COVID-19 and the affective politics of congestion: an exploration of population density debates in Australia

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the post-COVID-19 debates over the level of migration to Australia to understand how the rhetoric of ‘affective congestion’ which is used for population management has changed. On the one hand, it demonstrates that the concerns of white bodies regarding congestion are taken more seriously by the political and media mainstream than those of new migrants. On the other, it shows that COVID-19 is bringing the injustice of this approach to light, as seen in the case of the harsh lockdown imposed on public housing estates in Melbourne. Finally, it argues for population density planning that uses the ‘mobility justice’ framework and makes a case for developing affective capacities in addition to building infrastructure.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• congestion
• migration
• population
• COVID-19
• mobility justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Further information

This Special Issue article has been comprehensively reviewed by the Special Issue editors, Associate Professor Ted Striphas and Professor John Nguyet Erni.

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Notes on contributors

Sukhmani Khorana

Sukhmani Khorana is a Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow at the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Previously, she was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Academic Program Leader at the University of Wollongong. Sukhmani has published extensively on diasporic cultures, multi-platform refugee narratives, and the politics of empathy. She is the author of The Tastes and Politics of Inter-Cultural Food in Australia (RLI).