COVID-19 upended both the existing world order and the research agenda of academics. In both cases, one crucial feature was a net shift from an expansive ‘hyper mobile’ world to a strong emphasis on the immobilization of people. With... more
COVID-19 upended both the existing world order and the research agenda of academics. In both cases, one crucial feature was a net shift from an expansive ‘hyper mobile’ world to a strong emphasis on the immobilization of people. With growing anxieties about the risks and dangers involved in human mobility, there was a turn in mobility studies: an ‘immobility turn’ agonized by a rapidly evolving diseasescape shaped at the intersection of a rapidly evolving virus and rapidly evolving human responses to it. This paper seeks to examine the dynamic dialectical relationship between this diseasescape and human (im)mobility that has resulted in the formation of a new mobility hierarchy that stresses ‘sanitized mobility’. This in turn heightens human inequality. The pandemic has also forced a competition in ‘immobility governance’— testing different models of governing health security within and beyond borders. The paper sheds new light on the emerging scholarship on ‘immobility and pandemic’ by examining the multifariousness in ‘immobility governance’ and interrogating the uneven state capacity in ensuring ‘sanitized mobility’ and practicing ‘immobility governance’ that will bring different outcomes in national and international health security in the post-COVID era.
Research Interests:
Mobility/Mobilities, Global Governance, Corporate Governance, Migration, Citizenship And Governance, and 11 moreInfectious Diseases, Multidisciplinary, Social Inequality, Mobilities, Global Health Governance, Immobility, Sanitation, Global health security, Mobility justice, COVID-19 PANDEMIC, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
COVID-19 upended both the existing world order and the research agenda of academics. In both cases, one crucial feature was a net shift from an expansive ‘hyper mobile’ world to a strong emphasis on the immobilization of people. With... more
COVID-19 upended both the existing world order and the research
agenda of academics. In both cases, one crucial feature was a net shift
from an expansive ‘hyper mobile’ world to a strong emphasis on the
immobilization of people. With growing anxieties about the risks and
dangers involved in human mobility, there was a turn in mobility studies:
an ‘immobility turn’ agonized by a rapidly evolving diseasescape
shaped at the intersection of a rapidly evolving virus and rapidly evolving
human responses to it. This paper seeks to examine the dynamic
dialectical relationship between this diseasescape and human (im)mobility
that has resulted in the formation of a new mobility hierarchy that
stresses ‘sanitized mobility’. This in turn heightens human inequality.
The pandemic has also forced a competition in ‘immobility governance’—
testing different models of governing health security within and
beyond borders. The paper sheds new light on the emerging scholarship
on ‘immobility and pandemic’ by examining the multifariousness in
‘immobility governance’ and interrogating the uneven state capacity in
ensuring ‘sanitized mobility’ and practicing ‘immobility governance’ that
will bring different outcomes in national and international health security
in the post-COVID era.
agenda of academics. In both cases, one crucial feature was a net shift
from an expansive ‘hyper mobile’ world to a strong emphasis on the
immobilization of people. With growing anxieties about the risks and
dangers involved in human mobility, there was a turn in mobility studies:
an ‘immobility turn’ agonized by a rapidly evolving diseasescape
shaped at the intersection of a rapidly evolving virus and rapidly evolving
human responses to it. This paper seeks to examine the dynamic
dialectical relationship between this diseasescape and human (im)mobility
that has resulted in the formation of a new mobility hierarchy that
stresses ‘sanitized mobility’. This in turn heightens human inequality.
The pandemic has also forced a competition in ‘immobility governance’—
testing different models of governing health security within and
beyond borders. The paper sheds new light on the emerging scholarship
on ‘immobility and pandemic’ by examining the multifariousness in
‘immobility governance’ and interrogating the uneven state capacity in
ensuring ‘sanitized mobility’ and practicing ‘immobility governance’ that
will bring different outcomes in national and international health security
in the post-COVID era.
