“Gold Standard” A comic by graphic artist Sonny Liew

Soft truths to keep Singapore from stalling.

Gold Standard provides a good account of how covid has highlighted the presence of the huge population of low-pay migrant workers in Singapore, heretofore hardly present in the consciousness of the local community at large. The high number of covid infection in this group (hundreds each day) compared to the much lower number in the community at large (several to ten-plus each day) brought about further segregation of the migrant workers and the local community, notwithstanding the new awareness of the migrant workers.

This work was made possible by the Splice Lights On Fund, which supports small to mid-sized news organisations and their freelancers in Asia that are financially affected by Covid-19.

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The Migrant-Citizen Nexus in View of the Coronavirus Pandemic: Can We De-Migranticize Responses?

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How can the migrant-citizen nexus help us make sense of Europe’s nationalist reaction to COVID-19 and its consequences? Using the lens of the migrant-citizen nexus, I present some alternatives to these nationalism-based policies and measures. I focus on the Swiss case as a specific example of a more general pattern in Europe as a whole (and beyond).

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