Search

In this paper, we explore what the travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic reveal about the changing geographies of mobilities and the making of homo sacer, the latter constituted through differentiated control of mobilities. Implemented to protect U.S. public health, travel restrictions imposed on travelers from Mainland China during the early days of the pandemic exemplify how sovereign power that declares a state of emergency and creates bare life can be readily applied to groups of people who previously had privileged access to global mobility. In this sense, bare life does not refer to fixed and disadvantaged social categories but is rather contingently and contextually constituted, through the works of hybrid sovereign regimes. At the same time, however, these travelers are not reduced to a state of zero-agency but reside within a liminal space between soft and hard cosmopolitanisms, as they can still deploy agency and cosmopolitan capital to achieve certain degrees of mobility. By examining how Chinese travelers navigated various travel restrictions and the constantly changing policies to travel to the U.S., this paper explores new spaces of exception and forms of bare life, and argues that homo sacer is dynamically, relationally and recursively constructed, both through apparatus of control and the agency of travelers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluated whether the citizens are satisfied with outcomes and performance of lockdown initiatives in defending against COVID-19. We statistical analyzed participants' characteristics and used a logit regression to analyze the factors associated with their experience and satisfaction with the lockdown initiative. According to our results, the issues of information disclosure, reasonable resource arrangements, and timely governmental responses significantly influenced the experiences of citizens during the lockdown period. The findings can guide policy makers regarding implementing more progressive initiatives to limit the spread of COVID-19 and facilitate the use of emergency measures for the sake of public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]