Awaab Ishak and the devaluation of migrant, working-class life

On 21 December 2020, 2-year-old Awaab Ishak died at Royal Oldham Hospital. The inquest concluded that he had died from a severe respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould. Institutions which ultimately reacted to the case read this death as related to the impact of bad housing on health. The authors argue that Awaab’s death emerges through the mechanics of racialised neoliberal capitalism, and the devaluation of working-class life which is linked to the racialisation of the migrant as a ‘disposable subject’. For them, racialisation marks out working-class migrant communities to (in Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s words) ‘vulnerability to premature death’. Understanding the full context of this process is important in the building of movements against state-led austerity, racism, border violence and human disposability.