Governmentality Versus Community: The Impact of the COVID Lockdowns.

The COVID lockdowns were characterised by new forms of governmentality as lives were disrupted and controlled through the vertical transmission of biopolitics by the state. The paper considers how this was experienced by academics in 11 different countries through analysis of diaries written during the first lockdown. The paper asks if communities can offer an alternative to governmentality by looking at three levels: the national, the neighbourhood and the personal.

COVID-19 and policies for care homes in the first wave of the pandemic in European welfare states: Too little, too late?

This article examines COVID-19 and residential care for older people during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, comparing a range of countries - Denmark, England, Germany, Italy and Spain - to identify the policy approaches taken to the virus in care homes and set these in institutional and policy context. Pandemic policies towards care homes are compared in terms of lockdown, testing and the supply of personal protective equipment. The comparative analysis shows a clear cross-national clustering: Denmark and Germany group together by virtue of the proactive approach adopted, whereas England, Italy and Spain had major weaknesses resulting in delayed and generally inadequate responses.