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
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

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.

  1. Cetron M. e Landwirth J. (2005). Public health and ethical considerations in planning for quarantine. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 78, 5: 325-330.
  2. Amon J.J. e Todrys K. (2008). Fear of Foreigners: HIV-related restrictions on entry, stay, and residence. Journal of the International AIDS Society, 11, 1: 8; -- https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-2652-11-8.
  3. Annas G.J. (1993). Detention of Hiv-Positive Haitians at Guantanamo. The New England Journal of Medicine, 329, 8: 589-592; -- https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199308193290826.
  4. Bashford A. (2006). Medicine at the border: disease, globalization and security, 1850 to the present. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
  5. Batlan F. (2007). Law in the time of cholera: Disease, state power, and quarantines past and future. Temple Law Review, 80, 1: 53-122.
  6. Chinazzi M., Davis J., Ajelli M., Gioannini C., Litvinova M., Merler S., Pastore e Piontti A., Mu K., Rossi L., Sun K., Viboud C., Xiong X., Yu H., Halloran M.E., Longini Jr. I.M., Vespignani A. (2020). The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Science, 400(April): 395-400; -- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba9757.
  7. Cohn S.K. (2007). The black death and the burning of Jews. Past and Present, 196, 1: 3-36; -- https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtm005.
  8. Corriere della Sera (2020). Coronavirus, rientrati 40 italiani da Mauritius: “Un incubo, trattati come pacchi”, 24 February; -- https://www.corriere.it/cronache/20_febbraio_25/coronavirus-rientrati-40-italiani-mauritius-un-incubo-trattati-come-pacchi-6971f47a-5786-11ea-a2d7-f1bec9902bd3_preview.shtml?
  9. Creţan R. e Light D. (2020). COVID-19 in Romania: transnational labour, geopolitics, and the Roma ‘outsiders’. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 61:4-5, 559-572; -- https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2020.1780929.
  10. Dzankic J. e Piccoli L. (2020), Coronavirus : citizenship infected. GLOBALCIT blog, 13 March; -- https://globalcit.eu/coronavirus-citizenship-infected/.
  11. Fasani F. e Mazza J. (2020). Immigrant Key Workers: Their Contribution to Europe’ s COVID-19 Response. IZA DP, 13178; -- http://ftp.iza.org/pp155.pdf.
  12. Ferhani A. e Rushton S. (2020). The International Health Regulations, COVID-19, and bordering practices: Who gets in, what gets out, and who gets rescued?. Contemporary Security Policy, 41, 3: 458-477; https://doi.org/:10.1080/ 13523260.2020.1771955.
  13. Gelatt J. (2020). Immigrant Workers: Vital to the U.S. COVID-19 Response, Disproportionately Vulnerable. Migration Policy Institute, (April 2020); -- https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/immigrant-workers-us-covid-19-response.
  14. Gössling S., Scott D. e Hall C.M. (2020). Pandemics, tourism and global change: a rapid assessment of COVID-19. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29, 1: 1-20; https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1758708.
  15. Gupta A.G., Moyer C.A. e Stern D.T. (2005). The economic impact of quarantine: SARS in Toronto as a case study. Journal of Infection, 50, 5: 386-393; https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jinf.2004.08.006.
  16. Kochenov D. e Lindeboom J. (2017). Empirical assessment of the quality of nationalities the quality of nationality index (QNI). European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance, 4, 4: 314-336; -- https://doi.org/10.1163/22134514-00404007.
  17. Lee D. e Lee J. (2020). Testing on the Move South Korea’s rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 5; -- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2020.100111.
  18. Markel H. e Stern A.M. (2002). The Foreignness of Germs : The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society. The Milbank Quarterly, 80, 4: 757-788;-- https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.00030.
  19. Mateus A.L., Otete H., Beck C., Dolan G. e Nguyen-Van-Tam J. (2014). Effectiveness of travel restrictions in the rapid containment of human influenza: A systematic review. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 92, 12: 868-880; -- https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.14.135590.
  20. Pepe E., Bajardi P., Gauvin L., Privitera F., Lake B., Cattuto C. e Tizzoni M. (2020). COVID-19 outbreak response: a first assessment of mobility changes in Italy following national lockdown. Scientific Data, 7, 230: 1-7; -- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00575-2.
