Citizenship, Migration and Mobility in a Pandemic (CMMP)

Governments have significantly constrained human movement in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Systematic information on mobility restrictions that governments adopt in view of safeguarding public health would help explain the causes of varying policy responses of states to the COVID-19 pandemic, while also bettering our understanding of the policy effectiveness of these measures in relation to rates of infection per million inhabitants. Our datasets on Citizenship, Migration, and Mobility in a Pandemic (CMMP) allow users to systematically track and compare public decisions to regulate human movement in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The CMMP brings together two sets of publicly available information on the closure of the borders and restrictions to mobility, including information on the timing and variation of government responses.

Map with the countries that introduced travel restrictions (24 May 2021).

International Travel Restrictions in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak

The first dataset tracks the restrictions to international travel implemented by 204 countries to limit the spread of COVID-19. The dataset has global coverage. It provides information on the countries that have introduced additional controls, the type of controls (self-isolation, medical certificate, quarantine, no entry), what target countries, and exceptions granted (e.g., nationals, residents, humanitarian workers, passengers in transit, asylum seekers). The interactive visualization can be accessed through this link or by clicking on the images. The dataset (24 January 2020 – 24 May 2021) can be downloaded here.

Growth in the number of restrictions to travel globally (24 May 2021).

We request users to cite the dataset as follows: Lorenzo Piccoli, Jelena Dzankic, Andreas Perret, Didier Ruedin, Timothy Jacob-Owens and Luca Bernasconi 2022. International Travel Restrictions in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak, nccr – on the move and GLOBALCIT.

Mobility and Border Controls in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak

The second dataset correlates policies related to border control and policies related to the regulation of internal mobility by 29 countries in Europe. It provides information on the type of border control (open border; open border, with additional controls at the entry; border closed with generous exceptions to entry; border closed) and the policies related to the regulation of internal mobility (no restrictions; population invited to stay at home, schools closed; businesses and schools closed; curfews). The interactive visualization can be accessed through this link. The dataset (1 March 2020 – 31 May 2020) can be downloaded here.

Growth in the number of countries introducing restrictions on mobility and closure of borders (31 May 2020).

Different preferences for countries in the regulation of mobility and borders (31 May 2020).

We ask users to cite the dataset as follows: Lorenzo Piccoli, Leslie Ader, Paula Hoffmeyer, Christina Mittmasser,Oliver Pedersen, Aurélie Pont, Frowin Rausis, Petra Sidler. 2020. Mobility and Border Control in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak, nccr – on the move and GLOBALCIT.

Data

Data was collected from public sources (International Migration Organization, government websites, newspaper agencies) by a team of researchers from the nccr – on the move, in collaboration with GLOBALCIT at the European University Institute.

The datasets are provided free of charge. We ask that users acknowledge the source when using our data for their research and in their classes.

Additional interactive visualizations from this project and a short clip are available on the website cmm-pandemic.com.

The CMMP project led to the publication of the following studies:

Piccoli, Lorenzo, Jelena Dzankic, Didier Ruedin, Timothy Jacob-Owens (2022). Restricting Human Movement During the COVID-19 Pandemic: New Research Avenues in the Study of Mobility, Migration, and Citizenship. International Migration Review.

Piccoli, Lorenzo, Jelena Dzankic, Didier Ruedin (2021), Citizenship, Migration and Mobility in a Pandemic (CMMP): A global dataset of COVID-19 restrictions on human movement, PLoS ONE 16(3).

Piccoli, Lorenzo, Jelena Dzankic, Andreas Perret, Didier Ruedin, Timothy Jacob-Owens (2020), International travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak dataset. EUI Research Data: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and nccr – on the move.

Piccoli, Lorenzo, Leslie Ader, Paula Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Christina Mittmasser, Oliver Pedersen, Aurélie Pont, Frowin Rausis, Petra Sidler (2020), Mobility and border control in response to the COVID-19 outbreak dataset. EUI Research Data: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and nccr – on the move.

The CMMP project was also featured in two articles by Sara Goodman Wallace and Lorenzo Piccoli, both of which have appeared on the Washington Post; a radio interview of Lorenzo Piccoli with RSI; an episode of The Borders of Equality podcast with Lorenzo Piccoli and Alex Afonso; an article of the Centre of International Research at Sciences Po; three articles on the GLOBALCIT blog by Peter Spiro, Jelena Dzankic, Jelena Dzankic and Lorenzo Piccoli; a webinar co-organized by GLOBALCIT and the Migration Policy Centre with Jelena Dzankic and Lorenzo Piccoli.