TY - JOUR
AU - Birdsall, Andrea
AU - Sanders, Rebecca
PY - 2022
DA - February
TI - Opportunistic oppression: U.S. migration restrictions and public health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic
JO - The International Journal of Human Rights
EP - 829
VL - 27
IS - 5
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2022.2044314
AB - As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world in Spring 2020, the Trump administration invoked war against the coronavirus to severely restrict admission of migrants and asylum seekers into the United States. At the same time, it declined to enact national measures to control viral community spread and sharply criticised public health policies. We analyse this notable inconsistency as a case of opportunistic oppression whereby policymakers take advantage of a crisis to pursue pre-existing, and often unrelated, policy preferences. We identify how the securitisation of health and the crisis-enabled politics of enmity allowed the Trump administration to cynically erode migrant human rights protections while simultaneously failing to contain the pandemic. Opportunistic oppression represents an attractive strategy for states facing real and imagined emergencies to pursue political agendas that are not necessarily part of a coherent and effective response to the crisis at hand.
PB - Taylor and Francis
UR - https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/d454e74f-0984-45f4-81c3-c72a295d47f1
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
ER