Paper short abstract:

In 2020 everyday life culture was fundamentally changed. As an effect of the corona crisis, new trans/national bordering practices were established. In this paper, the analysis is focused on the bordering practices in a twofold way: quarantine rules and self-isolation performances.

Paper long abstract:

Nation-state borders and personal body boundaries were an outstanding preoccupation in the pandemic year of 2020. All over the world, the everyday life culture of borders and boundaries was fundamentally re-arranged and negotiated in similar but different ways due to the spread of the corona virus. In this paper, attention is directed towards a specific two-sided example of how “glocal” everyday life culture changed and was reset in different patterns as a consequence of the corona crisis: on the one hand the emergence of a new form of quarantine/security practices on the nation-state borders, and on the other hand the establishment of self-isolation performances and embodied boundarywork inside/outside the contested borders. In my paper a theoretical question will be addressed regarding how the field of border/mobility studies (Donnan & Wilson, Rumford) can be combined with practice-orientated body theories (Foucault, Merleau-Ponty). Based on material which was collected during the pandemic year and which includes newspaper articles, websites, auto-ethnographic notes, etc, the paper will start on the border and, with the Swedish example in focus, analyze phenomena such as quarantine rules and quarantine hotels in-between nation-states.