Assistant Professor of Sociology Yasmin Ortiga has been awarded the Social Science Research Council (New York) Rapid Response Grant on Covid-19 and the Social Sciences. This grant supports projects that investigate the social, cultural, psychological, and political impact of Covid-19 in the US and globally. The grant call received 1300 applications from all over the world. Her project was one of 62 proposals awarded this grant.
With a team of researchers from the Philippines and Singapore, Assistant Professor Ortiga’s examines how the pandemic upsets two extreme ends of the Philippines’ labor-export system: the deployment of migrant workers to employers in other countries and the repatriation and reintegration of those who had been forced to return home. They focus specifically on the experiences of two groups of Filipino workers at both of these ends: 1) aspiring nurse migrants unable to leave the country due to border closures and a state deployment ban on health workers; and 2) returning service workers who had lost their jobs in the cruise industry.
More information on the SSRC Rapid Response Grant can be found here.