On the Forms of Vulnerability and Ungrievability in the Pandemic

This contribution reviews and comments on recent scholarship on the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on how vulnerability was constructed and studied. We reflect on the various meanings of vulnerability and suggest political science should go beyond individualized and identity-based approaches and see the pandemic conditions as shared and embedded within the already existing social, political, and economic structures. We also examine how our previously identified discursive frames of science and security work in the context of the later pandemic stages and the vaccination rollout and note how these frames continue to render certain lives ungrievable. Our contribution is intended to add to the growing interest in using the concepts of vulnerability, precariousness, and precarity in studies of politics and international relations, as well as in critical studies of public health and the coronavirus pandemic.