The Jurisprudence Lecture, delivered by Ayelet Shachar, challenges the established dichotomy between open and closed borders, showing that one of the most remarkable developments of recent years is that borders are simultaneously both more open and more closed. Membership boundaries are not fixed or static. Instead, they expand or shrink, selectively and strategically, depending on the target populations they encounter.

In recent years, surveillance technologies have increasingly been deployed to monitor, control, and curtail the movement of people. The pandemic is accelerating this trend. While controlling the spread of Covid-19 is of paramount importance, a global regime of technologically enabled exclusion underpinned by a discourse of contagion is emerging. Even in a crisis, a debate over the future of mobility and technological surveillance is critical.

In a new article published in the UNESCO Courier, Prof Ayelet Shachar warns that the COVID-19 pandemic accentuated the trends…

The shifting border: Legal cartographies of migration and mobility