Research Information System
International Academic Conference, The Post-Covid-19 World:Old and New Responses to Uncertainties and Challenges , Ohrid, Macedonia, 2 - 04 September 2021, (Unpublished)
This study aims to explore the EU’s responses to
Covid-19 pandemic within the field of migration and border management.
Increasing tendency of the EU member states towards deploying surveillance
technologies at the management of compelling policy areas such as border
security and migration is now showing itself in the EU’ responses to Covid-19
pandemic. For the past two decades, The EU member states have increasingly
adopted digital surveillance technologies such as artificial intelligence,
biometric data, fingerprinting and facial recognition to combat new challenges
of 21st century; namely, refugee crisis, transnational terrorism and crime.
Today similar tools such as digital health passports are being discussed to be
used to combat new global challenges like Covid-19 pandemic, having similar
results: increasing discrimination among people and producing new borders or
walls for people who want to travel or seek asylum in Europe. While digital
health surveillance may serve as impetus for further vaccination and mitigate
the impact of pandemic, it also raises ethical concerns in terms of
antidiscrimination, right to privacy and travel. The preliminary findings of
the study suggest that the way the EU deals with global pandemic in the field
of migration and border management is likely to have lingering repercussions in
these contested EU policy areas such as producing new EU borders and serious
challenges to human rights and normative international identity of the EU.
Key words: Health surveillance, global pandemic,
border management, EU migration policy, normative identity.