Framing immobility: Schengen governance in times of pandemics

Contagious Policies? Studying National Responses to a Global Pandemic in Europe

“…In addition, the apparent lack of vertical diffusion regarding cross‐border restrictions should be investigated further. While one could have expected a more unified response among Schengen countries, Wolff et al (2020) argue that the principle of free movement was already fragile at the start of the pandemic due to previous crises in the Schengen area, thus facilitating unilateral responses and tit‐for‐tat strategies. However, the persistence of border controls and entry bans for non‐EU nationals even as infection rates were going down significantly and the fact that most countries adopted more severe restrictions on the external dimension might also point to a convergence within the Schengen area towards closing off to the outside.…”

The EU Institutional Architecture in the Covid‐19 Response: Coordinative Europeanization in Times of Permanent Emergency

“…This first phase (March–August 2020) of restrictions for the freedom of movement did not lead to much contestation by the public or legislators, due to the fact that many legislatures had to adapt to the pandemic and were in the first instance relatively marginalized (Griglio, 2020 ). It was indeed politically costly for legislatures, including the European Parliament, to ‘politicize the breaches to the freedom of movement, as it would have meant to question the discourse of ‘doing everything necessary to protect citizens' in times of uncertainty’ (Wolff et al ., 2020 , p. 1129).…”

“…As a result, EU institutions were left only with the possibility to react to the unilateral reintroduction of internal border controls in 17 member states. Confronted with a discourse that defined public health as a national security issue, the European Commission had initially very little leverage and prioritised the re‐establishment of green lanes by calling EU member states to ease freedom of movement for goods, medical professionals, and cross‐border workers (Wolff et al ., 2020 ). It discursively mobilised a functional‐solidarity frame where coordination and non‐discrimination were key principles to contest this uncoordinated renationalisation of Schengen by EU member states.…”

On board the quarantine-ship as “floating hotspot”: Creeping externalization practices in the Mediterranean Sea

“…In this piece, we explore those cracks, delving into their deepest depths in the time of COVID-19. While many studies are emerging on the impact of the pandemic on borders at the sub-national and national levels (see e.g., Kenwick and Simmons 2020 ; Wolff et al, 2020 ), less attention has been paid to practices applied during these times on illegalized crossings. This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Central Mediterranean Sea, one of the most spectacularized and, at the same time, contested borders of recent years.…”