Broken bonds: how COVID‐19 border restrictions transformed experiences and conceptualizations of citizenship

Abstract Most scholarship on human mobility in the context of COVID‐19 border restrictions is either doctrinal or focuses on health and wellbeing. This article adds to the limited research on COVID‐19 border restrictions’ socio‐political implications by uniquely investigating how these laws and policies affected experiences and conceptualizations of citizenship. I take Australia as a case study because it implemented some of the world's strictest COVID‐19 border laws. This qualitative, interview‐based study brings the citizenship and legal consciousness literatures into conversation and makes contributions to both fields. The article extends theories exploring the sentimental and existential aspects of citizenship by examining loss of citizenship as a sensation as opposed to a legal reality. The study also provides new angles on debates about ‘legal alienation’ as a distinct form of legal consciousness.