Obedience in times of COVID-19 pandemics: a renewed governmentality of unease?

Abstract

This article transects and articulates different disciplines and lines of thought in order to understand the redefinitions of the boundaries of political power in times of COVID-19, and the practices which may outlive the potential normalisation of the crisis when an efficient vaccine is discovered. We claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is an original form of governmentality by unease articulating three dimensions. First, the basic reaction of modern states when faced with uncertainty is to apply national-territorial logics of controls. Second, bureaucracies consider the virus as a danger to security and organise public health emergencies according to the rules of the game of national security, creating tensions between internal security, public health and the economy because policymakers may be unsure about the priorities and may prioritise border controls. Third, resistance against the chosen national policies show that people are not led by a politics of fear and/or protection, but rather their own concerns about themselves with peer-to-peer surveillance as a key element of their compliance. Contact tracing technologies and strategies of border controls are key elements to analyse. We do so in different contexts: the UK, the EU and Turkey.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>The COVID-19 pandemic is an original form of governmentality by unease.</li><br /><li>The new COVID-19 approach of many Schengen states was to change their measures from ones which block people from travelling to ones which dissuade people from travelling on account of the consequences.</li><br /><li>The arena of public health provides opportunities for a wide variety to actors to enter the data collection sphere where their actions face less public resistance because of the variable success of the politics of fear project accompanying state measures to fight the pandemic.</li></ul>

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

“…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. Schengen states, as a first response to the pandemic, felt comfortable to resort to an administrative territorial logic of border management rather than prioritising a coordinated response (Bigo et al ., 2021, p. 15). 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).…”

“…This has been balanced by more measures to track and trace people's movements, whose personal data on quarantine and travel movement is increasingly subject to scrutiny. In a way instead of relying on national borders, measures of quarantine, isolation and lock‐down are calling upon the sense of civic duty among people and also pushing the borders from a national level to that of people's homes (Bigo et al ., 2021, p. 15). This approach has left more room for health experts to enter the debate about freedom of travel.…”

“…The breakthrough was the involvement of ministries of health into Schengen governance. This led to a ‘new Covid‐19 approach’ where Schengen states decided to evolve from stopping people from crossing borders and forbidding them to do so to an approach ‘which dissuades people from travelling on account of the consequences’ (Bigo et al ., 2021, p. 14). Instead of barring EU citizens from travel, the shift has been to put the onus on citizens themselves, to dissuade them from travelling and to ‘create a reluctance’.…”

Reading the COVID-19 emergency with and beyond Foucault: The liberal subject and everyday practices of mobility

“…Since the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, virtually all disciplines have scrutinised its impact. Within political studies, great attention has been devoted to states’ emergency powers ( Ginsburg and Versteeg, 2021 ; Spadaro, 2020 ); new modalities of governing (im)mobility and (un)freedom ( Holwitt, 2021 ; Jagannathan and Rai, 2021 ; Shin, 2021 ; Wolff et al, 2020 ); technologies of control and surveillance ( Bigo et al, 2021 ; Eck and Hatz, 2020 ; Sonn and Lee, 2020 ); border closures and new emergencies ( Casaglia, 2021 ; Martin and Bergmann, 2021 ; Opiłowska, 2021 ; Tazzioli and Stierl, 2021 ); biopolitics and bordering practices ( Chao, 2020 ; Ferhani and Rushton, 2020 ; Gamlin et al, 2021 ); political activism ( Kowalewski, 2021 ; Pleyers, 2020 ; Pressman and Choi-Fitzpatrick, 2021 ); economic and social consequences ( Schwab and Malleret, 2020 ; Ward, 2020 ); as well as liberal versus totalitarian responses to COVID-19 ( Celermajer and Nassar, 2020 ; Degerman et al, 2020 ; Merrin, 2020 ). A great part of the literature has adopted a Foucauldian approach.…”

Discourse, Antagonisms, and Identities during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Attention has been directed toward the potentially contradictory impact that pandemic policies may have on democratic standing (Eichler and Sonkar, 2021;Bigo et al, 2021). Some scholars have argued that restriction and surveillance policies during the pandemic were reliant on previous security surveillance architectures already in place.…”