COVID-19, legal geography and spatial justice: exploring multifaceted borders

Keywords: spatial justice; border; motion; legal geography; COVID-19
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Wednesday
Session Start / End Time: 4/7/2021 08:00 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/7/2021 09:15 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 15

Abstract

As the pandemic evolves within societies, scholars are examining the agency of non-human actors on the conceptualisation of borders. At the same time, nation-states are invoking their regulatory powers to define the ‘right’ equilibrium between protecting public health and maintaining economic activity. In the course of this, individuals’ movements in space are periodically redefined. In 2020, for many EU nationals, the limits to their movements went from being the outer edges of the EEA, to ‘essential travel’, and then to the household doorstep. This contribution uses legal geography and spatial justice to analyse how the state uses the law to regulate relations in space, and in so doing, aims to attain a ‘just’ outcome (i.e. spatial justice). How just is the law used to define the border when it is constantly renegotiated? Using, in particular, the concept of lawscape (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2010 and 2015), we investigate how law and space constantly negotiate with one another – and struggle with one another – as movement transcends them. In a continuation of Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’ thought, which conceptualises spatial justice as the movement of ‘withdrawal’ out of this conflict, we explore several manifestations of the border in space and the questions they pose in terms of spatial justice.