Viewpoint by Robin Cohen*
OXFORD (IDN) – The coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the salience of class to the spread, containment and impact of infectious diseases. The virus hitches a ride on us, the humans who act simultaneously as its hosts and victims. Human mobility and immobility – who can and can't move and why – is therefore crucial to understanding the virus. And these issues of mobility have significant class dimensions.
Some researchers have argued in recent years that we are living through an "age of migration" characterised by international movements of people. Yet the coronavirus crisis also shows this is an age of involuntary immobility for many people around the world.