Global pandemic, transnational communities and local public policy

In modern societies, including democracies, substantial gap exists between the public and civic-private spheres[i]. In much more aggravated form, such cleavages remain integral to the daily lives of transnational communities (ethnic groups with persistent transnational ties)[ii]. These are communities often excluded from positions of influence at particularly public institutions. In addition, they often endure recurring discursive public assaults leading to internal and external social and political enclosures with disempowering tendencies. At the same time, they formally subordinate to considerably distant bureaucratic public institutions.

Paradoxically, though such binary relationships prevail, the dynamics within and around authority-community encounters and connections generates a dialectical relationship in which involved actors separately and collectively contribute to the formation of alternative social and political understandings and even collaborations.

The recent media debates and interactions, in connection with a rather controversial covid-19 prevention case in the Danish city of Aarhus, illustrate the potentiality of revaluating the often static pregiven conceptions of the relationship between public authorities and transnational communities.