Does COVID-19 Spell the End of Globalisation?

The year of social distancing, which has seen travel interrupted and the establishment of virtual forms of meeting, has fundamentally shaken confidence in practices and infrastructures of migration and transport that were believed to be safe. This has also laid bare the unequal consequences that interruptions in mobility have in different regions of the world and social groups. For mobility researchers, this allows a new perspective on the forms and limits of movement and travel for different groups of people. In its fifth annual conference from 7 to 10 October, the Leipzig University Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1199, Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition, will address the challenges this poses for mobility research in the social sciences and humanities. The online conference will bring together scholars from Germany, Austria, Finland, the United Kingdom, the US and Canada to discuss the question of how new spaces are created by different forms and practices of mobility, and which stakeholders shape them. For Dr Steffi Marung, who devised the conference together with Professor Matthias Middell, this year makes it particularly clear that globalisation is not an abstract power. "Globalisation processes are the result of the many things that people, companies or organisations do to hold their own in a closely interwoven world,' she said.