Abstract
This article examines the global pandemic, COVID-19, through the lens of responses to vulnerable migrants, asking what state responses mean for the future of human rights values and for humanitarian interventions. The responses of the Australian state are developed as a case study of actions and policies directed at refugees and temporary migrant workers through the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical framing of the article draws on racial capitalism to argue that the developments manifest during the ‘crisis times’ of COVID-19 are in large part a continuity of the exclusionary politics of bordering practices at the heart of neoliberal capitalism. The article proposes that a rethinking of foundational theoretical and methodological approaches in the social sciences are needed to reflect contemporary changes in justice claims, claims that increasingly recognize the multi-species nature of existential threats to all life.
Highlights
The spectre of death, illness, unemployment, recession and isolation wrought on the world by the global COVID-19 pandemic is, at least in some respects, ubiquitous and indiscriminate across global society
The ideas we explore are set against the case study of the Australian state’s responses to COVID-19, focused on the circumstances faced by vulnerable migrant populations
The article turns to briefly outline the circumstances that refugees face in the Australian context and how COVID-19 responses have impacted on particular vulnerabilities that refugees face
Summary
The spectre of death, illness, unemployment, recession and isolation wrought on the world by the global COVID-19 pandemic is, at least in some respects, ubiquitous and indiscriminate across global society. Our point in raising these theoretical concepts is to highlight continuities in the exclusions and discriminations that migrants and refugees face Though contemporary crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic may appear unique or novel, we suggest that exceptionalist responses by states to crisis events draw on, and create, moral panics that often use migrants as scapegoats for a range of social problems. A justice-oriented vision leads to the enactment of a global commons (commons of land, knowledge, technologies, healthcare, access to vaccines and so on)—requiring attitudes and values that recognize the shared vulnerability of human and non-human life An existential crisis such as a pandemic focuses attention on what a society’s core values are and how vulnerable persons who happen to live in a particular territorial jurisdiction are protected or ignored (Carens 2013; Zaretsky 2019; Khazan 2020). The article turns first to the concept of borders, key to the governance of populations and forms of exclusion, before exploring the case studies of temporary migrants and refugees
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