Passport to neoliberal normality? A critical exploration of COVID-19 vaccine passports.

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic governments across the world including in France, Canada, Lithuania, Austria, Italy, and Ireland imposed ‘vaccine passports’ on the premise that they would curtail transmission of the virus, reduce COVID-19 related mortalities, and enable society to return to neoliberal normality. However, vaccine passports raise several important and troubling issues that have not been given sufficient attention within the social sciences. Therefore, this article offers a critique of vaccine passports. It is structured into three key themes: (a) scientifically and ethically problematic, (b) the death of the social and the ‘Other’, and (c) digital surveillance and freedom. The article begins by exploring how vaccine passports make little scientific sense and further entrench some unvaccinated peoples’ sense of political and medical mistrust. It then discusses how they amplify social divisions, creating the unvaccinated Other in society and intensifying the neoliberal shift towards a post-social, contactless world. The paper closes with an outline of how vaccine passports were cast as enabling a return to neoliberal normality and freedom, hinging upon an assumption of harmlessness while cementing the negative ideology of capitalist realism.

COVID-19 and organized crime: an introduction to the special issue

“…In research on the pandemic, it has been suggested that COVID-19 represented another example of Klein's (2007) 'shock doctrine' or Mirowski's (2013) belief that capitalism never wastes an opportunity created by a serious crisis (Briggs et al 2021b). Where 9/11 created the conditions for the expansion of digital surveillance in the name of security and the threat of terrorism (Zuboff 2019), the pandemic created conditions whereby a biomedical security model can use digital surveillance to protect public health (Telford et al 2022). As political-economic shifts take place, criminal groups adapt to new circumstances and exploit emerging situations.…”

“…As political-economic shifts take place, criminal groups adapt to new circumstances and exploit emerging situations. Aside from the various critiques and concerns associated with digital certification and social exclusion (see Telford et al 2022;Kheriaty 2022), this represents a new criminal market ready for exploitation by actors willing to circumvent legal strictures and provide counterfeit digital certificates. In this special issue, Andrew Childs outlines the emergence of fake vaccine passports in Australia as the injunction for digital certification meets with dissatisfaction and concern over rights and freedoms.…”