How COVID-19 is altering our conception of citizenship

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency, but it also has the potential to impact on many other elements of European societies beyond health services. Jelena Dzankic and Lorenzo Piccoli write on the effect the outbreak is having on the uses and meanings of citizenship. The rapid spread of the coronavirus has wrecked human mobility, and profoundly disrupted the daily lives of millions of people worldwide. Its effects are mirrored in policies such as evacuations from affected areas or spaces, travel restrictions, and confinement in quarantines, but also in social and behavioural practices ranging from panic-shopping to the alteration of greeting customs that entail physical contact. These occurrences show how profoundly the virus has cut into the relationship between citizenship as a guarantee of the state’s responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, on the one hand, and human rights and practices of solidarity, on the other.