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Open Borders and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

David Owen
David Owen*
Affiliation:
University of Southampton, UK
*
E-mail: dowen@soton.ac.uk
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Abstract

This paper considers the implications of COVID for open borders. It notes that while COVID concerns do not directly challenge arguments for open borders, the pandemic has revealed two more general phenomena that are salient for such arguments. The first concerns the increasing unmooring of legal borders from physical spaces and the interaction of surveillance and identification technologies with this process. The second addresses the issue of interdependency and the potentially negative implications of open borders if not underpinned by a global basic structure.

Keywords

borderscoronavirusCOVIDdemocracyglobalopen society

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