  21. Piccoli L. (2020). Coronavirus restrictions on movement may jeopardize the lives of the most vulnerable. Washington Post, 5 April; -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/05/coronavirus-restrictions-movement-may-jeopardize-lives-most-vulnerable/.
  22. Piccoli L., Dzankic J., Perret A., Ruedin D. e Jacob-Owens T. (2020a). International travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak dataset. EUI Research Data; 2020; Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies; -- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/68359.
  23. Piccoli L., Ader L., Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik P., Mittmasser C., Pedersen O., Pont A., Rausis F. e Sidler P. (2020b). Mobility and border control in response to the COVID-19 outbreak dataset. EUI Research Data; 2020; Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies; -- https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/68358.
  24. Republic of the Marshall Islands. Office of the Secretary Ministry of Health and Human Services (2020). 2019 Novel Coronavirus. Health Travel Advisory and Restrictions; -- https://mh.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/83/2019-nCoV-Travel-Advisory.pdf.
  25. Shachar A. (2020). Borders in the time of COVID-19. Max-Planck Gesellschaft blog, 4 April; -- https://www.mpg.de/14650555/borders-in-the-time-of-covid-19.
  26. Schabas R. (2004). Severe acute respiratory syndrome: Did quarantine help?. Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases, 15, 4: 204; -- https://doi.org/10.1155/2004/521892.
  27. Schiller N.G. e Salazar N. (2013). Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39, 2: 183-200; -- https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.723253.
  28. Tianqiong J. e Wei H. (2020) Flying to China still a challenge as restrictions extended, Nikkei Asia; -- https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Flying-to-China-still-a-challenge-as-restrictions-extended (Accessed: 9 October 2020).
  29. Tognotti E. (2013). Lessons from the history of quarantine, from plague to influenza A. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 19, 2: 254-259;
  30. Torpey J.C. (1998). Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate “Means of Movement”. Sociological Theory, 16, 3: 239-259; -- https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00055.
  31. United Nations Security Council (2014). With Spread of Ebola Outpacing Response, Security Council Adopts Resolution 2177 (2014) Urging Immediate Action, End to Isolation of Affected States [SC/11566].
  32. Visontay E. e Hurst D. (2020). Constitutional question : is it legal to limit how many Australian citizens can fly home each week ? public health. The Guardian, 25 August.; -- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/26/constitutional-question-is-it-legal-to-limit-how-many-australian-citizens-can-fly-home-each-week.
  33. Wells C.R., Sah P., Moghadas S.M., Pandey A., Shoukat A., Wang Y., Wang Z., Meyers L.A., Singer B.H. and Galvani A.P. (2020). Impact of international travel and border control measures on the global spread of the novel 2019 coronavirus outbreak. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117, 13: 7504-7509; -- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2002616117.
  34. World Health Organization (2005). International Health Regulations. Geneva: -- https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241580496.
  35. World Health Organization (2020a). WHO advice for international travel and trade in relation to the outbreak of pneumonia caused by a new coronavirus in China, 10 January; -- https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/who-advice-for-international-travel-and-trade-in-relation-to-the-outbreak-of-pneumonia-caused-by-a-new-coronavirus-in-china/.
  36. World Health Organization (2020b). Updated WHO advice for international traffic in relation to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV, 27 January; -- https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/updated-who-advice-for-international-traffic-in-relation-to-the-outbreak-of-the-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov.

  • Introduction: Migrants and Migration in the Eco-Pan-Syndemic Era Francesco Della Puppa, Fabio Perocco, in Two Homelands /2022
    DOI: 10.3986/dd2022.2.01
  • Governing Immobility in the COVID-19 Crisis in Italy: Non-conforming Behaviors of Migrants Confronting the New Old Processes of Othering Giulia Fabini, Omid Firouzi Tabar, in Critical Criminology /2023 pp.307
    DOI: 10.1007/s10612-023-09701-z

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