Abstract
Abstract. Every crisis is a moment both of the intensification of borders (social, economic, geographical …) and of their potential breaking down – a moment of the reaffirmation of a certain social model and of its questioning. Borders have acquired centrality in the imaginary of the management of the pandemic. They are a constitutive part of the pandemic condition, endowed with a new symbolic and cognitive force. The new importance of borders in times of a pandemic also shows the complexity of the concept of border itself and accelerates the trends underway regarding borders' transformations. The pandemic draws a new strategic border space and accentuates the complexity of the relationship between sovereignty and territory inherent to the process of globalization. The massive interventions by states to shore up the economy and support businesses and workers have the goal of stabilizing the economy, without any intention of entering into a logic of redistribution and expansion of public services. These massive bailouts may simply be the prelude to a more virulent phase, where a crisis of legitimacy and a crisis of social reproduction and of the global forms of governance of neoliberalism are interwoven. The contradiction between the free movement of capital and goods and the limited movement of labor that characterizes globalization can be further intensified, while the rhetoric of borders and control takes on new relevance.
Highlights
“Many people blame the Coronavirus epidemic on globalization, and say that the only way to prevent more such outbreaks is to de-globalize the world” wrote Noah Harari (2020) in a disapproving tone at the beginning of the pandemic
In the 14th century there were no airplanes and cruise ships, and yet the Black Death spread from East Asia to Western Europe in little more than a decade
One thing is to see that pandemics are inherent in human history and the other is not to see how the conditions of gestation and propagation of the COVID-19 pandemic concretely relate to neoliberal globalization
Summary
“Many people blame the Coronavirus epidemic on globalization, and say that the only way to prevent more such outbreaks is to de-globalize the world” wrote Noah Harari (2020) in a disapproving tone at the beginning of the pandemic. For him it was wrong to blame globalization for the current pandemic, since in the past humanity has already faced other and more deadly crises of this kind: “Epidemics killed millions of people long before the current age of globalization. In the 14th century there were no airplanes and cruise ships, and yet the Black Death spread from East Asia to Western Europe in little more than a decade. It killed between 75 million and 200 million people – more than a quarter of the population of Eurasia” (Harari, 2020). One thing is to see that pandemics are inherent in human history and the other is not to see how the conditions of gestation and propagation of the COVID-19 pandemic concretely relate to neoliberal globalization
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