On the Forms of Vulnerability and Ungrievability in the Pandemic

Abstract

This contribution reviews and comments on recent scholarship on the
politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on how vulnerability was
constructed and studied. We reflect on the various meanings of
vulnerability and suggest political science should go beyond individualized
and identity-based approaches and see the pandemic conditions as shared
and embedded within the already existing social, political, and economic
structures. We also examine how our previously identified discursive frames
of science and security work in the context of the later pandemic stages
and the vaccination rollout and note how these frames continue to render
certain lives ungrievable. Our contribution is intended to add to the
growing interest in using the concepts of vulnerability, precariousness, and
precarity in studies of politics and international relations, as well as in
critical studies of public health and the coronavirus pandemic.