Mobile pastoralist geographies of care: nomadic relationalities between the global pandemic and environmental risks

Abstract

This article brings work on geographies of care into dialogue with critical agrarian studies and research on mobile pastoralism to explore pastoral mobility as a form of care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mongolia. We aim to understand the spatialization of care and the tension between immobility and mobility as both divergent and intersecting modes of securing human and animal life during the co-occurrence of the global pandemic and severe winter conditions (dzud). Our research demonstrates how pastoral mobility as a form of care and normative orientation dynamically interacts with state institutions and power dynamics on multiple scales.