“June 15 will be the re-Open Borders Day of Schengen Area,” Eudebates.tv, May 15, 2020, ➝.
Lucía Abellán and Álvaro Sánchez, “European borders are reopening, but there is a lot of small print to digest,” El Pais, June 21, 2020, ➝.
Migreurop, “From the ‘war against the virus’ to the war against exiles: security responses to COVID-19 exacerbate violence at borders,” Migreurop, April 2, 2020, ➝. Throughout this paper I use the term “illegalized migrants” to highlight that migrants illegality is a product of state law rather than an intrinsic feature of migrants. Migrants’ illegalisation in turn precaritises their status and social condition. See Harald Bauder, “Why We Should Use the Term Illegalized Immigrant,” RCIS Research Brief 1 (2013): 1-7.
See ➝.
See ➝.
Valeska Huber, “The Unification of the Globe by Disease? The International Sanitary Conferences on Cholera, 1851–1894,” The Historical Journal 49, no. 2 (2006): 453–476. See also Stephen S. Morse, “Factors in the Emergence of Infectious Diseases,” in Andrew T. Price-Smith (ed.) Plagues and Politics: Infectious Disease and International Policy (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2001).
Amnesty International. 2020, “Policing the Pandemic - Human rights violations in the enforcement of COVID-19 measures in Europe,” Amnesty International, June 24, 2020, ➝.
AFP, “Hungary's Orban blames foreigners, migration for coronavirus spread,” France 24, March 13, 2020, ➝.
Miriam Ticktin, “Invasive Others: Toward a Contaminated World,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 84, no. 1 (2017).
Didier Pittet, “Didier Pittet insiste vraiment: Ce n’est pas le virus qui circule mais les gens,” Le Temps, March 19, 2020, ➝.
Rony Brauman, “On a cru pouvoir éradiquer les maladies infectieuses mais c’était une chimère,” Le Temps, March 24, 2020, ➝.
Kevin Linka, Mathias Peirlinck, Francisco Sahli Costabal and Ellen Kuhl, “Outbreak dynamics of COVID-19 in Europe and the effect of travel restrictions,” Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering (May 2020).
Amilhat Szary and Anne-Laure, “Les confinés, ce sont les plus mobiles !,” Libération, April 27, 2020, ➝.
Gianfranco Spiteri et al., “First cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the WHO European Region, 24 January to 21 February 2020,” Euro Surveill 25, no. 9 (2020). For an extensive data set on travel restrictions and border control, see ➝.
Jozsef Borocz, “Could a Global Pandemic Defeat the Rule of European Difference?” Criticatac, June 8, 2020, ➝.
Andrea Bagnato, “Staying at Home,” At the Border (e-flux Architecture and A/D/O, 2020). ➝.
Italy had introduced a national lockdown on March 9, Germany had implemented school and border closures starting March 13, Spain followed on March 14, and France on March 16. For an extensive data set on travel restrictions and border control, see ➝. WHO, “Updated WHO recommendations for international traffic in relation to COVID-19 outbreak,” February 29, 2020, ➝.
European Commission. “COVID-19: Temporary Restriction on Non-Essential Travel to the EU,” March 16, 2020, ➝.
Costas Lapavitsas, Lluís Torrens, Sergi Cutillas, Pablo Cotarelo, “Confronting the Coronavirus Crisis: A case for a Pandemic Basic Income with evidence from Spain,” Brave New Europe, June 11, 2020, ➝.
European Commission. “On the second assessment of the application of the temporary restriction on non-essential travel to the EU,” May 8, 2020, ➝.
Frontex, “Risk Analysis for 2020,” March 2020, ➝.
Houssem Ben Lazreg and Wael Garnaoui, “The Passport Paradox and the Advent of Immobility Justice,” Resetdoc, June 8, 2020, ➝.
These debates have emerged in relation to past epidemics as well. See Antoine Flahault, “HIV and travel, no rationale for restrictions,” The Lancet 336, no. 8724 (1990): 1197–1198.
