Vulnerabilization of Migrant Workers During Crises

The COVID-19 pandemic hit undocumented migrant workers, a population already living in precarious and particularly hard circumstances. Often overlooked and misunderstood, their lives remain largely invisible with limited data available to illustrate their struggles, especially in times of crisis. In Geneva, Switzerland, many grappled to cope with losing their jobs, unstable housing and limited access to healthcare, yet many managed to stay despite facing these hardships.

Undocumented migrant workers were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic (Burton-Jeangros et al., 2020; Duvoisin et al., 2022; Genovese et al. 2023). These workers reside in Switzerland without legal authorization, often searching for economic opportunities in poorly regulated labor market sectors, such as domestic work, construction or catering, allowing them to stay for several decades. However, their living conditions and reactions to major crises are generally poorly understood, mainly due to their fear of identification and deportation, which makes them particularly difficult to include in scientific studies.

Taking advantage of the pilot regularization policy “Papyrus”, we monitored undocumented and newly regularized migrants in a multidisciplinary and longitudinal study (Parchemins) in the canton of Geneva (Jackson et al., 2019; Refle et al., 2024). Longitudinal data collection occurred between 2017 and 2022, over five waves including one conducted in spring 2020 to assess the COVID-19 pandemic’s consequences. At the onset of the study, over 450 undocumented migrants were recruited.

Public health policies to fight the pandemic in Switzerland were less severe than in neighboring countries and limited to semi-confinement for a brief period. Although specific measures were implemented for undocumented workers, our analyses show they were insufficient to mitigate the severe impact of the social and health crisis on this already precarious population. We present some results in three key areas that have been documented in the literature but primarily in different geographical and institutional contexts: employment, housing, and access to healthcare (Mallet-Garcia & Delvino, 2021; Mengesha et al., 2022; Pelizza et al., 2021; Salinas & Salinas, 2022).

Employment

Undocumented workers as well as newly regularized faced reductions in employment opportunities and income loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being essential workers in many contexts, including the care sector, their already low income levels further decreased. In the initial weeks, 80% of undocumented migrants experienced wage cuts, with some losing their income entirely. Compared to pre-pandemic data, they worked an average of 6 hours less per week, leading to severe income losses.

With limited capacity to make savings, many undocumented migrants had to borrow money, sometimes from equally impacted relatives. Despite their own financial instability, they continued to send remittances to their countries of origin, however in more limited amounts (from about 410 CHF/month to less than 370 CHF). The longer-term effects of these income losses can be assessed in the decrease in the number of people studied: only those with already higher income levels before the pandemic continued to participate in the study in 2022 (Refle et al. 2025).

Housing

Undocumented migrants’ housing conditions left them particularly exposed to the virus. The average housing density for undocumented migrants is much higher than that of the general population, as a way to share housing costs; financial pressure to maintain housing during the crisis added to their challenges.  Our findings suggest that only those who were able to maintain a certain income level over time could secure subletting arrangements and/or could continue to live at employers’ houses, finally allowing them to stay in Geneva (Refle et al. 2025).

Health

Restricted access to the healthcare system and generalized identity controls (related to the COVID pass and mobility restrictions) may have discouraged undocumented migrants from seeking help when infected, worsening their conditions during the pandemic. When COVID-19 arrived in Geneva, undocumented workers were given access to free healthcare to enable early screening and interrupt transmission chains (Baggio et al., 2021; Burton-Jeangros et al., 2024). Despite this, the number of undocumented migrants working while sick or renouncing healthcare remained higher compared to regularized migrants. With the pandemic, renouncing healthcare became slightly less frequent, probably due to increased individual and societal awareness.

Self-reported anxiety and depression increased throughout the study, a trend observed more widely in the Swiss population, particularly among younger people (Swiss Health Observatory, 2023). However, among undocumented migrants, who already experienced high levels of anxiety and depression (about 60% of respondents in our data) prior to 2020, these rates increased to about 80% during the pandemic. In contrast, regularized migrant workers reported fewer symptoms, suggesting some protective effects from their residence permits (Refle et al., 2023).

