Covid-19. Borders, world-making, and fear of others

This article investigates borders as fertile sites of human interaction. It examines how movement, collective memory, relationality and what I will call ‘being in limbo’ can facilitate studying the creative world-making potential that exists among humans who find themselves at borders, whether physical or notional, as in being based on imagination or ideas. I am particularly interested in exploring which relationships take place and can be anticipated at borders. The article uses the Covid-19 pandemic as context to investigate where and how notions of borders occurred during this time of crisis. It furthermore asks how borders facilitate humans extending themselves to(wards) each other and taking risks, yet thereby also juxtaposing forms of withdrawal and divisions that borders inevitably suggest. The period of the Covid-19 crisis provides a contemporary example through which to study heterogeneity and hybridity as they emerge from, and are shaped by, cultural, political, embodied, social and linguistic practices as well as every-day choreographies of border making, securing and overcoming. This article concludes that Covid-19 is an ‘intersectional virus.’ At this time, people engage in actions with each other that aim to change the intersectional oppressions that have been rendered visible through the crisis. In order to provide a global and historical reading of contemporary events, this article analyzes an example from 1991 in Europe that relates to border-crossing. The article uses etymology and introduces origins of keywords in order to facilitate an extended reading of these words beyond common usage.