Crisis politics of dehumanisation during COVID-19: A framework for mapping the social processes through which dehumanisation undermines human dignity
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178247 |
| Author | Salvador Santino F. Regilme |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Special Section: The Global Politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178247
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(3) 555 –573
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481231178247
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Crisis politics of
dehumanisation during
COVID-19: A framework for
mapping the social processes
through which dehumanisation
undermines human dignity
Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr
Abstract
The COVID-19 global pandemic is understood to be a multidimensional crisis, and yet
undertheorised is how it reinforced the politics of dehumanisation. This article proposes an
original framework that explains how dehumanisation undermines the human dignity of individuals
with minoritised socio-economic identities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework
identifies four interrelated mechanisms of crisis-driven dehumanisation: threat construction,
expanded state coercion, reinforcement of hierarchies, and normalisation of deaths. The article
argues that an understanding of these mechanisms is crucial for capturing the complexity of
human rights deterioration during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article uses the plausibility
probe method to demonstrate macro-processes of dehumanisation, with illustrative empirical
examples from diverse societies during COVID-19. It proposes a framework for understanding
these dehumanisation processes that can apply to other transnational crises.
Keywords
COVID-19, crisis, dehumanisation, human dignity, human rights, necropolitics,
necrostratification, securitisation
Introduction
Since early 2020 until March 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic killed at least 6.9 million
lives due to direct infections (World Health Organization (WHO), 2022). In addition, mil-
lions of people worldwide continue to suffer due to the loss of income resulting from vari-
ous combinations of pandemic restrictions, which gravely undermined the operations of
History and International Studies, Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr, History and International Studies, Institute for History, Leiden University,
Doelensteeg 16, 2311 VL Leiden, The Netherlands.
Email: s.s.regilme@hum.leidenuniv.nl
1178247BPI0010.1177/13691481231178247The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsRegilme
research-article2023
Special Issue Article
556 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(3)
business, amid insufficient state support for vulnerable communities (Darvas, 2021;
Goodale, 2020; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020; Thomson and Ip, 2020). The COVID-19 global
pandemic is a multidimensional crisis (Goodale, 2020; Greer et al., 2021; Han et al.,
2021; Hirst and Rossdale, 2021). It is a crisis of global public health, as governments
struggle to introduce various restrictions in social gatherings, in a bid to avoid the break-
down of public health systems, while trying to minimise the number of infections, hospi-
talisations, and deaths. It is also a crisis of democratisation (Lundgren et al., 2021; Moon
et al., 2021; Pamuk, 2022). Illiberal and authoritarian leaders use the pandemic’s existen-
tial threat to justify increased state violence against minoritised communities and all
forms of political dissent. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced an epistemic
crisis, whereby the proliferation of ‘fake news’ outlets has persistently delegitimised sci-
entific expertise and evidence-based journalism (Fleming, 2020; Linden et al., 2020;
Schuetz et al., 2021). During the pandemic’s third year, the Russian war of aggression in
Ukraine along with global economic crisis, food insecurity, widespread poverty, and
inflation increased the sense of precarity among marginalised communities both in the
global South and in the North (Liadze et al., 2022; Michta, 2022; Skiver, 2022).
Yet, even before the pandemic, several global systemic crises have emerged in the 21st
century, in addition to the apocalyptic threat of climate change. Before the COVID-19
pandemic, there were two transnational crises that challenged the stability of the post–
Cold War global system: the post-9/11 human rights crisis generated by the US-led global
war on terror vis-à-vis global terrorism and the financial crisis in 2007/2008. It appears
that both pre-COVID19 crises provided the broader structural conditions that amplified
dehumanisation and human rights deterioration in the current pandemic era. The post-
9/11 human rights crisis, which was facilitated by the terror attacks, and the consequent
US-led ‘global war on terror’ later on evolved into various localised forms of ‘war on
terror’, including the drug wars in Thailand and Colombia as well as Beijing’s intensified
repression of the Uyghur minorities and other places elsewhere (Diken and Laustsen,
2004; Leffler, 2005; Rasmussen, 2002; Regilme, 2018a, 2018b; Roberts, 2020).
Consequently, many states intensified their surveillance systems, widespread extrajudi-
cial killings, and the proliferation of abuses such as torture, enforced disappearances, and
armed conflict in many places worldwide (Foot, 2005; Groot and Regilme, 2021; Regilme,
2018a, 2018b, 2020a). The 2007/2008 financial crisis, on the other hand, accelerated the
shrinking of welfare systems, which, in turn, gravely affected the most marginalised pop-
ulations. The detrimental effects of austerity politics are numerous, lethal, and enduring
(Blyth, 2013; Cummins and Gómez-Ciriano, 2021; Regilme, 2019, 2023). In public
health, a weak or absent welfare state facilitated increased mortality due to poverty with-
out safety nets (Rajmil and de Sanmamed, 2019) and increasingly unmet medical needs
in countries due to reduced state subsidies in public health (Legido-Quigley et al., 2016).
Facilitating the shrinking of welfare states due to austerity politics and the expansion of
states’ coercive apparatuses, both of which gravely impacted already marginalised com-
munities, the ‘war on terror’ and the 2007/2008 financial crises laid the foundations for
intensified dehumanisation in the COVID-19 era.
Focusing on how the COVID19 pandemic intensifies dehumanisation, this article is
guided by the following organisational logic. The next section presents the core question
concerning the relationship between global crises and the persistent politics of dehumani-
sation. I discuss therein the theoretical literature on crises and the core arguments that
illuminate the dehumanising processes of policy responses during the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Next, I systematically analyse how and under which conditions did the pandemic
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