: Impacts of COVID-19 throughout the migration cycle
COVID-19 has proved to be a great disrupter, negatively impacting migrants throughout the international migration cycle, starting with departure from countries of origin, entry into transit and destination countries, stay in transit and destination countries, and the return to countries of origin. Table 1 presents a summary of these disruption impacts.
Key resources on the topic
- COVID-19’s impact on migration (WMR 2022, Ch. 5)
- A Post-Pandemic Rebound? (WMR 2024, Ch. 9)
- COVID-19 Analytical Snapshots – Migration Research Division, IOM
- COVID-19 and the State of Global Mobility in 2020, IOM and the Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
COVID-19 and and air travel
COVID-19 has been the most acute pandemic in over a century and since the 1919 flu pandemic. It resulted in 10,185,374 confirmed cases and 503,863 deaths in the first six months after the virus was detected. This far exceeds other recent coronavirus pandemics, such as SARS (2003) and MERS (2012), and has seen much larger initial infection numbers compared with previous severe pandemics, such as those experienced in 1957 (so-called “Asian flu”) and 1968 (so-called “Hong Kong flu”). Evidence from previous modern-day pandemics indicates that a key response has been on preventing the movement of people (as transmitters of the virus) internationally and within countries. This has become much more challenging as globalization has deepened transnational connectivity, with global reliance on international transportation surging in recent years. The large-scale impact of the COVID-related travel restrictions becomes very clear when air passenger data are examined. We can see from long-term air passenger figures that COVID- 19 travel restrictions had a major impact on both international and domestic air travel in 2020. Total air passengers carried dropped by 60 per cent from around 4.5 billion in 2019 to 1.8 billion in 2020.
Air passenger numbers have risen rapidly since early 2020 when lockdowns brought the world to a halt, but many airlines remained decimated even in late 2022. International air-travel passenger numbers were still below 2019 levels in all world regions. In Africa, they were still down by 10 per cent and in Europe by 25 per cent. One reason is that would-be travellers and migrants still face more complex and riskier regulatory environments than they did in 2019, involving long visa backlogs, the possibility of sudden border closures, reduced airline capacity, and sky-high prices. It often makes the most sense to delay travel plans. In Asia and the Pacific, these factors are compounded by the large distance between international borders in a region characterized by large national territories and widely dispersed archipelagos. In this world region, the number of international air passengers is still 49 per cent lower than in 2019, far lower than in any other world region.
COVID-19 impacts on migration and migrants, Dr Marie McAuliffe
COVID-19 impacts on mobility
Figure 1: Examples of the broad impacts of COVID-19
COVID-19, travel restrictions, and international migration
Over the course of the first year of the pandemic, more than 108,000 COVID-related international travel restrictions were put in place by countries, territories or areas, in addition to the rolling implementation of internal movement restrictions within countries. Consequently, the global travel industry has been decimated by the pandemic. The initial race to implement restrictions had a significant and immediate impact on air travel around the world. By early May 2020, for example, the number of international flights had decreased by around 80 per cent globally. As a result, tourism – one of the largest industries in the world – faced a similar decline in 2020, with losses of about USD 2 trillion or 2 per cent of global GDP. Further, COVID-19 acted as a brake on international migration, with the United Nations estimating that the pandemic had slowed the growth in the stock of international migrants by around two million by mid-2020, or 27 per cent less than the growth expected.
Government responses to minimize COVID-19 transmission
Travel restrictions were only one type of measure, but one of the most significant. This was especially the case for international travel restrictions, which were implemented quickly and largely remained in place over the course of the first year. Nevertheless, when the broader suite of government responses to minimizing the transmission of COVID-19 is examined globally, we can see different patterns emerge following the initial rapid imposition of a wide range of measures between March and May 2020. The University of Oxford’s Government Response Tracker data (see Figure below) show that international travel controls related to COVID-19 consistently remained the highest throughout the period January 2020 to March 2021. Other measures, such as school closures and internal movement restrictions, have gradually declined over time, while key measures involving workplace closures, restrictions on gatherings and “stay-at-home” requirements all declined in mid-2020, only to creep back up as transmission rates increased and new variants were detected.
Over two and a half years after the global pandemic was declared, and more than 20 months after the first vaccines were rolled out, several countries still imposed significant international travel and movement restrictions, despite substantially reduced public health risks. So-called “zero-covid” policies continued in some locations, with commentators pointing to population control measures being given priority over economic and social recovery.
Government responses to minimize COVID-19 transmission, by number of countries
Impacts of COVID-19 throughout the migration cycle
Reflection questions
How did the COVID-19 pandemic slow mobility and migration?
Drawing on Figure 2, describe two government responses to minimize the spread of COVID-19.
Drawing on Table 1, find one news story that reflects how migrants were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.