Emotions and Labour Migrant Protests during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic led many social movement researchers to investigate whether the lockdown measures resulted in a decline in protest activism or the growth of public expression of claim-making politics. Between 2020 and 2021, Bangladesh witnessed protests from labour migrants, a group usually considered insignificant in the landscape of political mobilisation. Relying upon newspaper reports, this article explores the role of emotions in the protests led by this economically important segment of Bangladesh’s population in this period. It suggests that the pandemic generated not only emotions of anger, fear, anxiety but also compassion and solidarity, which catalysed the labour migrants’ protest. These emotions were not unique to the labour migrants who returned to Bangladesh but were part of a more extended, transnational emotional landscape that came into being due to the pandemic.