Exploring the future of mobility in a post-covid world

11/05/2020 | Cologne Mobility

The Global South Studies Center (GSSC) of the University of Cologne is doing a web-talk series about the future of mobility in a post-covid world. How does the Virus change our understanding of mobility, both physical and digital?

Corona Conversations is based on three assumptions: that there is a complicated yet crucial link between mobility and the contagion, that the world is henceforth divided into pre-Covid, Covid and post-Covid times, and that post-Covid time entails post-Covid realities likely to reshape human interactions both physical and digital – hence in need of immediate explorations. Consequently, this series of talks explores how the Covid and post-Covid realities are going to condition the future of migration, mobility and transnationalism.

The need for a conversation on Covid’s impact on mobility stems from the unparalleled emphasis on the restrictions that governments across the world have put on human mobility in the wake of the contagion. It appears to be a quick assumption that quarantines and lock downs are the most effective control mechanisms to contain the virus. Popular media has been equally quick to defend this assumption citing from the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. Standing more than a hundred years later, one is forced to wonder if we need similar control mechanisms to address Covid19 as we did for the Spanish Flu. There is no denying the fact that both frequency and extent of mobility have increased many times today compared to a century back. From that viewpoint, with global shut down of flights, trains and roadways, on month’s end, resulting in restricted, disrupted and prohibited mobility of humans in a hyper-socialised and highly mobilized world, one ought to ask: what are the human(e) costs of restricted mobility as control mechanism of Covid? How does Covid19 impact future migration, mobility and transnationality trends? Does Covid fundamentally change the pattern of future mobility forever? How does one negotiate between the need to migrate and the need to protect against the contagion?

The Corona Conversations series is moderated by Dr. Amrita Datta, Institute of Geography at the University of Cologne

 

Registration:

Please register at gssc-webinar@uni-koeln.de

The Web Talk series will be hold on following dates:

27th October

09th November

27th November

09th December

11th January

27th January

10th February

For the details on times of individual talks, please visit the website

https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/veranstaltungen/webinare/2020-corona-conversation-mobility-and-migration

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