'The less we move, the more we can contain the virus' : how COVID-19 fundamentally alters understandings of mobility and the free movement of people

Abstract

Across the world, government responses to the COVID-19 crisis are leading to deep changes in our understanding of social reality. A particularly important change is that hundreds of millions of people around the world currently experience severe constraints on their mobility. While perhaps being an understandable response to the fear brought by a global pandemic, an associated representation of mobility as danger has negative implications in the long term. Physical distancing has proved to be necessary to prevent contagion. However, the measures to enforce it have framed mobility as a danger and as a problem, and have increased the inequalities of mobility.