COVID-19 passports and refugees: an emerging border technology of exclusion and mobility injustice

Abstract

ABSTRACT The global COVID-19 pandemic has seen unprecedented state border closures and a proliferation of novel restrictions on human mobility both within and between states. This article examines the human rights implications for refugees and asylum seekers of one COVID-19 response measure within and beyond Australia: namely, the adoption of COVID-19 vaccination passport systems. We argue that the use of COVID-19 passport systems in 2021 intensified and entrenched the growing inequalities between states and people in the vaccine-rich Global North and vaccine-deprived Global South as well as between citizens and non-citizens within particular states. Using the concepts of ‘mobility injustice’ and ‘immunoprivilege’, we explore how COVID-19 passport systems created particular additional barriers for refugees to access asylum, to exercise their right to mobility and to realise their right to health. We thus call for ongoing vigilance against the potential for COVID-19 passport systems to be redeployed in future times of global pandemics or emergencies to the detriment of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented people, both in Australia and globally, even while being touted as a means of protecting populations, opening international travel and granting greater freedoms.