WHO, February 29, 2020, ➝. Benjamin Mason Meier, Roojin Habibi, Tony Y. Yang, “Travel restrictions violate international law,” Science 367, no. 6485 (2020): 1436.
Matteo Chinazzi et al., “The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak,” Science 368 (2020): 395–400.
Véronique Petit and Nelly Robin, “COVID-19 et migrations en Afrique : la réduction des mobilités, une riposte efficace ?,” The Conversation, May 31, 2020, ➝. Kevin Linka et al., “Outbreak dynamics of COVID-19 in Europe and the effect of travel restrictions,” (2020).
Wendy Brown, “A Worldwide Mutual Pact,” The Drift, June 24, 2020, ➝.
European Commission, March 16, 2020, ➝.
Migreurop, “From the ‘war against the virus’ to the war against exiles,” ➝.
Gianni Rosini, “Malgré le coronavirus, la France continue de refouler les migrants à Vintimille,” Courrier International, March 22, 2020, ➝. Le Courrier des Balkans, “Réfugiés : la haine se réveille tout au long de la route des Balkans,” Le Courrier des Balkans, March 22, 2020, ➝. Rony Brauman, “Le coronavirus rappelle que, sans Etat, les plus vulnérables sont écrasés,” Heidi News, March 8, 2020, ➝.
The Mediterranean has been the focus of my research within the Forensic Oceanography project over the last 10 years. See ➝.
See the Global Passport Power Rank: ➝.
Etienne Balibar, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Many other scholars have developed the global apartheid analysis since, including Henk Van Houtum, “Human blacklisting: the global apartheid of the EU's external border regime,” Environment and Planning D 28 (2010): 957–976’ and more recently Ghassan Hage, “Etat de siège: A dying domesticating colonialism?,” American Ethnologist 43, no. 1 (2016): 38–49.
Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, “The Mediterranean Mobility Conflict: Violence and anti-Violence at the Borders of Europe,” Humanity Journal Blog (2018). ➝.
See United for Intercultural Action’s List of deaths: ➝.
Ruth Gilmore Wilson defines racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death,” Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Itamar Mann, “Tents at Sea: How Greek Officials Use Rescue Equipment for Illegal Deportations,” Just Security, May 22, 2020, ➝.
Alessandra Ziniti, “Coronavirus, le Ong fermano le missioni di salvataggio in mare. Migranti senza più soccorsi,” La Repubblica, March 18, 2020, ➝.
Alarm Phone, “Twelve Deaths and a Secret Push-Back to Libya,” April 16, 2020, ➝.
Marco Menduni, “Giro: ‘Fare rientrare quelle persone vuol dire condannarle all’inferno,’” La Stampa, August 6, 2017, ➝.
Médecins sans frontières. “COVID-19: Evacuation of squalid Greek camps more urgent than ever in light of coronavirus pandemic,” March 13, 2020, ➝.
Alan Gamlen, “Migration and Mobility after the 2020 Pandemic: The End of an Age?,” COMPAS Working Paper No. 146 (University of Oxford, 2020). ➝.
Stefano Scarpetta, Jean-Christophe Dumont, Karolina Socha-Dietrich, “Contribution of migrant doctors and nurses to tackling COVID-19 crisis in OECD countries,” OECD brief, May 13, 2020, ➝.
OECD, “Women at the core of the fight against COVID-19 crisis,” OECD brief, April 1, 2020, ➝. Similarly to what has been observed in the US, in the UK, one of the few European countries that considers “ethnicity” within its public statistics, found that “death rates from COVID-19 were higher for Black and Asian ethnic groups when compared to White ethnic groups,” Public Health England, 2020, “Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19,” Public Health England, June 2020, ➝. Fassin, “L'illusion dangereuse de l'égalité devant l'épidémie,” ➝. In its recent report, Amnesty International concluded that “police enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns across Europe have disproportionately targeted ethnic minority and marginalized groups with violence, discriminatory identity checks, forced quarantines and fines,” Amnesty International, “Policing the Pandemic,” ➝.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore in conversation with with Paul Gilroy, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, June 7, 2020, ➝.
