THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON SECURITISATION OF MIGRATION AND MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46827/ejsss.v5i6.939Paraules clau:
COVID-19, Coronavirus, travel restrictions, migration and security, securitisation, mobility, Copenhagen SchoolResum
This article examines transformations in migration and security, arising from COVID-19 prevention measures. It utilises the Copenhagen school to theorise and illuminate the changes in the securitisation of migration and mobility in the United States. The focus on the United States was based on the fact that the country has, on top of being the world's most securitised, been the most severely affected by the pandemic, considering numerical statistics of infected and affected persons, deaths, and socio-economic impact. In doing so, the paper utilised relevant information sourced from online publications such as newspaper articles and other relevant institutional websites of the key agencies in the fight of the COVID-19 pandemic, chiefly the World Health Organisation, Centre for Disease Control, and the United States federal and state governments and academic journal articles. The main argument of the paper is that the COVID-19 pandemic will produce similar effects on migration and security as the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. The lessons gleaned from the current pandemic will most likely be a significant factor in shaping future politics and policies on the securitisation of migration and human mobility. The pandemic's portrayal as a security threat to human health has resulted in significant changes like travel embargoes, suspension of issuance of specific visa categories, and internal mobility controls, and now many countries are demanding for negative test results before allowing in any foreign arrivals into their territories. The paper concludes that the pandemic has ushered in alternative securitisation measures that would cause a shift in migration and security discourse from human-to-human aggression, notably terrorism, to the contagion of the pathogens like the coronavirus.
Article visualizations:
Referències
Baldwin, R., Weder, B., & Mauro, D. (2020). Economics in the Time of COVID-19. www.cepr.org.
BBC. (2020). Coronavirus: Trump suspends travel from Europe to US - BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51846923
Bigo, D. (2002). Security and immigration: Toward a critique of the governmentality of unease. In Alternatives (Vol. 27, Issue SUPPL. 1, pp. 63–92). Lynne Rienner Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1177/03043754020270s105.
Bosworth, M., & Guild, M. (2008). Governing through migration control: Security and citizenship in Britain. In British Journal of Criminology (Vol. 48, Issue 6, pp. 703–719). Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azn059.
Brambilla, C. (2015). Exploring the critical potential of the borderscapes concept. Geopolitics, 20(1), 14–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2014.884561.
Buzan, B., Wæver, O., Wæver, O., & Wilde, J. De. (1998). Security: A new framework for analysis.
Cancian, M. (2020). Use of Military Forces in the COVID-19 Emergency | Center for Strategic and International Studies. https://www.csis.org/analysis/use-military-forces-covid-19-emergency. Accessed 20 July 2020.
de Haas, H., Czaika, M., Flahaux, M. L., Mahendra, E., Natter, K., Vezzoli, S., & Villares-Varela, M. (2019). International Migration: Trends, Determinants, and Policy Effects. In Population and Development Review (Vol. 45, Issue 4, pp. 885–922). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12291.
Faist, T. (2002). “Extension du domaine de la lutte”: International migration and security before and after September 11, 2001. International Migration Review, 36(1), 7–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2002.tb00065.
Gabbatt, A. (2020). US anti-lockdown rallies could cause surge in Covid-19 cases, experts warn. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/20/us-protests-lockdown-coronavirus-cases-surge-warning. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Humphrey, M. (2013). Migration, Security and Insecurity. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(2), 178–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2013.781982.
Huysmans, J. (2000). The European Union and the Securitization of Migration. Journal of Common Market Studies, 38.
Huysmans, J., & Huysmans, J. (2006). The Politics of Insecurity. Taylor & Francis Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203008690-15.
Huysmans, J., & Squire, V. (2009). Migration and Security.
Karyotis, G. (2012). Securitization of Migration in Greece: Process, Motives, and Implications. International Political Sociology, 6(4), 390–408. https://doi.org/10.1111/ips.12002.
Kicinger, A. (2004). International Migration as A Non-Traditional Security Threat And The Eu Responses To This Phenomenon Central European Forum for Migration Research (CEFMR) is a research partnership of the Foundation for Population, Migration and Environment, Institute of . www.cefmr.pan.pl.
Léonard, S. (2010). EU border security and migration into the European Union: FRONTEX and securitisation through practices. European Security, 19(2), 231–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2010.526937.
Mahendru, V., Sachdeva, G., & Neha. (2019). Migration and Refugee Issues. In Challenges in Europe (pp. 253–270). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1636-4_13.
Nunes, J. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: Securitization, neoliberal crisis, and global vulnerabilization. Cadernos de Saude Publica, 36(5), 63120. https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-311X00063120.
Parker, N., & Vaughan-Williams, N. (2012). Critical border studies: Broadening and deepening the “Lines in the Sand” Agenda. In Geopolitics (Vol. 17, Issue 4, pp. 727–733). Taylor & Francis Group . https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.706111.
Salazar, N. B. (2011). The Power of Imagination in Transnational Mobilities. Identities, 18(6), 576–598. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2011.672859.
Sears, N. (2020). The Securitization of COVID‐19: Three Political Dilemmas.
Serwer, A. (2020). Trump’s Immigration ‘Ban’ Has Nothing to Do With Jobs - The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/trump-order-immigration/610822/. Accessed 20 June 2020.
Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2016). Mobilizing the New Mobilities Paradigm.’Applied Mobilities 1 (1): 10-25.
Squire, V. (2009). The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum. In The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230233614.
Statista. (2020). Most trusted coronavirus news sources in the U.S. 2020 | Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104557/coronavirus-trusted-news-sources-by-us/. Accessed 15 August 2020.
Themistocleous, A. (2013). Securitizing Migration: Aspects and Critiques. http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/icip/Continguts/Publi.
Triandafyllidou, A. (2016). Irregular Migration in Europe. In Irregular Migration in Europe (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315589848.
Wæver, O. (2015). The theory act: Responsibility and exactitude as seen from securitization. International Relations, 29(1), 121–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117814526606d.
Weiner, M. (1992). Security, Stability, and International Migration. International Security, 17(3), 91. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539131.
World Migration Report 2020 - | IOM Online Bookstore. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://publications.iom.int/books/world-migration-report-2020.
