Caught in between and in transit: forced and encouraged (im)mobilities during the Covid-19 pandemic in Longyearbyen, Svalbard

ABSTRACT

When Europe shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Longyearbyen, the main settlement of Svalbard, was moving from a coal-based economy to one based on science and tourism. The remote location of the Svalbard archipelago in the High Arctic makes it an isolated, secure haven from the chaos worldwide. But this renders its population vulnerable should the virus come since there are neither facilities to care for the sick nor other nearby communities to help in case of need. Svalbard, with its special territorial status, is in a unique geopolitical situation where people are free to come and go. Longyearbyen is an inherently transient space with a highly mobile population. Based on interview narratives of participants’ lived experiences in Longyearbyen during the pandemic (both in-person and online), this paper explores how forced and encouraged (im)mobilities impacted their individual life choices during the pandemic. Participants’ stories revealed systemic inequalities and vulnerabilities in Longyearbyen that were heightened and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. By combining minor theory with politics of mobility, this paper aims to add to the discussion within mobilities studies on how the personal, emotional responses to these situations are linked to decisions about mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Svalbard
• Covid-19
• ethnography
• mobility
• minor theory

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our reviewers for their constructive feedback, and the special issue editors, Marco Eimermann and Doris Carson, for making this publication possible. We are particularly grateful for Marco’s encouraging words and thoughtful comments on our manuscript. We would like extend a special thank you to the participants in our study for sharing their stories and experiences with us. Without them, this article would not be able to exist.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 It is proposed that non-Norwegian citizens must have lived three years in a Norwegian municipality on the mainland in order to be able to vote and stand for election for the Longyearbyen Community Council (Government.no 2021a).

2 The tax office number combines Longyearbyen with the research settlement of Ny-Ålesund, which has approximately 40 inhabitants.

Additional information

Funding

The research project of Zdenka Sokolíčková was financed through the grant CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_070/0009476 (bo)REALIFE: Overheating in the high Arctic: Qualitative anthropological analysis, funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, and the University of Hradec Králové. The project was hosted by the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. Jasmine Zhang’s contribution to the paper is funded by the Belmont Forum project SVALUR - Understanding Resilience and Long-Term Environmental Change in the High Arctic: Narrative-Based Analyses from Svalbard. Alexandra Meyer’s contribution was funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 773421 (project Nunataryuk), and by the ERC under grant agreement no. 885646 (project InfraNorth).