Certifying Health. The Unequal Legal Geographies of COVID-19 Certificates

European Journal of Risk Regulation, June 2021

16 Pages Posted: 23 Jun 2021

See all articles by Alberto Alemanno

Alberto Alemanno

HEC Paris

Luiza Bialasiewicz

Amsterdam Centre for European Studies

Date Written: June 17, 2021

Abstract

This article discusses some of the challenges posed by the introduction of COVID-19 certificates as a privileged tool to open up mobility and access in order to restore a semblance of normality to social life. While at present there is no international consensus neither on how – or why – such certificates should be used, nor on how they should be designed and applied, a growing number of countries have already introduced COVID-19 certificates in one form or another. Yet the scientific community as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO) have expressed caution, noting that such certificates might disproportionately discriminate against people on the basis of race, religion and socioeconomic background, as well as on the basis of age due to the sequencing of the vaccine rollout. Indeed, while the new COVID-19 certificates may appear to promise a magical solution to freeing global mobility and re-opening economies, they actually risk creating new borders and new forms of inequality through an exclusionary sorting and profiling mechanism that delimits ‘safe’ from ‘unsafe’ bodies, based on differential access to ‘immuno-privilege’ – but also differential forms of ‘bio-securitization’. They also provide an illusion of pandemic safety – assuring citizens that through the ‘fetish’ of the certificate ‘safe travel’ could magically be re-instated. Securing territories and populations has always been, in Foucauldian terms, a matter of “making a division between good and bad circulation and maximizing the good circulation by diminishing the bad”. We can therefore reasonably expect growing contestation, including before courts, around COVID-19 certificates in their different national and international iterations, as their inherently discriminatory nature, and other unintended consequences such as those stemming from the use of persuasive – as opposed to the more traditional coercive – governmental power, begin to unfold in their performative trajectory.

Keywords: COVID-19, Health, COVID pass, COVID certificates, Health law, Risk Regulation, Coronavirus, Suppression, Precautionary principle, Emergency Regulation, European Governance, Free Movement, Schengen, passports

JEL Classification: K3, K32, K33

Suggested Citation

Alemanno, Alberto and Bialasiewicz, Luiza, Certifying Health. The Unequal Legal Geographies of COVID-19 Certificates (June 17, 2021). European Journal of Risk Regulation, June 2021 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3869090 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3869090

Alberto Alemanno (Contact Author)

HEC Paris ( email )

1 Rue de la libération
JOUY EN JOSAS, 78351
France

HOME PAGE: http://www.albertoalemanno.eu

Luiza Bialasiewicz

Amsterdam Centre for European Studies ( email )

P.O. Box 15718
Amsterdam, 1001 NE
Netherlands

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