Description
Since the declaration of COVID-19 pandemic, states have been invoking the need of exceptional measures to deal with exceptional circumstances, arguing that the pandemic poses an existential threat to their community.
Since January 2019, the securitisation of COVID-19 speech has been used as an argument and a tool to foster stronger measures against migrants, and it has been deepening populist and right-wing speeches in Europe and in the United States.
Initially by othering COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus” or the “Virus from China”, many world leaders tried to dissociate themselves in a move to politically blame and shame China.
The handling of global health intertwined with the fracturing international migration governance has raised the need to further investigate to what extent will the securitization of the pandemic will affect the migration agenda and how the declaration of human biosecurity emergency may deepen the idea of borders as security threat.
Using a securitisation theory lens, this paper seeks to understand how the biosecurity claim, such as the many times summoned argument of the need to “flatten the epidemic curve”, is being used to close borders and how it will ultimately impact on the international migration management.
