Immobility beyond borders: Differential inclusion and the impact of the COVID-19 border closures

Abstract

This article discusses differential inclusion as it relates to mobility in Europe through migrants’ experiences of the closure of the European Union (EU) Schengen borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on 36 comparative online interviews with three groups of migrants – Erasmus students, asylum seekers and seasonal workers – the article empirically investigates how differential inclusion is reflected in migrants’ perceptions of border closures and the impact of border closures on international mobility. Drawing on the concept of differential inclusion, I examine the divergent border mobilities in a moment of crisis. In the interviews, migrants’ reflections on borders are informed either by their own perception of borders, their surprise at the lack of awareness of borders for other migrants, or the realisation that closed borders are crossed for capitalist economic demands under high health risks. Taking this as its basis, the article makes two arguments. First, that preexisting differential inclusion exacerbated during border closures in a global health emergency. Second, that borders are not concrete but flexible in (im)mobilising people according to capitalist economic demands. In this way, the article contributes to an understanding of the process of rebordering that took place during COVID-19 and in which borders remained spaces of differentiation.