Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Covid-19 riskscapes in Uganda and Malawi. Specifically, the analysis explores how communities constructed risk in relation to differential mobilities which emerged during lockdowns.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how populations across the African Great Lakes region construct riskscapes to understand the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Drawing on eleven months of remote fieldwork conducted in Uganda and Malawi, we show that the lens of mobility emerged as an important category of local analysis. As spatiality variegated lockdowns produced differential restrictions on movement, particular mobile bodies were understood as nodes of viral threat to be avoided. We complement the emergent literature which has emphasised the global racialisation of the Covid-19 pandemic, with insights into localised and often politicised notions of “othering” within diverse African societies. Our findings highlight the ways in which the relationship between viral risk and mobile bodies draws not just on grand geographies of continental demarcations, but also upon place-specific discriminations and inequalities. We argue that to look in depth at more localised renditions of risk, reveals otherwise neglected forms of discriminatory discourse and practice that remain out of view in the broader landscapes of pandemic geography. We conclude by relating our data on riskscapes to national approaches for testing Covid-19 cases. current approaches to testing and dissemination Covid-19 cases.