We have never been so bounded: Pandemic, territoriality, and mobility

Abstract

In this intervention, I examine the bordering dynamics in the nomosphere configured by the global pandemic crisis and their territorial consequences, drawing on an autoethnography of the impact of bordering on everyday life and academic practices. On the one hand, I rely on my observation of Switzerland, and Europe in general, to discuss the bodily and everyday experiences with borders at different scales; on the other, as a British National (Overseas) passport holder in an attempt to get access to Taiwan for doing fieldwork, I document the difficulties in dealing with the border control, showing how the influence of geopolitics and contested identities on the research praxis is complicated by bordering during the pandemic. These legal geographies of territoriality demonstrate that borders are not only constantly becoming and fluid, but also more discursively present and materially visible during the pandemic than other times. The work of bordering, I argue, produces an uneven geography which deserves our attention.