Unstable body, fragile mobility: Digital media, Covid-19 and biometric borders between China and Africa

In the past two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted and reshaped human mobility as countries across the world implement control measures ranging from quarantines, lockdowns, travel restrictions, to border closures. Despite high social and economic costs, China continues to pursue a “zero-Covid” policy, showing no sign of lifting international travel restrictions in the short term. While this strategy allows the Chinese government to narrate a “success story” in combating the pandemic, it also risks isolating China from the rest of the world and compromising efforts to foster closer ties with strategic trader partners. Taking Africa for example, this continent has gained vital geopolitical importance long before the coronavirus outbreak when high-profile projects like the Belt and Road Initiative aim to challenge the US-led status quo by fostering exchanges between China and Africa. How do cross-border flows of people and goods look like in face of China’s strict border controls in the pandemic? What are the new dynamics, implications, and risks?

Historically, restricting human mobility to varying degrees has always been a major response to infectious diseases. What makes the Covid-19 pandemic stand out, however, is the widespread use of digital technologies in tracing and tracking Covid-19 and in collecting biometric data on a large scale through the employment of so-called “health codes” and “vaccine passports”. In such contexts, transnational travel is not only about crossing a physical border but also involves traversing a series of “biometric borders” (Amoore, 2006) that inscribe the boundaries of safe/dangerous, healthy/unhealthy, legitimate/illegal. In other words, when biometric technologies take a strong hold in the governmentality of mobility, the bodies of travellers become an important site of encoded boundaries that approve or deny access.

Paying attention to the use of biometric technologies in border management and disease control, this study aims to explore how cross-border mobility has been datafied and politicized between China and Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic. The primary research method used is in-depth interviews. Starting from November 2021, we have been conducting interviews with a wide range of people who have travelled between China and several African countries (e.g., Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, Cameroon) during the pandemic. These include employees of both Chinese state and private companies in Africa, Chinese medical workers in Africa, as well as African students studying in China. In addition, we also use document analysis to collect complementary data such as China’s policy documents and news coverage.

Practically, this study reveals the tensions between “unstable body” and “fragile mobility” when crossing the biometric borders, shedding new light on the China-Africa engagement at both people-to-people and geopolitical levels. Theoretically, this study will contribute to our understanding of how bio–techno–disciplinary techniques are reshaping the spatial and temporal existence of human bodies, which may contain ambivalent, antagonistic, and contestable moments.