Understanding the agency of female migrant workers in the time of COVID-19: The case of Tirupur garment cluster

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact of the life and livelihood of migrant workers in the garment sector. It has deepened the pre-existing inequalities, laying bare the precarity of social, political and economic systems. Women, more specifically migrant women, have been disproportionally impacted by the crisis. Therefore, examining how the ongoing crisis of COVID-19 has affected female migrant garment workers in Tirupur export-garment cluster and how migrant women have attempted to respond to the crisis will be key areas of focus. On applying an analytical framework of intersectionality and agency, it showed that COVID-19 was not gender neutral but rather had exacerbated female migrant workers highly vulnerable and precarious position in the labour hierarchy. Migrant women faced increased threat to their safety and health which was further heavily influenced by the intersections of gender, age, socio-economic condition, and marital status, affecting some more than others. Though influenced by this environment of crisis and inequality, many migrant women were active agents of change expressing their agency through practices of resilience, followed by reworking in order to cope and even improve their material well-being in the workspace. The shift from resilience to reworking was also influenced by the duration of the crisis.