As the COVID-19 pandemic reached all corners of the world, countries rapidly introduced a series of containment policies to stop its spread, including school and workplace closures, restrictions on gathering size, and limits to population movement. In contrast to complete or partial border closures for foreign nationals, restrictions on population movements within one’s country have received much less attention, despite the fact that most countries introduced restrictions on internal migration during the pandemic in the form of bans on inter- or intra-provincial travel, or partial or complete lockdowns. With over 300 million internal migrants in India and 261 million in China (out of an estimated 760 million internal migrants worldwide), these barriers to mobility are particularly acute in Asia. But are they effective?

Restrictions on internal migration during the COVID-19 pandemic

Historically, the most notable instances of internal migration controls were carried out by the central government of authoritarian states, such as China’s hukou or Vietnam’s household registration system (KT). The fact that freedom of movement within a country’s borders is often enshrined in the constitution has limited the ability of many democratic states to control population movements. Indeed, many democratic states have instead called for the removal of any structural and cultural barriers to domestic mobility in order to facilitate their citizens’ freedom of movements.

The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly changed these dynamics, transforming internal migration restrictions into an increasingly common practice across political regimes.  

For instance, China was the first country to implement internal movement restrictions amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, strictly controlling movements in and out of Wuhan city. Vietnam introduced two full lockdowns, first in the city of Da Nang in the late summer of 2020, and more recently in Ho Chi Minh City, which just lifted its three month long lockdown measures. Democratic countries like India also implemented restrictions, instituting a nation-wide, 21-day lockdown on March 24, 2020 which was subsequently transformed into a ‘strict perimeter control’ in containment zones.

Are internal mobility restrictions effective?

There are several ways to assess the effectiveness of internal mobility restrictions. Figure 1 captures the relationship between the levels and timing of restriction on internal movements (coded as the ‘C7 index’ and developed by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker) and variations in the monthly average of daily new COVID-19 cases. As Figure 1 shows, the relationship between C7 index and variations in monthly average of daily new cases in 6 Asian countries is not clear. China restricted internal mobility early on, kept the restrictions at a very high level for most of the pandemic, and managed to drastically flatten its curve (Fig 1.1). However, other Asian countries—be they democratic or authoritarian leaning— that also implemented mobility restrictions early on in the pandemic, often did so temporarily, introducing and then withdrawing such policies, which resulted in substantial variations of their C7 indices.

In India and Pakistan, the complete withdrawal of internal mobility restrictions in January-February 2021 and in August 2020-February 2021 respectively resulted in the two states experiencing their highest monthly average of daily new cases shortly after, providing some support for the effectiveness of strict domestic mobility restrictions as a containment policy (Fig 1.2 and 1.6). But in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, the relaxation of mobility restrictions did not coincide with a higher number of cases; in fact, in these three countries, the number of COVID cases ultimately peaked as mobility restrictions reached their maximum (Indonesia) or remained very high (Malaysia and Vietnam) (Fig. 1.3; 1.4; and 1.5).

Figure 1. Restrictions on internal movements (C7) Index vs Monthly average of new daily COVID-19 Cases in 6 Asian countries. Source: Synthesized from Oxford Government Response Tracker and Our World in Data–COVID-19 Cases

… but at what costs?

The security implications of restrictions on internal migration go far beyond their impacts on the health security of the domestic population. A closer look at internal mobility restrictions in India shows how they come with heavy, multifaceted security risks for domestic migrants. Already vulnerable to socio-economic insecurities such as forced evictions, food shortages, and losses of income, COVID-19 mobility restrictions put the migrant workers population in India in an even dire conundrum, forcing them to choose between “dying from hunger or the virus.”

Lockdowns in urban high-risk areas also exposed millions of domestic migrants to anti-migrant prejudice as they returned to their rural homes. In the days following India’s nation-wide lockdown in March 2020, 7.5 million migrants relocated from urban centers to rural areas, the largest internal mass movement since the country’s partition. Fears of transmission of COVID-19 from return migrants were rampant, and many villages barricaded their entry and exit points and prominently displayed posters proclaiming “outsiders are not allowed” despite return migrants’ being natives of these villages.       

Migrant workers sometimes responded to mobility restrictions with resistance or outright violence. Protests emerged in India in April 2020 for instance, as police clashed with thousands of migrant workers who were gathered at railway stations and demanded an end to the nation-wide lockdown in order to return home, or to obtain government assistance.

Security concerns for the future

To be sure, lockdowns and other internal mobility restrictions need to be planned carefully to avoid sudden large-scale movements to areas that are not under restrictions. States should make sure to properly integrate migrant workers into their national COVID-19 policy to lower threats to their human security, providing them with financial relief measures or ration cards, and avoid confining them into crowded temporary housing where COVID-19 can easily spread.

As the pandemic slowly subsides, what will states do with these policies of population control? Will states happily discard this added responsibility once the health risks decrease? Will they seek to continue exercising restrictions on population movement in situations of extreme emergencies? Or has the COVID-19 pandemic set a precedent, allowing states to reassert this newfound power whenever convenient, barring or opening regions to population movements as they see fit?

While the vast majority of internal mobility restrictions implemented in the Asia Pacific during the pandemic have, to date, limited movements in and out of high risks urban areas, sub-national units may also be tempted to erect additional borders to protect themselves from other areas of the country deemed higher risks, like Newfoundland and Labrador did in Canada. In light of the mounting anti-migration hostility and nativism occurring in several regions of the world, scholars, public servants, and anyone interested in intra-state and transnational security issues in the Asia Pacific and beyond will do well to keep a close eye on these developments.