From 26 to 28 June 2024, a workshop funded by the DFG on "Postpandemic Remnants: Long-term Covid-19 Impacts on Migration/Mobility in the Global South" took place at the ABI in Freiburg with 20 participants from various social science disciplines. The workshop was organised and conducted by the DFG Network: Migration and Imm/mobility in the Global South in Times of a Pandemic.
As a kick-off to this last of four workshops, Dr Gunjan Sondhi from The Open University (UK) gave a public keynote speech at the University of Freiburg. In the lecture entitled "Repairing Infrastructures of (Im)Mobility - Lessons from the Covid-19 Crisis", Dr Sondhi addressed the question of the extent to which crises, which should be seen as moments rather than events, reveal internal contradictions in society and the underlying system. The focus here was on the infrastructure failure concerning the (im)mobility of international students and other vulnerable migrants. Although these migrants have always faced weak infrastructures, the pandemic has exacerbated the intensity of this experience of spatial and temporal insecurity. Although the pandemic as an active moment of crisis is over, the repair work started on these migrant infrastructures is not yet sufficient.
The second day of the workshop was initially dedicated to analysing the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on migration and mobility in the Global South. The inputs were based on a research project Franzisca Zanker (ABI) coordinated in 2021. Joyce Takaindisa from the University of Witwatersrand focussed in her presentation on exemptions granted to Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa during the pandemic. She focussed on the post-pandemic interplay between xenophobia and constantly changing political migration regulations.
Luisa Gabriela Morales Vega from the Autonomous University of Mexico State presented her research on Mexico's national migration controls in the wake of the post-pandemic. She showed that the tightened state migration controls in Mexico are a remnant of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The participants then split into smaller groups and went on an interactive walk to discuss their own experiences and observations on the after-effects of the pandemic on migration in the countries they are researching. This walk was the prelude to a writing workshop in which the participants prepared short texts for a joint publication to be published following this workshop.
The last day of the workshop gave the participants another opportunity to work on their texts and exchange ideas. Finally, the next steps for the network group and other possible publications were discussed in plenary and invitations to various academic conferences were extended.