The policy response to COVID-19 has involved extraordinary efforts to govern human movement and resulted in differing degrees of openness and closure at various scales. This project investigates the past and future legacies of these efforts: it studies how the measures have affected how the governance of human movement is being conceived, implemented, technologically mediated, and lived.

We apply a qualitative approach focused on three work packages (a baseline study and two in-depth case studies) covering the following fields: Governance of national borders; Monitoring of people on the move ; Control of spatial security enclaves. For each field, we analyze the logics of bordering, boundary-making and securitization inherent in the responses to COVID-19.

On this basis, the project develops an integrative theoretical model to understand the particular mobility regime that crystallized at the critical junctural moment of the COVID-19 crisis.