COVID-19 highlights the fact that infectious disease outbreaks and human mobility are intrinsically linked, yet the links are complex. On the one hand, the movement of people can contribute to the spread of these diseases, creating pandemics in the worst cases. On the other hand, such outbreaks also have wide-ranging consequences for human mobility. They can lessen movement directly by order of governments, and indirectly, for example through economic impoverishment. Simultaneously, pandemics can shift mobility patterns, for example by increasing urban to rural migration as a mechanism to reduce risk. Indeed, COVID-19 has turned many of the world’s human mobility dynamics upside down: international travel has plummeted, millions of internal migrant workers have been struggling to get back to their homes, and a third of the world population has been on some sort of lockdown constraining their mobility.
This paper focuses on four potential mobility outcomes: Voluntary mobility, which encompasses the most prevalent forms of internal and international migration; involuntary immobility, which occurs when people want to move, but cannot do so; acquiescent or voluntary immobility, when people do not want to move regardless of their ability to do so; and involuntary mobility, when they must move regardless of their aspirations.