Borocz, “Could a Global Pandemic Defeat the Rule of European Difference?,” ➝. On April 22, 2020, Der Spiegel reported the death of Nicolae Bahan, a Romanian farm worker employed in an asparagus harvest in Bad Krozingen, Germany. Nils Klawitter and Keno Verseck, “Ein Leben für den Spargel,” Der Spiegel, April 22, 2020, ➝.
Valeska, “The Unification of the Globe by Disease?”
Emma Graham-Harrison and Helena Smith, “What is the future for travel and migration in age of COVID-19?,” The Guardian, May 12, 2020, ➝. For a timeline of these reopening measures, see ➝. For a useful summary see Euronews, “Which European countries have opened their borders ahead of the summer holiday season?,” Euronews, June 21, 2020, ➝.
Miriam Berger, “The coronavirus is reshaping an old hierarchy: Who can travel where,” The Washington Post, June 6, 2020, ➝.
Daniel Boffey, “US visitors set to remain banned from entering EU,” The Guardian, June 29, 2020, ➝.
Gamlen, “Migration and Mobility after the 2020 Pandemic,” ➝.
Huub Dijstelbloem and William Walters, “Atmospheric Border Politics: The Morphology of Migration and Solidarity Practices in Europe,” Geopolitics (2019), ➝.
Katy Fallon, “Greece ready to welcome tourists as refugees stay locked down in Lesbos,” The Guardian, May 27, 2020, ➝.
Ben Lazreg and Garnaoui, “The Passport Paradox and the Advent of Immobility Justice,” ➝.
Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire, “International Migration, Border Controls and Human Rights: Assessing the Relevance of a Right to Mobility,” Journal of Borderlands Studies 21, no. 1 (2006.): 75–76. Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma, and Cynthia Wright, “Editorial: Why No Borders?” Refuge 26, no. 2 (2009).
Charles Heller, “For an open migration policy to end the deaths and crises in the Mediterranean,” Open Democracy, June 28, 2018. ➝. This is an argument I have also developed collaboratively: Charles Heller, Lorenzo Pezzani, and Maurice Stierl, “Toward a Politics of Freedom of Movement,” in Reece Jones (ed.), Open Borders: In Defense of Free Movement, (University of Georgia Press, 2018).
Sandro Mezzadra and Maurice Stierl have offered the first robust argument in this direction, upon which this contribution builds. “What happens to freedom of movement during a pandemic?,” Open Democracy, March 24, 2020, ➝.
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), “Considerations for travel-related measures to reduce spread of COVID-19 in the EU/EEA,” ECDC, May 26, 2020, ➝.
Ibid.
Huber, “The Unification of the Globe by Disease?” See also Morse, “Factors in the Emergence of Infectious Diseases.”
Didier Bigo, “COVID-19 tracking apps, or: how to deal with a pandemic most unsuccessfully,” About:intel, June 3, 2020.➝. Achille Mbembe, “Bodies as borders,” From the European South 4 (2019): 5–18. ➝. Louise Amoore and Alexandra Hall, “Taking people apart: Digitised dissection and the body at the border,” Environment and Planning D 27, no. 3 (2009): 444–464.
Holmes et al., “Coronavirus mass surveillance could be here to stay,” ➝.
“Statement by Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, on the COVID-19 crisis,” UNHCR, March 19, 2020, ➝.
Victoria Waldersee, “Portugal to treat migrants as residents during coronavirus crisis,” Reuters, March 28, 2020, ➝.
Lapavitsas et al., “Confronting the Coronavirus Crisis,” ➝.
For a broad range of progressive internationalist responses, see “Coronavirus: the need for a progressive internationalist response,” Transnational Institute, March 26, 2020, ➝.
