COVID-19 and Informal Workers in Asian Cities: Impact, Response, and Implications for Urban Recovery

Abstract

As COVID-19 took hold across borders in 2020 and 2021, more than 1.6 billion informal workers were estimated by the United Nations to have been impacted by mobility restrictions and other “lockdown” measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. In the Global South, the pandemic has severely affected the sprawling megacities in Southeast and South Asia that have in the past few decades been driving urbanisation at vertiginous rates, and where there is a very high concentration of informal workers. The Tackling a Global Pandemic in Asian Megacities project and this book more specifically, examine how these responses to the pandemic impact informal workers in five Asian megacities: Dhaka (Bangladesh), Hyderabad (India), Karachi (Pakistan), Jakarta (Jakarta) and Manila (Philippines). Gathering voices and experiences from across these subregions and a cast of diverse worldviews on Southern urbanism, the chapters engage with issues surrounding state measures to manage the COVID-19 crisis, unpacking their gaps and lessons learned in addressing the needs of informal workers. They also shed light on grassroots solidarity practices that have cushioned the devastating effects of the crisis. The book ends with a discussion of the implications of identified state measures and citizen-led responses for (post-)pandemic planning and urban governance in Asian cities in an age of recovery.