UNU-CRIS working paper, 2021, 6: Covid-19 in the European Union and MERCOSUR: Border Management at Different Scales

Closing borders has always been a typical reaction to pandemics in the history of humanity, and the responses to Covid-19 mark no difference. Initiatives to limit the diffusion of the virus has put the closure of national borders under the spotlight worldwide. However, national scale offers a partial perspective, particularly within the case of regional integration processes, where several actors oversee, or contribute to the daily management of “internal” borders. The article offers an overv…

Closing borders has always been a typical reaction to pandemics in the history of humanity, and the responses to Covid-19 mark no difference. Initiatives to limit the diffusion of the virus has put the closure of national borders under the spotlight worldwide. However, national scale offers a partial perspective, particularly within the case of regional integration processes, where several actors oversee, or contribute to the daily management of “internal” borders. The article offers an overview of different scales of border management in response to Covid-19 pandemic in the European Union and MERCOSUR, providing a more comprehensive representation of national borders and their management, alongside a state of the art of the integration processes. Whereas in a national and supranational perspective the Covid-19 emergency can be read as a (further) blow to integration scenarios, the vitality of cross-border cooperation at the local scale allows for more optimistic expectations in both the analysed cases.