Mitigating the Risks and Vulnerabilities during COVID-19 Pandemic: Emerging Solidarities With-in the Migrant Neighbourhood of Delhi, India
Abstract
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The article explores migrant children’s lives and emerging solidarities in the selected neighbourhood (a squatter-slum) during the early phase of COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdown. Children’s lives within the family, as community member and mutual relationship in the moments of risk and resilience are explored.
THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Belonging to marginalised group, for children and their families, the COVID-19 lockdown period added multiple layers of disadvantage. Children’s lives are explored with ethnographic fieldwork (as part of the broader study initiated in 2017) and during the lockdown period (early 2020) with telephonic interviews.
THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The article establishes migrant children’s contribution who despite being doubly disadvantaged in an adult centric society, actively shape and co-build the social spaces. Drawing upon Walby’s work on crisis; the New Sociology of Childhood, children are reinstated as collaborators, presenting the adaptation strategies of children to sustain and cope during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
RESEARCH RESULTS: Risk and resilience have become normalised part of the lived reality of migrant children’s lives. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic the risks got elevated and with it the adaptive coping strategies at the level of family and neighbourhood emerged that helped in mitigating the risks to some extent.
CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: The article demonstrates migrant children as collaborators and recommends (i) considering children’s voices and participation while framing policies, programmes, and schemes, and (ii) to view children as expert of their lives, active members, reiterating recognition of their role at various fronts.
References
Balagopalan, S. (2002). Constructing indigenous childhoods: Colonialism, vocational education and the working child. Childhood, 9(1), 19–34.
Beck, U. (1992) Risk society: Towards a new modernity. Sage.
Biswas, S (2020, March 30). Coronavirus: India’s pandemic lockdown turns into a human tragedy. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52086274
Corsaro, W.A. (2018). The sociology of childhood. Sage Publications.
Ellis-Petersen, H., & Chaurasia, M. (2020, March 30). India racked by the greatest exodus since partition due to coronavirus. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/india-wracked-by-greatest-exodus-since-partition-due-to-coronavirus
Gittens, D. (2009). The historical construction of childhood. In M.J. Kehily (Ed.), An introduction to childhood studies (2nd ed., pp. 35–49). Open University Press.
James, A., & Prout, A. (Eds.). (1997). Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. Falmer Press.
Lancy, D.F. (2017). Anthropological perspectives on children as helpers, workers, artisans, and laborers. Springer.
Lancy, D.F. (2020). Child helpers: A multidisciplinary perspective. Cambridge University Press.
Nandy, A. (1997). Traditions, tyranny, and utopias: Essays in the politics of awareness. Oxford University Press.
Nieuwenhuys, O. (1998). Global childhood and the politics of contempt. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 23(3), 267–289.
PTI. (2020, March 29). Exodus of migrant workers out of Delhi unabated but police block their entry into Anand Vihar ISBT. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coronavirus-exodus-of-migrant-workers-out-of-delhi-unabated-but-police-block-their-entry-into-anand-vihar-isbt/article31198725.ece
Sharma, R. (2020). Reading UNCRC and children’s rights sociologically: A paradigm shift from ‘protection to rights’. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Education and Research, 9(11), 188–198.
Sharma, R (2021). Altered lives of children from Coolie-Camp, Delhi: Navigating through the vulnerabilities amidst COVID-19 lockdown. Akademos, 15, 82–102. http://akademos.in/2021/07/82-102.pdf
UN. (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations. https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=IV-11&chapter=4&clang=_en
Walby, S. (2015). Crisis. Polity Press.
Walby, S. (2022) Crisis and society: developing the theory of crisis in the context of COVID-19. Global Discourse, 12(3-4), 498–516. https://doi.org/10.1332/204378921X16348228772103
Copyright (c) 2023 HORIZONS OF EDUCATION
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright to their work while granting the journal the right of first publication. The work will be simultaneously licensed under a CC BY-ND license, which permits others to share the work with proper credit given to the author and the original publication in this journal.
- Authors may enter into additional, non-exclusive agreements for the distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., posting it in an institutional repository or publishing it in another journal), provided that the original publication in this journal is acknowledged.
We allow and encourage authors to share their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on personal websites) both before and during the submission process, as this can foster beneficial exchanges and lead to earlier and increased citations of the published work. (See The Effect of Open Access). We recommend using any of the following academic networking platforms:
