An estimated 2.5 million Keralites were working abroad before the coronavirus hit, the vast majority in the Persian Gulf. The pandemic is pushing them home in record numbers. (Arunchandra Bose/AFP/Getty Images) Meanwhile, the pandemic has also prompted some countries in the region to accelerate plans to “nationalize” their workforces — in other words, to reduce their reliance on foreign migrants altogether. The workers who came home are struggling. Indians who lost their jobs in the gulf are returning to an economy crippled by rising infections and by the aftermath of one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. “You’re looking at devastation on both sides of the corridor,” said Shabarinath Nair, a regional migration specialist at the International Labor Organization. The coronavirus crisis has upended many aspects of globalization previously taken for granted — in manufacturing, in education, in tourism — but one of its most dramatic impacts has been on migration. As country after country closed borders and banned flights, migrant workers around the globe faced chaos without precedent. Some began a desperate scramble to get home. Others were stranded and faced an equally desperate wait.