Isabella M. Radhuber, Wanda Spahl, Michael D. Hill | 22.11.2023
[I think] that we should be a world of [global] solidarity and that we should understand that life and the world is only going to sustain itself if there is or if we are more equitable and we are more supportive. And if we support each other, we could do that. There is too much concentration of wealth among very few and the preservation of misery and poverty. And that does a lot of harm. (Interviewed person from Ecuador, 2021)
At the beginning of the pandemic, governments and international organisations called on us all to stand together worldwide. WHO Director Tedros Adhanom declared that the coronavirus was a test of global solidarity. Although the initial political responses to the pandemic were very much national in nature, people have experienced the global dimensions of the pandemic in their everyday lives. This study asks how people have dealt with the global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we analysed 493 qualitative interviews conducted between April 2020 and November 2021 in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Ecuador, Ireland, Italy and Mexico.
When it became clear that COVID-19 would not stop at China’s borders, many people initially saw national containment as a sensible measure to protect themselves and their loved ones from the dangers posed by the novel virus. One person from Ireland, for example, criticised that an important rugby match with Italy was cancelled in the early stages of the pandemic, but the border was not closed, and Italian fans were still allowed to enter Ireland. This critic emphasised that he was not concerned with the exclusion of Italians in a xenophobic sense. Rather, he was bothered by the inconsistency of the measures taken.
Over the first 18 months of the pandemic (i.e., comparing the period April-November 2020 to July-November 2021), however, there was a change in the experiences of our interviewees. The inconveniences caused by the border closures gradually came to the fore. For example it was difficult for affected people to be separated from their loved ones for a longer period of time. There was also often concern about who would look after people who were outside their own country:
Like the Haitians that have gone to South America and come from South America to Mexico, and unfortunately, we find that they are mistreated instead of being helped. (Interviewed person from Mexico, 2021)
Furthermore, the ongoing pandemic made respondents increasingly aware of how they themselves were positioned in a very unequal world - unequal in terms of global health dynamics such as the distribution of vaccines, but also in terms of educational opportunities, economic participation and prosperity.
The people we interviewed then began to describe a new normality: they described a feeling of global connectedness across national borders. In our study, we identify everyday practices of bordering and debordering. We show that borders are not only territorial and institutional but also that they run through the lives of people who redraw, shift or dismantle them through their daily actions. For example, people were concerned about others who were worse off, worried about migrants who lacked adequate support, and described their own identification with more than one government in border regions. Through these practices, they connected with or distanced themselves from other people in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our interviewees often addressed North-South borders, sometimes legitimising them and in many cases criticising them. Many described how the entrenchment of these borders in political practice would perpetuate the inequalities shaped by colonialism. Against the backdrop of how COVID-19 has reconnected different places in the world, many expressed a desire for increased international cooperation and some even for global citizenship. One interviewee from Ireland formulated a concept of “crisis citizenship”, which goes beyond national belonging. This person proposed a model for the needs-based distribution of vaccines that would work regardless of geographical location or nationality:
“I think we should say that globally we want every healthcare worker and every vulnerable person to get the vaccine. Whether you are in an affluent country or in a poor country, the criteria should be the same. Once those people have been vaccinated, we should then go down to the second level and maybe look at the over 60s and the over 50s and do it increasingly in terms of need. But it should be done on a global basis, and it should be the same criteria whether you are living in America or Ireland, as whether you are living in Ghana or Sierra Leone.” (Interviewed person from Ireland, 2021)
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This study is published in a scientific journal:
Radhuber, I.M., Fiske, A., Galasso, I., Gessl, N., Hill, M.D., Morales, E.R., Olarte-Sánchez, L.E., Pelfini, A., Saxinger, G., Spahl, W. (2023) Toward global citizenship? People (de)bordering their lives during COVID-19 in Latin America and Europe. Global Public Health, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2023.2285880
