Towards a Novel Mobility Regime? The Legacies of the COVID-19 Pandemic Regarding the Governance of Human Movement
The ‘permanentification’ of a regime of crisis: reinforced and enduring bordering and normalization of right-wing narratives
In public and political discourses, 2015 was constructed as the peak of a ‘refugee crisis.’ While a crisis is supposed to be temporary by definition, it seems that many references to migration have since been associated with the label ‘crisis.’ We argue that a ‘permanentification’ of a regime of crisis has been taking place over the last years. We use the term ‘permanentification’ in the sense of a process by which a state of exception is normalized and enduring. This can be observed in two key dimensions, each with significant consequences: on the one hand, exceptional measures have become routinized, institutionalized, and normalized; on the other hand, right-wing narratives have been mainstreamed to an unprecedented degree. Taken together, these dynamics reinforce existing necropolitics, institutionalize violence, and deepen exclusion.
COVID-19 and the Search for Continuity in the Swiss Asylum Regime
How are public health and asylum governance connected? During the COVID-19 pandemic, migration authorities took measures to maintain a certain continuity in asylum governance in Switzerland. By studying the pandemic’s impact on the asylum regime, we not only see the importance of uninterrupted movement to it, but we also realize that the historical sanitary bordering on migranticized groups persists.