Tracking Pandemic Borderscapes: Chronicles of mobility and immobility

As states have shut down mobility world wide, refugees and transit migrants have been particularly immobilized, unable to pursue applications on resettlement or to seek for safe secondary migration journeys that could give them more dignified lives. At the same time, in the context of Covid-devastated economies, despite the fact that many states have shut down mobility and imposed “hard borders”, displacement has not abated. Indeed, many refugees and transit migrants have lately taken uncertain trips in the risky waters of the Mediterranean or in the Arizona desert. As of now, however, there is paucity of research that has generated knowledge on these Covid-related forms of displacement and stuckness. Digital research methods arise as a particularly strong entry point for filling in our knowledge gaps. Against this backdrop, this research project draws on textual and visual analysis of selected Twitter accounts to set up a digital archive on “pandemic borderscapes”.