The Production of Mobilities in the Peruvian-Chilean Space during the Closure of Borders by COVID-19: A Reading from Everyday Objects

Abstract

This article analyzes the situation of border mobility in the Peruvian-Chilean territory, during the context of border closures due to COVID-19. Despite the decreed closure, the population was discontent regarding the fact that the border never fully closed and that trucks, capital, merchandise, grocery products, among other elements, continued to transit through it. Hence, to analyze the production of border mobility in the context of COVID-19, we consider it necessary to make the concept of mobility itself more complex, as well as the empirical approaches to it. In this way, for the present communication we adopt the mobility turn and object tracking as theoretical and analytical frameworks to study this context. The research applied a semi-structured interview guide addressed to eighty-six formal and informal economic actors on the Tacna border, from which we selected border economic actors from the health sector and the gastronomic sector. Among the main findings, the analytical possibilities of the mobility turn to study border mobility are corroborated, as well as the presence of the border-device as an element that engages in the production of mobilities beyond being considered only as a device that crosses between an origin and a destination.