Mobility Regimes of Pandemic Preparedness and Response (MoREPPaR): The Case of Covid-19 - Vorbereitungsmittel

The Covid - 19 pandemic dramatically shows how the emergence and global proliferation of pathogens are closely interrelated with different types of human and nonhuman mobilities. This project argues that the individual and collective costs of immobilization - and the privileges of mobility - are distributed unevenly within and across countries. It approaches these disparities by examining pandemic preparedness and response as a mobility regime in which (im-)mobilities are governed through complex sets of actors, networks, technologies, and scientific expertise. This project will explore these mobility regimes through an ethnographic study of the diversity of lived experiences of various instances of (im-)mobilization in a globalized world. The research will focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa (SA), Germany (G), and South Korea (SK) to explore how mobility regimes have emerged historically at these research sites, and how Covid-19 shapes new mobility regimes by enforcing immobilities - and granting movement - over different phases of the pandemic. These case studies offer unique insights into countries with (DRC, SA, SK) and without (G) previous experience with recent epidemic outbreaks, and represent a broad range of low-, middle- and high-income countries in the Global South and Global North. This project aims to show how the comparative analysis of mobility regimes can improve pandemic preparedness by reflecting on the assumptions and concepts defining preparedness as the protection of populations in the frame of the nation-state. This reflexivity is crucial to capture the diversity of (im-)mobilities that characterize human wellbeing in an interconnected world and counter the growing tendency to cast preparedness as the protection of national interests.