The Spread of Disparities and Inequality due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 : The Conditions Faced by Essential Immigrant Workers in New York City

This paper examines the disparities and inequality due to the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by focusing on the conditions faced by essential immigrant workers through an analysis of multiple bodies of data from official sources and previous studies.New York, as a global city where multinational corporations, financial institutions and information and communication technology industries are concentrated, has been changing with the expansion of globalization.Accompanying that phenomenon is the creation of labor demand in various fields in peripheral areas of the city, involving foreign immigrants as non-regular workers or daily laborers.Among them, mainly non-professional and undocumented laborers have been particularly vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19, and lockdowns due to the pandemic have exacerbated their situation.In addition, the definition of essential workers and critical occupations based on the guidelines of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency varied from state to state as attempts were made to satisfy residents' daily needs and maintain their livelihood during lockdowns.Undoubtedly structural polarization in the income gap existed before COVID-19.However, the epidemiological crisis further made apparent and exacerbated the social disparity and inequality among New York's citizens related to its character as a global city, particularly between the naturalized and nonimmigrants on the one hand, and the undocumented and immigrant workers, whose vulnerabilities lie in the fact that they are disposable daily labor or low-wage workers with unstable income on the other.This paper concludes that the working conditions created immediately after the issuance of the lockdown order could be divided into three categories.First, nonessential migrant laborers immediately lost their opportunities to work.Second, essential workers were encouraged to keep working so as to enable New York City inhabitants' daily sustenance and survival. While city residents recognized and appreciated the critical role of essential workers duringThe Spread of Disparities and Inequality due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 the COVID-19 crisis, they were at a higher risk of infection.Also, their family members, who tend to live in cramped conditions, likely had a disproportionately high risk of infection.Third, workers who could work remotely were able to stay at home and keep their jobs and salaries.Although the disparity and inequalities in the working and living conditions between immigrant workers and family members were apparent, the problems were especially severe among the undocumented.In terms of the infection risk faced by essential workers and the undocumented, the COVID-19 crisis particularly affected Hispanics.This analysis demonstrates that immigrant workers, who had been experiencing precarious work conditions even before the pandemic, were disproportionately being dismissed as merely disposable workers, pushing them deeper into vulnerable and precarious living conditions.