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Taken together these essays reveal both synergies and contradictions between and within immigration and welfare policies. Several common themes emerge. Firstly, while access to the welfare state is an important signifier of membership, in practice claiming certain state benefits is accompanied by suspicion, surveillance and stigma. The good citizen is a worker citizen. Secondly, the importance of the welfare state in putting the nation into the nation-state: the normative national community imagined as the rightful subject of welfare states is racialised and classed. Thirdly, deservingness functions in both welfare states and immigration regimes to prioritise victimhood rather than rights and redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among adults, COVID-19 hospitalization rates increase with age. Data from the COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network were analyzed to estimate populationbased COVID-19–associated hospitalization rates during October 2023–April 2024 and identify demographic and clinical characteristics of adults aged ≥18 years hospitalized with COVID-19. Adults aged ≥65 years accounted for 70% of all adult COVID-19–associated hospitalizations, and their COVID-19–associated hospitalization rates were higher than those among younger adult age groups. Cumulative rates of COVID-19–associated hospitalization during October 2023–April 2024 were the lowest for all adult age groups during an October–April surveillance period since 2020– 2021. However, hospitalization rates among all adults aged ≥75 years approached one COVID-19–associated hospitalization for every 100 persons. Among adults hospitalized with COVID-19, 88.1% had not received the 2023–2024 formula COVID-19 vaccine before hospitalization, 80.0% had multiple underlying medical conditions, and 16.6% were residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs). Guidance for adults at high risk for severe COVID-19 illness, including adults aged ≥65 years and residents of LTCFs, should continue to focus on adopting measures to reduce risk for contracting COVID-19, advocating for receipt of recommended COVID-19 vaccinations, and seeking prompt outpatient antiviral treatment after receipt of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infants aged <6 months are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease but are not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination; these children depend upon transplacental transfer of maternal antibody, either from vaccination or infection, for protection. COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET) data were analyzed to estimate COVID-19–associated hospitalization rates and identify demographic and clinical characteristics and maternal vaccination status of infants aged <6 months hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. During October 2022– April 2024, COVID-NET identified 1,470 COVID-19– associated hospitalizations among infants aged <6 months. COVID-19–associated hospitalization rates among young infants were higher than rates among any other age group, except adults aged ≥75 years, and are comparable to rates among adults aged 65–74 years. The percentage of hospitalized infants whose mothers had been vaccinated during pregnancy was 18% during October 2022–September 2023 and decreased to <5% during October 2023–April 2024. Severe outcomes among infants hospitalized with COVID-19 occurred frequently: excluding newborns hospitalized at birth, approximately one in five young infants hospitalized with COVID-19 required admission to an intensive care unit, nearly one in 20 required mechanical ventilation, and nine infants died during their COVID-19–associated hospitalization. To help protect pregnant persons and infants too young to be vaccinated, prevention for these groups should focus on ensuring that pregnant persons receive recommended COVID-19 vaccines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Janine Dahinden and Bridget Anderson discuss each other’s responses to the challenges of knowledge production in migration studies. Dahinden introduces the concept of the “migrant-citizen nexus” and Anderson argues for more attention to be paid to the racialisation of “the migrant” through the ways that nationality elides race and discuss the nationalistic policies adopted in reaction to the pandemic.

This article uses the lens of state control over mobilities of residents both migrants and citizens to move away from assumptions that position them as competitors for the privileges of membership. I begin by critiquing the migrant/citizen binary, claiming that it promotes as actuality Fantasy Citizenship of equality and accessible rights when the reality is one of banal citizenship. This Fantasy citizen is a Worker Citizen. However, the substance of the 'right to work' is the right to the welfare safety net and the banal citizen finds access to this safety net restricted by the 'duty to work'. Taking the example of the UK and specifically, England, I examine how citizens' mobility is restricted and controlled, firstly by social housing allocation policies which effectively turns citizens into 'migrants' via worker citizenship, and secondly through the restrictions of COVID-19 including its racialised policing. In this way, I suggest closer attention to state restrictions on the mobilities of citizens can help draw out connections in practice between the citizen and the migrant, connections that are obscured by Fantasy Citizenship and the migrant citizen binary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ILR Review invited this group of scholars who work within the fields of sociology, history, and urban planning to share their perspective on the politics of skills. We called on their expertise to draw attention to the politics that drive the definition and development of skill and its use in shaping the rights and voice of workers. The essays in this forum explore the politics of skill along three lines. First, they interrogate the definition and assessment of skill, with particular attention to the ways that structural markers of social difference—such as race, gender, class, and immigration status—shape the valuation of skill. Second, they analyze the ways that the interpretation of skill is shaped by power dynamics at the worksite and in the broader economy. This line of analysis also considers possibilities for industrial renewal and labor mobilization. And third, the essays explore how skill classifications are used to narrow political and civil rights and to justify forms of exploitation and dehumanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how wealthy countries' reliance on migrant workers is not restricted to migrants working within their borders but extends, through global supply chains, to migrants employed in lower-income countries. It provides an exploratory discussion of how migration, labour, and trade systems interact to argue for the expansion of research on dependence on migrant labour – a 'widening of the lens' – beyond national systems effects. Using the COVID-19 pandemic and associated concern with the provision of essential goods and services, we consider how the employment of migrants in global supply chains, and by extension societal resilience of higher-income countries, is shaped by trade policies and agreements regulating flows of essential products across countries; labour markets and conditions in low- and middle-income countries producing essential products for export; and migration systems between and within low- and middle-income countries. Thus, we tentatively explore how national systems and institutions interlock with those of other states, and also with transnational and international institutions. We illustrate our arguments with a case study of the Malaysian production and export of rubber gloves, an essential good during the COVID-19 pandemic that is heavily dependent on migrant labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]