Covid, re-racialisation of migrants and the ‘refugee crisis’

The chapter examines themajor sociopolitical transformation due to an ‘exogeneous’ factor of Covid-19 which has brought the celebrated ‘world on the move’ to a standstill. No one could imagine neither the scale, nor the depth of the panic and global state of emergency against what might be termed “miasmic deviants”. This has accentuated processes of exclusion, racialisation, marginalisation and expulsion of migrants, refugees and ‘the damned of the earth’. New borders and bordering processes generated, as old ones are invigorated. These dynamics have rekindled ‘old’ and ‘new’ forces in Europe and the globe, bringing about the collapse of consensus in politics and generating a ‘politics of hate’. Dissensus reigns and migration and asylum are at the heart of these processes. This chapter will primarily focus on these processes in the eastern Mediterranean.