Brexit, viral borders and vaccine nationalism

By Michaela Benson (@michaelacbenson) and Nando Sigona (@nandosigona)

(Originally published in The Sociological Review)

Three weeks into 2021 and the end of the Brexit transition period, and not a day has passed where the borders haven’t made their presence felt in the news cycle. The coincidence of COVID and Brexit has produced a perfect storm, as public health concerns and necessary containment measures have become entangled with the emerging post-Brexit geopolitics, and often weaponised to score political points.

Closing the borders

A few days before Christmas 2020, the so-called ‘British’ variant of COVID-19 took the world by storm. Donald Trump’s ‘Chinese virus’ gained a new passport. Once again, the virus is nationalised and with it the ‘national’ scale is reaffirmed as the one where both the problem and its solutions were to be sought and found. Indeed, around the world the response to the pandemic has been largely framed…