‘Stay home’: emergency, (im)mobility, and the liberal subject

Understanding who the European liberal subject is during emergency situations As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, exceptional measures to hinder the spread of this infectious disease have been and continue to be imposed in countries around the world.

The EU-funded MOBILISE project aims at investigating how these emergency measures have impacted on concepts of citizenship, freedom and civic engagement, with a focus on resistance practice against forced immobility.

To achieve this goal, the project will address important questions, such as what defines a good citizen during an emergency, and the characteristics that define a responsible citizen.

The outcome of the project will contribute to a better understanding of the transformation that European citizens have undergone during the pandemic.

Objective "The MOBILISE project aims to critically investigate the COVID-19 emergency through the prism of (im)mobility and citizenship by scrutinising EU citizens’ actions, reactions and inaction.

By scrutinising acts of compliance, resistance and contentious politics in Europe, this project will critically investigate not so much emerging disciplining and policing practices but who the European liberal-subject-during-emergency is.

By scrutinising the level of (non-)conformity as well as the reasons for it, it will be possible to map not only how common EU citizens have experienced, and are still experiencing, the crisis, but most importantly, what kinds of subjects/citizens have emerged out of it. Who is the ‘citizen of emergency’?

Or perhaps even better: what defines a good citizen during an emergency? Is it freedom? Is it democratic participation? Or is it responsibility? What does it mean to act as a responsible citizen? To what extent are the protests against and during the lockdown irresponsible acts? Which modalities of action make a citizen an irresponsible citizen?

Is it the very act of contravening restrictions? Is it the non-compliance with health norms?

In other words, should recent protests be investigated through the prism of citizenship and freedom, as traditionally done? Or should protests-during-emergencies be investigated through a different prism? These are some of the key questions that the MOBILISE project will investigate.

By investigating citizen protests during and against governmental lockdowns, in Italy and in France, the MOBILISE project will uncover not only the modalities through which EU citizens are making their voices heard, but also the extent to which ""a new push for European democracy” has emerged despite the many mobility restrictions.