Searching for the right balance between openness and closure: Spatial logics of crisis management and control in the policy response to pandemic disease such as COVID‐19

This paper argues that at its very core, the policy response to a pandemic such as COVID‐19 is shaped by the search for the right balance between openness and closure, mobility and public safety. More specifically, drawing upon relevant social‐scientific literatures and examples relating to the fight against COVID‐19 in Switzerland, the paper highlights three broad and fundamentally intertwined spatial logics of control and restriction through which differing degrees and modalities of closure and openness are being articulated in the context of infectious disease. These refer to (1) border and access control; (2) the monitoring of people and objects on the move and (3) to the internal organization and monitoring of specific spatial enclaves. The three spatial logics of crisis management and control offer an exploratory framework, the paper argues, to study the functioning and implications of outbreak response both during and after the pandemic.