Mobile Citizenship, States of Exception, and (non)Border Regimes in the Pandemic and post-Covid19 Cyprus

This study examined the impact of the emergency measures on community relations, fundamental rights, and mobility rights during the Covid19 pandemic in de facto divided Cyprus. It explored states of exception, as well as solidarity aiming to counter those restrictions. Internal and external borders were mobilised to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’, shaped by the pandemic policies and media discourses via a hygiene emergency with suspension of rights, hitting severely the most vulnerable, often migrants and asylum-seekers. The hostile and securitised climate was generated by the political elites and the media and was built on the ‘Cypriot states of exception’ and colonial laws by extending old and generating new bordering processes. An illiberal policy frame towards migrants and asylum-seekers was manifested in form of a state exception of immobility, which affects the relations between the two communities, the division of Cyprus, peace-keeping and peace-making. Contra this hostile environment and given the welfare state crisis, acts for citizenship have generated praxis-based solidarity. Via digital networking, we observed processes of reorganisation of activism. This is prefiguring a potential for reassembling socialities, paving ways for social imaginaries of a mobile citizenship transcending old and new divisions of Cyprus and the world.