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Exploring the future of mobility in a post-Covid world

Web Talk Series, starting October 27, 2020

Corona Conversations is based on three assumptions: that there is a complicated yet crucial link between mobility and the contagion, that the world is henceforth divided into pre-Covid, Covid and post-Covid times, and that post-Covid time entails post-Covid realities likely to reshape human interactions both physical and digital - hence in need of immediate explorations. Consequently, in this series we explore how the Covid and post-Covid realities are going to condition the future of migration, mobility and transnationalism.

The need for a conversation on Covid’s impact on mobility stems from the unparalleled emphasis on the restrictions that governments across the world have put on human mobility in the wake of the contagion. It appears to be a quick assumption that that quarantines and lock downs are the most effective control mechanisms to contain the virus. Popular media has been equally quick to defend this assumption citing from the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. Standing more than a hundred year later, one is forced to wonder if we need similar control mechanisms to address Covid 19 as we did for the Spanish Flu. There is no denying the fact that both frequency and extent of mobility have increased manifold times today than it was a century back. From that standpoint, with global shut down of flights, trains and roadways, on month’s end, resulting in restricted, disrupted and prohibited mobility of humans in a hyper-socialised and highly mobilized world, one ought to ask – what are the human(e) costs of restricted mobility as control mechanism of Covid? How does Covid 19 impact the future migration, mobility and transnationality trends? Does Covid fundamentally change the pattern of future mobility forever? How does one negotiate between the need to migrate and the need to protect against the contagion?

Dates of events:

         (Times are UTC+1/ Berlin, please note your local time zone)

 

Moderation:

Amrita Datta

Venue:

Web Talk Series

Registration:

Please register at:

gssc-webinar@uni-koeln.de