The Parchemins Study as a Lens on Social Inequalities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Our data collected before and during the pandemic has highlighted the profiles of people living in extremely precarious conditions. Documenting the trajectories of undocumented workers is challenging due to their mobility and less consistent participation in studies compared to regularized workers. They appeared systematically disadvantaged even compared to newly regularized migrants who were undocumented just a few months earlier within our data.

The Parchemins study confirms existing research findings, highlighting the pandemic’s significant effects on the living conditions of populations already in unstable situations. As in previous epidemics, social and health inequalities were exacerbated (Burton-Jeangros et al. 2024). The health crisis has thus increased these inequalities within society, as a result of the unequal distribution of resources in employment, income, housing, and health, which, in turn, influenced individual exposure and responses to the virus. For undocumented migrants, the COVID-19 pandemic was a major ordeal. Despite occasional aid from institutions and deteriorating living conditions, they often relied on their own means to cope with the crisis.

Claudine Burton-Jeangros is a researcher at the Institute for Sociological Research and LIVES Swiss Center of Expertise for Life Course Research, Centre interfacultaire de gérontologie et d’étude des vulnérabilités, at the University of Geneva.

Liala Consoli is a researcher at the Institute for Sociological Research, University of Geneva.

Jan-Erik Refle is a researcher at the LIVES Swiss Center of Expertise for Life Course Research, Centre interfacultaire de gérontologie et d’étude des vulnérabilités, at the University of Geneva.

Yves Jackson is a researcher at the Department of Primary Care Medicine, within the Geneva University Hospitals and the University of Geneva.

References:

–Baggio, S., Jacquerioz, F., Salamun, J., Spechbach, H., & Jackson, Y. (2021). Equity in access to COVID-19 testing for undocumented migrants and homeless persons during the initial phase of the pandemic. Journal of Migration and Health, 4, 100051.
–Burton-Jeangros, C., Duvoisin, A., Lachat, S., Consoli, L., Fakhoury, J., & Jackson, Y. (2020). The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Lockdown on the Health and Living Conditions of Undocumented Migrants and Migrants Undergoing Legal Status Regularization. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, 940.
–Burton-Jeangros, C., Jackson, Y., Racapé, J., Raynault, M.-F., & Rea, A. (2024). Les inégalités sociales et de santé. Comparaison de gestion de la crise de la Covid-19 à Bruxelles, Genève et Montréal. Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles.
–Duvoisin, A., Jackson, Y., Burton-Jeangros, C., Consoli, L., Fakhoury, J., & Lachat, S. (2022). Confinement et conditions de vie des migrant-es sans-papiers ou récemment régularisé-es à Genève. In COVID-19: Les politiques sociales à l’épreuve de la pandémie (Rosenstein Emilie, Mimouni Serge). Seismo.
–Genovese, E., Page, K. R., Cailhol, J., & Jackson, Y. (2023). Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic response to strengthen undocumented migrant-sensitive health systems: Case studies from four countries. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 27, 100601.
–Jackson, Y., Courvoisier, D. S., Duvoisin, A., Ferro-Luzzi, G., Bodenmann, P., Chauvin, P., Guessous, I., Wolff, H., Cullati, S., & Burton-Jeangros, C. (2019). Impact of legal status change on undocumented migrants’ health and well-being (Parchments): Protocol of a 4-year, prospective, mixed-methods study. BMJ Open, 9(5), e028336.
–Mallet-Garcia, M. L., & Delvino, N. (2021). 12: Rethinking exclusionary policies : The case of irregular migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe (p. 243-264). Policy Press.
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–Pelizza, A., Milan, S., & Lausberg, Y. (2021). Understanding migrants in COVID-19 counting: Rethinking the data-(in)visibility nexus. Data & Policy, 3, e18.
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–Refle, J.-E., Burton-Jeangros, C., Jackson, Y., Consoli, L., & Fakhoury, J. (2024). Becoming visible, Épistémé. EPFL Press, Lausanne.
–Refle, J.-E., Burton-Jeangros, C., & Jackson, Y. (2025). Resilience among undocumented migrants. An analysis of the likelihood to participate in a panel study among undocumented migrants amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 62.
–Salinas, J. L., & Salinas, M. (2022). Systemic racism and undocumented Latino migrant laborers during COVID-19: A narrative review and implications for improving occupational health. Journal of Migration and Health, 5, 100106.

This article is part of a series on “Vulnerabilization of migrant workers during crises.”