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The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed an unprecedented disruption. The quantitative effects on health, economy, travel, social interaction and almost any walk-of-life imaginable are massive. There is no doubt that this is a deep crisis, with profound effects. As we speak estimations and extrapolations of what this means for the future of cities and societies takes on new heights. This paper is not about these 'big effects'. Rather, it will invite a reflection upon the often taken-for-granted nature of mobilities and the contemporary city. We propose to 'think with' Covid-19 as it were in order to utilize it as a catalyst for bringing about more nuanced and deep descriptions of 'banal' everyday mobilities practices. For example, the standing in line at the bus-shed, the positioning and seating on the subway, the passing of pedestrians on the pavement, and the mobile negotiation of street spaces. The paper treat Covid-19 as a window into the 'politics of visibility'. The paper presents two key concepts as tools for enabling this reflection. One is the notion of the 'extended body' and the other the 'elastic situation'. These are exemplified in three short empirical vignettes of public space activities: queuing, running, and drive-in services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to the pervasive spread of both cartographic materials related to the COVID-19 pandemic and critical commentaries about such materials. Written by four Italian map-scholars with different theoretical backgrounds but similar socio-cultural and emotional concerns, this paper emerged spontaneously, following the impulse to grasp the rapid movement of coronavirus cartographies, particularly online. Through conversations carried out during the lockdown, the authors collaboratively observed how both scientific and governmental, as well as existential and affective features of the pandemic have been informed by cartographic imaginings. This plurality of cartographic visuals and mapping practices, which appeared soon after the coronavirus outbreak, requires exponential research angles. Approaching the pandemic through and in the proximity of maps, mapping practices, map-like objects and creative cartographies, this paper aims to foreground the speculative, empirical and fast-moving expressions of the pandemic's cartographic imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the paradox of pathological treatments of certain transnational flows in a time of pandemics. Reflecting on COVID-19 developments in Singapore between January and October 2020, the paper traces the city-state's struggles against risks posed by different (im)mobile bodies within and surrounding its territory. While initially vowing not to 'isolate' itself, Singapore was seen to move incrementally toward tightening domestic and international mobilities, culminating in broad-based 'circuit breaker' restrictions in April 2020. Through an analysis of policy manoeuvres and news reports, the paper examines1) the graduated (and gradual) stoppage of aeromobilities among (even) kinetic groups, and 2) the dispersal and quarantine of low-skilled migrant workers usually stationed at peripheral enclosed spaces, as the city-state confronted multiple, unanticipated dormitory outbreaks. In both cases, the management of pathological risks took a turn, as (im)mobilities once thought to be non-risky turned out precisely to be high-risk. Singapore's response to COVID-19 not only highlights the unevenness of resource distribution and citizenship rights among different transnational groups, but also uncovers the dangers of bifurcating transnational flows in discriminatory ways in a post-pandemic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has spotlighted the relationship between mobilities and gender-based violence (GBV). The national lockdowns across the world have im/mobilised people, creating extraordinary social proximities that have been associated with a 'shadow pandemic' of violence. Before the pandemic, GBV was often im/mobilised in academic and policy thinking in that it was located in unconnected static sites. This article is based on a transdisciplinary project that seeks to produce understandings of GBV in the Covid-19 pandemic, using the heuristic lens of im/mobilities. The project aims to do so through the creation and analysis of personal stories detailing experiences of GBV across the UK. These stories are in the form of existing first-hand accounts on campaign websites, magazines and newspapers. Through them this article investigates how im/mobilities precipitate gendered violence, both felt and experienced, and examines how embodied experiences become situated in mobile spaces—inside, outside and online—in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, it evolves the concept of im/mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporeal travel has been highly problematized during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to the curtailment of many previously taken-for-granted mobilities. This includes the circulation of international students; individuals undertaking short duration credit mobility exchanges alongside those who have migrated for an entire degree course. The objective of this article is to look at how the pandemic has affected credit and degree mobility students from inside and outside Europe, focusing on the example of Portugal during the lockdown of Spring 2020. Using evidence from qualitative interviews, we illustrate the unfolding impact of the pandemic on the lives and learning habits of these students, showing how the international learning experience changed from being a relatively positive and carefree experience to one characterized by risk and uncertainty. This apparent inversion extends to a potential devaluation of their mobility capital, somewhat undermining the raison d'être of much student mobility. In conclusion, we argue that whether temporary or permanent, during the pandemic we have witnessed a turn towards immobility in tertiary education, and perhaps in the broader field of mobilities, creating an imperative to open up debate on the impact of the limitations that affect student mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, primarily focused on Europe, charts some of the momentous transformations in bordering practices, migration and global mobility that have been sparked by the new coronavirus pandemic. In a first part it argues that since the onset of the pandemic, the enduring 'global mobility apartheid' which uses citizenship and visa restrictions to police the differential access to mobility founded on race and class, has been supplemented by a fluctuating 'sanitary apartheid', seeking to separate populations designated as at risk of Covid-19 infection from those designated as Covid-free. While these logics are distinct, where states have conflated them, we have seen eruptive and mutating border violence. In a second more normative part the article seeks to rethink the demand for freedom of movement in the context of the pandemic, arguing that allowing migrants who today are illegalised to move in safe and legal ways is also the condition to implement sanitary measures to protect the health of migrants and sedentary populations alike. Adopting a mobility justice approach, the article also argues that the excessive mobility of the privileged through air travel that has been a major factor in spreading the virus and contributes to ecological destruction should be limited. Ultimately this article calls for re-thinking the politics of (im)mobility in the context of the pandemic as part of the process of transformation towards a more just and sustainable world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While situations of crisis are a cause of great distress for those affected, particularly the most vulnerable ones, they offer scholars unique opportunities to study people and society because such circumstances intensify existing processes, revealing what works well and where there are problems. The 2020 coronavirus outbreak was not any different. From a mobility studies perspective, one of the most striking things that occurred during the global pandemic were the changed patterns of who and what moved when, where, and how. Authorities across the planet (re-)classified the most common mobilities along 'essential' and 'non-essential' axes, the latter category temporarily being restricted or even forbidden. This article offers a critical assessment of such crisis regimes of (im)mobility, taking Belgium and its capital city Brussels as an illustrative case study. I reflect on the mobility implications of COVID-19 mitigation measures for citizens and others, highlighting how the condition of lockdown led to (sometimes unexpected) alterations in people's daily mobilities. The anthropological analysis shows that an exceptional situation, such as the one witnessed in 2020, clearly brings to the fore which types of (im)mobility are valued by various stakeholders in society, which ones are discursively framed as essential (mainly from a socio-economic perspective) and which ones are experienced as existential (contributing to people's general well-being). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the World Health Organization's (WHO) declared the Coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, the virus has invaded lives around the globe. The ongoing health, social and economic crisis that followed forced urban life, business, culture, community etc. into idle mode for weeks resulting from mandated immobility. What was once taken for granted as the essence of urban experience such as cultural activities, meeting friends, relatives and colleagues in public space or in professional encounters, disappeared overnight. Free movement became significantly restricted all over the world. It seemed that immobility, social and physical distancing, and isolation were the only antidote to the fast-moving virus. For many people, working from home while also schooling their children and providing social care at a distance, peak activity at maximum physical immobility became the "new normal." A culture emerged where rules and norms of mobilities previously taken for granted were re-negotiated and re-defined. Before the crisis and despite the negative ecological side effects, mobility has been positively connotated as a signifier for progress and success. Under the Corona regime mobility turned into a life-threatening risk. The theory of reflexive modernization, risk society and the mobilities paradigm are used to discuss these contemporary shifts and transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]