Mobility, Control, and the Pandemic Across the Americas: First Findings of a Transnational Collective Project

Abstract

Before Covid-19, countries in the Americas—deeply unequal spaces historically determined by migrant mobilities—had hardened their migratory policies, provoking the rise in the number of undocumented migrants and limitations on the right to refuge. Based on the initial findings of a collaborative and comparative research project encompassing twenty-one countries in the Americas (www.inmovilidades.org), this article argues that the current pandemic justifies a perverse intersection between health policies and politics to control mobility that has configured a de facto state of exception in migration matters, which only magnifies the existing tension between mobility and control. By reviewing press material and policy documents, and complementing those with the testimonies of regional and extra-continental migrants, this article proves that common situations are arising across the Americas that disproportionately affect regional and extracontinental undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, consigning them to daily hyper-precarization and dispossession of rights. It also shows that new forms of migrant mobility are emerging. The article thus focuses on five intertwined common situations: 1) border closures and increased internal policing; 2) suspension or limitation of the right to refuge; 3) selective hyper-nationalist aid programmes; 4) the adoption of a new anti-migrant legal architecture; and 5) new forms of migrant mobility and struggle. As the article suggests, against the current pandemic and hyper-control migrant mobilities are strategies for resistance with spatial effects on national and transnational scales across the continent.