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Free movement and European welfare states: why child benefits for EU workers should not be exportable
Introduction The right to free movement of workers is one of the fundamental pillars of the European Union (EU). This notwithstanding, the conditions under which it occurs have been subject to considerable political debates...
Introduction
Every government in the world introduced restrictions to human mobility – that is, the movement of persons across and within state borders – in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While such restrictions thus constituted a global phenomenon, they were by no means globally uniform. Rather, they varied significantly between and within states, as well as over time. For instance, while the majority of countries closed their external borders to most travellers, a small minority – among them Ireland, Mexico, and the United Kingdom (UK) – opted to rely on less drastic travel restrictions. The border closures were themselves highly variable, with some lasting only a few months (e.g., in Brazil) and others the best part of a year (e.g., in South Africa). During the ‘closures’, many states continued to grant entry to certain categories of travellers, often including permanent residents, diplomats, and transport personnel, while others (e.g., Australia and Morocco) even barred entry to their own citizens. As the pandemic has worn on, states have increasingly moved away from border closures to travel restrictions based on medical documentation, such as negative COVID-19 tests and vaccine certificates. The nature, scope, and duration of ‘internal’ mobility restrictions, such as lockdowns, curfews, and regional boundary closures, have likewise varied considerably across the world.
The global scale and variation of COVID-19 mobility restrictions open new avenues for social scientific inquiry. Early studies of the restrictions focused on their epidemiological effects (e.g., Chinazzi et al. 2020; Lee and Lee 2020; Wells et al. 2020; Koopmans 2020) and their impact on patterns of human movement (Iacus et al. 2020; Martin and Bergmann 2021; Pepe et al. 2020; Santamaria et al. 2020). By contrast, this research note highlights the significance of global variation in the restrictions as such and, in particular, its implications for the ‘global mobility regime’ – that is, the legal and policy frameworks producing unequal opportunities to travel across and within state borders (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013; Koslowski 2011). From this perspective, the restrictions not only impact upon for the movement of persons across and 3 within state borders (mobility), but also the movement of persons away from their usual place of residence (migration) and the legal relationship between persons and states as recognised under international law (citizenship).
Research conducted in the context of previous pandemics generated five key insights concerning mobility restrictions. First, during pandemics, countries limit human movement not only in response to changing global epidemiology but also according to other criteria, including diplomatic and economic considerations (Abeysinghe 2016; Amon 2008; Markel and Stern 2004; Siewe et al. 2020). Second, during pandemics different communities tend to use broadly similar measures to curtail human mobility (Bier 2020; Clemens and Ginn 2020; Tognotti 2003). Third, travel restrictions introduced during pandemics cause significant economic disruption to affected communities (Cetron and Landwirth 2005; Colizza et al. 2007; Epstein et al. 2006; Schabas 2006). Fourth, restrictions have often been accompanied by exceptions for specific groups based on their legal or professional status (Vanderslott and Marks 2021). Finally, restrictions sometimes outlasted the emergency they were meant to contain, creating new categories of desirable and undesirable travellers (Rushton 2021).
These earlier findings suggest that conducting research on the COVID-19 travel restrictions can significantly advance our understanding of mobility, migration, and citizenship governance during and after the pandemic. This research note is intended as a catalyst for such efforts. In the next section, we present a survey of seven new datasets capturing various aspects of the regulation of human movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then outline five possible research avenues prompted by these data, drawing inspiration from the earlier insights outlined above.