Citizenship in pandemic times

The global COVID pandemic that has already killed millions of people worldwide and has sickened many millions more continues to disrupt economies, displace communities, and compromise the safety and security of many already vulnerable populations. The scope and scale of strain imposed by the spread of COVID on resources of citizenship and community has followed a flow of local and global activities, well established before the pandemic, through which the status of citizenship has emerged, is sustained, and continues to be contested. For example, from the early stages of the pandemic in January 2020, governments across the world have made extensive use of state authority to close borders, restrict travel, and limit public gatherings, claiming legitimate use of this authority to slow the spread of the pandemic and protect their citizens. In response, some citizens have rallied against the tyranny of such restrictions, others have taken it upon themselves to denounce those who fail to heed restrictions, and still others have volunteered to aid struggling health services. Even though governments may have justified use of their power as responsible public health policy intended to slow the spread of COVID, the exercise of that power and the execution of those policies also either further hardened or established boundaries to benefit select citizens above all others. Closing borders and isolating communities has left migrants, indigenous populations, persons who are undocumented, and those who are incarcerated further burdened by intensified government restriction and left with no recourse to avoid exposure. In this regard, the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated preexisting inequalities of race, gender, social class, and nationality through which citizenship is constructed and contested. When COVID emerged as a global health crisis, inequalities of race, class, gender, and nationality were already strained by the pre-pandemic rise of populism. Income inequality, political disaffection, and social divisions exacerbated by neoliberal policies allowed populist discontent to enter mainstream civic life in countries such as Brazil, Hungary, and the United States. Populist mistrust of liberal democratic governments, fueled by grievances of disaffection, bolstered authoritarianism and created opportunities for governments to use the pandemic to legitimate enhanced state surveillance of designated others. In their responses to the COVID pandemic, some governments mobilized and enhanced their surveillance activities, under the guise of public health, to further a nationalist agenda. In the most extreme case, China’s ‘zero Covid’ policy accelerated the country’s transition to a surveillance state.