Migration Letters November 2022 Volume: 19, No: 6, pp. 739 – 749 ISSN: 1741-8984 (Print) ISSN: 1741-8992 (Online) journals.tplondon.com/ml Migration Letters All rights reserved @ 2004-2022 Transnational Press London Received: 3 March 2022 Accepted: 16 September 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v19i6.2225 The ‘inconfinables’ or the creation of ‘superfluous lives’ in times of Crisis Laura Odasso 1 and Elisa Fornalé 2 Abstract Gender, class, ethnicity and generation played a determining role in exposure to the COVID-19 virus and in access to care. This translated into differences in communicability, morbidity and mortality. Migrants and ethnic minorities have been over-represented among serious cases, just as they are often also disproportionately affected during natural disasters and crises. We focus on a segment of vulnerable population defined by the French term ‘inconfinables’. Related to the term ‘confinement’, used in France to mean lockdown, the ‘inconfinables’ are those individuals that, due to personal, socio- economic and administrative factors, may not respect the governmental measures proposed to contain the spread of the pandemic. The article presents an comparative analysis of different approaches implemented at the domestic level (in France and Italy) to gain original insights into the practice of lockdown regimes. These insights are used to explore the nexus between ethnic social inequalities, governmental capacity to ensure effective protection of the whole population and human rights. Keywords: Vulnerability; Borders; COVID-19 lockdown; Italy; France Introduction By spring 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, eighty-four governments had implemented a ‘lockdown regime’, which profoundly affected the exercise of individual liberties (Sirkeci and Yüceşahin, 2020). The regime also posed unprecedented and multidimensional challenges to legal systems, because the situation gave rise to a ‘shared global vulnerability’ that put legal certainty under strain. It became evident that gender, ethnic origin, and administrative status played a crucial role in the very exposure to the virus and access to treatment. This had highly variable consequences not only in terms of transmission and mortality, but also precariousness. Against this background, drawing on the effects of the pandemic on a segment of vulnerable population that we will name the ‘inconfinables’, our contribution proposes a reflection on the unequal institutional treatments of some individuals during crises. Taking inspiration from the term ‘confinement’ used in France to identify the lockdown regime, the term ‘inconfinables’ allows us to reflect on the delimitation of personal and social spaces. It also enables us to examine boundaries between individuals and groups of individuals who, while living on the same state 1 Dr. Laura Odasso, Researcher, Collège de France « Chaire Migrations et Sociétés » & French Institute on Migrations Fellow, Paris, France. Email: laura.odasso@college-de-france.fr. The introduction, the two sections on state of the art and the conclusion are the outcome of a common reflection and elaboration by both the authors. The section on France was written by Laura Odasso and the section on Italy by Elisa Fornalé. 2 SNSF Professor Elisa Fornalé, World Trade Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. Email: elisa.fornale@wti.org. Acknowledgement: Many thanks are due to Tamara Koehler, a Research Assistant at the World Trade Institute, for her invaluable research support and to Susan Kaplan for editorial assistance. Professor Fornalé acknowledges the support of the SNSF grant no. PP00P1_194808 All rights reserved © 2022 Transnational Press London Author Copy - Not for Distribution