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By exploring im/mobilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper theorizes its effects on the interplay between mobility and governance as well as contributing to debates on the city, power, and spatial strategy. To explain governing power in the rearrangement of im/mobilities and urban life during the pandemic, the paper employs the concept of "governmobility." The term refers to governing through (im)mobility, and the technological self-governance discussed is not only constituted by the internalized regulation of im/mobilities but more specifically those mobilities enacted through communication technologies facilitating collective relations. This paper argues that technological self-governance maintains governmobility by enabling people to adjust to their "new normal" and continue with their daily lives. Governing, norm-making, and places are interwoven in the city's im/mobility regime, and resistance and criticism are intrinsic in the process of forming governance. The paper suggests considering place-(re)making at various levels as a proactive response to the new norm. Place-(re)making is constituted by governing activities of state and market as well as citizens to reshape their society and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 epidemic appeared in Poland in early March 2020. Since then, the epidemic has impacted strongly on the socioeconomic nature of the country. Since April 2020, the region with the most confirmed cases is the province of Silesia (Śląskie). This paper has two main aims. First, the authors focus on explanations for the causes of the large number of confirmed cases in this region. The second issue is the mosaic pattern of COVID-19 cases in Śląskie province. The paper explains these patterns with reference to urban shrinkage, trans-industrialism, hard coal mining and polycentricity. The impact of these drivers is clearly visible in the local patterning of the pandemic. The authors point out that this specific relationship in this province complicates regional and local policy and indirectly affects state policy focused on the epidemic as well. The key problem is the negative impact of COVID-19 on hard coal mining. This sector, in turn, is considered by the Polish government as one of the most important from an economic and political point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has played out in Romania in a similar way to that in many other European countries. The government implemented decisive early measures which were able to keep the infection and mortality rates relatively low. This paper considers three distinctive aspects of the situation in Romania. First, the situation was complicated by the influence of transnational migrant workers, large numbers of whom returned to Romania when the pandemic started, accounting for distinct geographical variations in the rates of infection. At the same time, large numbers were able to leave the country at the height of the pandemic because they were "needed" for low-paid agricultural/social care work in western European countries. Second, the pandemic placed tension on Romania's relationship with the EU, whilst highlighting a number of existing issues between Romania and its neighbors. Third, Romania's strict lockdown measures exacerbated long-standing internal tensions, particularly with regard to the large and marginalized Roma community. The paper concludes by considering some of the possible longer-term implications for Romania of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three months into the Covid-19 crisis, lockdown has become a global response to the pandemic. Why have so many countries resorted to lockdown? How is it being implemented in different places? Why have some places had more success with lockdowns and others not? What does the effectiveness of lockdowns tell us about the local institutions entrusted with enforcing them? This paper compares how lockdown orders have been implemented in China, Italy, and the U.S. The analysis points to two major factors that have shaped the enforcement: tensions between national and local governments, and the strength of local territorial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the notion of "more-than-viral" geographies of the covid-19 pandemic. It introduces a set of commentaries on the pandemic in the Eurasian region and its links with the rest of the globe. Taking "more-than-human" perspectives in Human Geography as an inspiration, it develops ways of analyzing the covid-19 pandemic as a "more-than-viral" phenomenon in which human and viral agencies are entangled. In this Introduction to the special issue, we focus on three key intertwined sets of processes that run through this volume, and which both shape, and are being radically reshaped by, the pandemic: interconnections, inequalities, and the geopolitics of disease. Each of these inter-related processes is developed in various ways by the commentaries which make up the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While necessary to control the pandemic and protect human life, the dominant virus-focused response to COVID-19 is ill-equipped to deal with growing xenophobia and racism, as well as the systemic vulnerabilities that turned a local disease outbreak into a pandemic. This paper draws from work on pathological life and disease ontology in arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic requires both a viral and a more-than-viral response. A pathogen-focused response on its own sustains illusions that this pandemic has a single origin point and an isolated local cause. A complementary relational response to the COVID-19 emergency would help challenge these illusions by attending to the social, ecological, and political circumstances in which the pandemic – and xenophobic and racist reactions to it – have taken place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first discusses some of the basic spatial features of the COVID-19 crisis in Finland. Second, it considers the role of the state and state power in response to the pandemic and explores some of the geopolitical aspects of COVID-19 in the Finnish context. Finally, it argues that the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the role of health care as a crucial constituent of state power. The COVID-19 crisis has not only made state power more clearly visible, but has also revealed some of the ways in which the "extra-economic" occupies a central position in maintaining both economic and societal order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has become a global public health pandemic which requires scientific, technical, public policy and health system responses at multi-scales. COVID-19 is also a pandemic that is impacting socio-economic and political systems in profound ways. This paper briefly outlines why and how pandemics may expose uneven socio-economic geographies of vulnerability and risk, and also be thought of in relation to environmental and non-human challenges to our geopolitical map of territorial nation-states and sovereignties. In relation to Southeast Asia we argue that preexisting and ongoing political-economy linkages are shaping key responses to COVID-19. In particular, we consider the geopolitical and geoeconomic reasoning of Cambodia and Myanmar, and their relations with China. We reflect on the factors that shape their national responses in response to the pandemic, characterized by certain silences and erasures to their local geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the specificities of Serbia's response to coronavirus. Two most important issues during the pandemic were the role of the State and the management of migration flows. Being placed in the China–Russia–EU triangle shaped the response on the crises but also the image of the country in the world. Two phenomena shaped mobility patterns. Citizens returning from abroad were caught between accusations of spreading the virus and a plea for healthcare and other key workers from the Serbian diaspora to help in Serbia. The issue of refugees and migrants attracted significant amounts of positive public attention, but in parallel with that xenophobia arose as a new attitude as part of aggressive campaigns against them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]