Mobility restrictions during Covid: How citizenship mattered during crisis, by Didier Ruedin; and Understanding the experience of internationally mobile students in the context of everyday bordering, by Yao Wang
Mobility restrictions during Covid: How citizenship mattered during crisis
Didier Ruedin (DPhil, Oxford) is a senior lecturer at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and affiliated research fellow at the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand. He uses experiments and quantitative analysis to examine discrimination and political reactions in policies and political debates. Personal website: http://druedin.com.
Abstract: Every government in the world introduced restrictions to human mobility – that is, the movement of persons across and within state borders – in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While such restrictions constituted a global phenomenon, they were by no means globally uniform; rather, they varied significantly between and within states, as well as over time. We use the large-scale Citizenship, Migration and Mobility in a Pandemic (CMMP) dataset to explore border closures and domestic lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 outbreak between March and June 2020. Drawing inspiration from research on previous pandemics, we outline possible implications and research avenues prompted by these data. We argue that explaining the causes and consequences of restrictions, as well as the differences between them, can advance research on the governance of mobility, migration, and citizenship.
Understanding the experience of internationally mobile students in the context of everyday bordering
Yao Wang is a lecturer in Intercultural Communication at Newcastle University. Her research interests extend to the internationalisation of Higher Education (HE), particularly centred around the adjustment, adaptation, and employability of international students. She works on different projects on decolonisation, equality, diversity, and inclusion within HE contexts.
Abstract: Everyday bordering encompasses the continuous construction of borders through various facets such as ideology, cultural mediation, discourses, political institutions, attitudes, and everyday forms of transnationalism. Universities have emerged as pivotal arenas for the manifestation of everyday bordering. Internationally mobile students encounter a myriad of challenges stemming from cultural differences,
issues of identity, and the potential for social isolation, these further complicated by their legal status, requiring them to negotiate the complex web of laws governing visas, residency, and citizenship. Hence, it is important to understand their emotional and intellectual work involved in negotiating, sustaining and/or developing a sense of belonging while dealing with everyday bordering. This session aims to shed light on the
experiences of internationally mobile students in the UK and elucidate the rationale behind initiating a research project dedicated to unravelling the intricacies of everyday bordering experiences in the UK and Germany.