It probably did not require COVID-19 to highlight that the world is experiencing a systemic crisis of global reach and historic scale: one in which economic, social, political, cultural, and ecological crisis nodes are entangled and unfolding in complex and destructive dynamics (Fraser and Jaeggi 2018). However, for a special issue on displacement, and on the historical and contemporary responsibilities that arise from it for social work and human services, the pandemic has brought into even sharper focus what was already an apparent concern: we appear to have entered another age of enmity (Mbembe 2019). This is an era in which borders are (re-)fortified, strangers are (re-)vilified, and dominant discourses contrast starkly with some of the optimism more commonly found in the latter decades of the previous century: not too long ago, the hope flourished that borders would not only be opened for the flows of capital, goods and global elites, but increasingly also to the movement of ordinary people and to progressive ideas in ways that could enable cultural exchanges and political alliances towards a global justice ‘from below’ (see for example, Sewpaul 2006; Fraser 2009).