“There are no guarantees”: when security is restricted to bonds of trust

Abstract

This article aims to present, based on comparative research conducted from February to July 2020 in Paris (France), and from August to October of the same year in São Paulo (Brazil) among Syrian refugees and forced migrants, how the uncertainty brought about the COVID-19 pandemic has destabilized current political and social relations, impacting global economies and markets characterized by the interdependence of their supply chains. And, the push for accountability falls primarily on minority populations, further deepening the inequality caused by the spread of false or dubious news as a mechanism for fueling moral panic (Hirst; Maciel, 2022) anchored to the figure of the imaginary enemy, as expressed in speeches by Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Emmanuel Macron, broadcast on national television.

In this context, the methodological convention of what is (or was) considered established by sociology redefines the rules of the game by imposing dilemmas that had not been widely accepted as solutions until then. Among these is the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Diminescu; Nicolosi, 2019) within the framework of intersectionality as an analytical lens throughout the migration cycle and as an expression of the persistence of inequalities in access to territories, whether physical or digital. In the same way that it delved deeper into the amalgam of (re)arrangements devised by the actors—considered peripheral—to (re)establish their axes of articulation (Merino, 2020; Telles, 2020) during the state-imposed—whether mandated or recommended—social isolation that suggested the immobility of their bodies, but not of their obligations.