Migration and Pandemics : Spaces of Solidarity and Spaces of Exception

This open access book discusses the socio-political context of the COVID-19 crisis and questions the management of the pandemic emergency with special reference to how this affected the governance of migration and asylum. The book offers critical insights on the impact of the pandemic on migrant workers in different world regions including North America, Europe and Asia.

The book addresses several categories of migrants including medical staff, farm labourers, construction workers, care and domestic workers and international students. It looks at border closures for non-citizens, disruption for temporary migrants as well as at special arrangements made for essential (migrant) workers such as doctors or nurses as well as farmworkers, ‘shipped’ to destination with special flights to make sure emergency wards are staffed, and harvests are picked up and the food processing chain continues to function.

The book illustrates how the pandemic forces us to rethink notions like membership, citizenship, belonging, but also solidarity, human rights, community, essential services or ‘essential’ workers alongside an intersectional perspective including ethnicity, gender and race.

Anna Triandafyllidou holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada as of 1st August 2019. She was previously Robert Schuman Chair at the Global Governance Program of the European University Institute, Italy (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 2012-2019) where she directed the Cultural Pluralism Research Area.  She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Chair of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee, and member of the IMISCOE Board of Directors. She has been Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges between 2002 and 2018. She has held research and teaching positions in Italy, Belgium, the UK, the US, and Greece before moving to Canada.

Anna’s recent books include: Routledge Handbook on the Governance of Religious Diversity (co-ed. with T. Magazzini, 2020); Migrants with Irregular Status in Europe (IMISCOE, co-ed. with S. Spencer, 2020); Migration and Globalisation Handbook (ed., 2018); Multicultural Governance in a Mobile World (ed., 2018). She is the author of Rethinking Migration and Return in Southeastern Europe (with E. Gemi, 2021), What is Europe? (with R. Gropas, 2015), Migrant Smuggling. Irregular Migration from Asia and Africa to Europe (with T. Maroukis, 2012), and Immigrants and National Identity in Europe (2001).