Fassin, “L'illusion dangereuse de l'égalité devant l'épidémie,” ➝. While Didier Fassin uses this term to denote the way public health policies may take into account social inequalities, I find it useful as well to account for claims to justice emanating from the governed with regard to the health policies targeting them—or precisely failing to do so. I thank Didier Fassin for expanding on this notion in an email exchange.
Panagiotis Sotiris, “Against Agamben: Is a Democratic Biopolitics Possible?,” Viewpoint Magazine, March 20, 2020, ➝. For some broad principles of a rights-based approach in relation to the new coronavirus see “Rights in the time of COVID-19 Lessons from HIV for an effective, community-led response,” UNAIDS, March 20, 2020, ➝.
“Ferries not Frontex! 10 points to really end the deaths of migrants at sea,” Women in Exile & Friends, April 23, 2015, ➝.
For an important initiative connecting both land and sea, see ➝.
Salar Mohandesi, “Crisis of a New Type,” Viewpoint Magazine, May 13, 2020, ➝.
Mimi Sheller, Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (London: Verso, 2018).
Hagar Kotef, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). Roger Harrabin, “Climate Change: The Rich are to Blame, International Study Finds,” BBC, March 16, 2020, ➝. Harrabin’s article is based on Yannick Oswald, Anne Owen, and Julia K. Steinberger, “Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories,” Nature Energy 5 (2020): 231–239.
Hiroko Tabuchi, “Worse Than Anyone Expected: Air Travel Emissions Vastly Outpace Predictions,” New York Times, September 19, 2019. ➝. For instance, the charity Oxfam has found that the richest 10% of people produce half of the world’s carbon emissions, while the poorest half contribute just 10%. See Nicholas Beuret, “Emissions inequality: there is a gulf between global rich and poor,” The Conversation, March 28, 2019, ➝.
Mimi Sheller, 2020, “Some Thoughts on What Comes After A Mobility Shock,” Critical Automobility Studies Lab, March 17, 2020, ➝.
See the bail out of Air France. Guy Dutheil, “Air France envisage jusqu’à 10 000 suppressions de postes,” Le Monde, June 17, 2020, ➝.
Bagnato, “Staying at Home,” ➝. It is important to note as well that digital communication has its own ecological footprint which is far from negligible.
Matthew Taylor, “‘A new normal’: how coronavirus will transform transport in Britain's cities,” The Guardian, May 18, 2020, ➝.
Andreas Malm, “To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism,” Jacobin, June 15, 2020, ➝.
Philippe Descamps and Thierry Lebel, “Un avant-goût du choc climatique,” Le monde diplomatique, May 2020, ➝.
Achille Mbembe, “The Universal Right to Breathe,” Critical Inquiry Blog, April 13, 2020, ➝.
Sheller, Mobility Justice (2018).
David Bacon, The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013); Tom Van Naerssen, “Imagining the Future of International Border Crossings,” Lecture given at the “Geographies of the Future” series, University of Bonn, November 27, 2014. Paolo Novak, “The Double Pincer of Migration. Revisiting the Migration and Development Nexus through a Spatial Lens,” Colombia Internacional 88 (September 1, 2016): 27–55.
Edouard Glissant, “Il n’est frontière qu’on n’outrepasse,” Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006. ➝.
Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016), 19.
Mbembe, “The Universal Right to Breathe,” ➝.
While I write this article in my name and thus bear the responsibility for any shortcomings, I am indebted to the collective thinking within the Migreurop network (of which I am a board member), as well as the thoughts and comments a number of colleagues have generously shared. I would like to thank in particular Michaël Neuman, Isabelle Saint-Saens, Lorenzo Pezzani, Itamar Mann, Maurice Stierl, Sandro Mezzadra, William Walters, Didier Fassin, Antoine Flahault, Bridget Anderson, Nicholas Beuret, and the Heller family.
An earlier version of this article was published by the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, ➝.
At The Border is a collaboration between A/D/O and e-flux Architecture within the context of its 2019/2020 Research Program.