The transformation of the global regime of mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Lorenzo Piccoli
Publishing Year 2021 Issue 2021/1 Language Italian
Pages 16 P. 45-60 File size 215 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2021-001003
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This article proposes a first analysis of the rapid transformation of the "global re-gime of mobility" (Schiller and Salazar, 2013), or the mechanisms of international regulatory and surveillance governance that normalise the mobility of some trav-elers and criminalise the movements of others, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article focuses on the transformations to citizenship (the levelling of the func-tion of different passports), international mobility (the differentiated access to in-ternational movement for different categories of individuals), and management of the borders (the heightened surveillance of international travelers). The article shows that restrictions taken by countries during the pandemic suspended some long-established privileges produced by the existing regime of mobility (for exam-ple, temporarily annihilating the external value of the U.S. passport as the key to global mobility), but they had some important discriminatory effects (for example, the shut-down of humanitarian corridors, the separation of families on the move, and the entrapment of migrants on a short-term work permit). A return to the rules that regulated global movement before the COVID-19 looks like a long path. This is why it is important to study the restrictions that were introduced during the pan-demic and understand their long term impact on different groups of the popula-tion.

Keywords: Mobility; migration; citizenship; borders; COVID-19; governance.

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Lorenzo Piccoli, La trasformazione del regime globale di mobilità durante la pandemia di COVID-19 in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 1/2021, pp 45-60, DOI: 10.3280/MM2021-001003