Migration And Im Mobility

In her endeavour to overcome the established methodological, conceptual, and empirical dualism of mobility and migration, Anna Xymena Wieczorek develops a "mobilities perspective" by combining migration studies theories with approaches of the mobility studies. With the help of rich empirical data gathered among young adults of Polish heritage in Germany and Canada, Wieczorek conceptualizes three patterns of (im)mobility which illustrate the diversity of immigrants' geographical movements after their initial migration. She thus reveals the different social configurations promoting or hindering the development, maintenance or shifting of each pattern in migrants' biographical trajectories.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book is concerned with the effects of migration policy-making in Europe on migrants in the Global South and challenges current migration politics to consider alternative ways of looking at the modern migratory phenomenon. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Morocco with migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, the author considers current migration dynamics from the perspectives of migrants themselves to examine the long-term social effects of immobility experienced by migrants whom get stuck in ‘transit’ countries. This book is an invaluable learning resource for those wishing to understand the social and political processes that migration policies lead to, particularly in countries in the Global South.

The crossing of national state borders is one of the most-discussed issues of contemporary times and it poses many challenges for individual and collective identities. This concerns both short-distance mobility as well as long-distance migration. Choosing to move - or not - across international borders is a complex decision, involving both cognitive and emotional processes. This book tests the approach that three crucial thresholds need to be crossed before mobility occurs; the individual’s mindset about migrating, the choice of destination and perception of crossing borders to that location and the specific routes and spatial trajectories available to get there. Thus both borders and trajectories can act as thresholds to spatial moves. The threshold approach, with its focus on processes affecting whether, when and where to move, aims to understand the decision-making process in all its dimensions, in the hope that this will lead to a better understanding of the ways migrants conceive, perceive and undertake their transnational journeys. This book examines the three constitutive parts discerned in the cross-border mobility decision-making process: people, borders and trajectories and their interrelationships. Illustrated by a global range of case studies, it demonstrates that the relation between the three is not fixed but flexible and that decision-making contains aspects of belonging, instability, security and volatility affecting their mobility or immobility.

The willingness to migrate in search of employment is in itself insufficient to compel anyone to move. The dynamics of labour mobility are heavily influenced by the opportunities perceived and the imaginaries held by both employers and regulating authorities in relation to migrant labour. This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the structures and imaginaries underlying various forms of mobility. Based on research conducted in different geographical contexts, including the European Union, Turkey, and South Africa, and tackling the experiences and aspirations of migrants from various parts of the globe, the chapters comprised in this volume analyse labour-related mobilities from two distinct yet intertwined vantage points: the role of structures and regimes of mobility on the one hand, and aspirations as well as migrant imaginaries on the other. Migration at Work thus aims to draw cross-contextual parallels by addressing the role played by opportunities in mobilising people, how structures enable, sustain, and change different forms of mobility, and how imaginaries fuel labour migration and vice versa. In doing so, this volume also aims to tackle the interrelationships between imaginaries driving migration and shaping “regimes of mobility”, as well as how the former play out in different contexts, shaping internal and cross-border migration. Based on empirical research in various fields, this collection provides valuable scholarship and evidence on current processes of migration and mobility.

Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day We are in the midst of a global climate crisis and experiencing the extreme challenges of urbanization. In Mobility Justice, Mimi Sheller makes a passionate argument for a new understanding of the contemporary crisis of movement. Sheller shows how power and inequality inform the governance and control of movement. She connects the body, street, city, nation, and planet in one overarching theory of the modern, perpetually shifting world. Concepts of mobility are examined on a local level in the circulation of people, resources, and information, as well as on an urban scale, with questions of public transport and “the right to the city.” On the planetary level, she demands that we rethink the reality where tourists and other elites are able to roam freely, while migrants and those most in need are abandoned and imprisoned at the borders. Mobility Justice is a new way to understand the deep flows of inequality and uneven accessibility in a world in which the mobility commons have been enclosed. It is a call for a new understanding of the politics of movement and a demand for justice for all.

This open access book explores the role of family, public, market and third sector welfare provision for individual and households’ decisions regarding geographical mobility. It challenges the state-centred approach in research on welfare and migration by emphasising migrants’ own reflections and experiences. It asks whether and in which ways different welfare concerns are part of migrants’ decisions regarding (or aspirations for) mobility. Employing a transnational and a translocal perspective, the book addresses different forms of geographical mobility, such as immigration, emigration, and re-migration, circular and return migration. By bringing in empirical findings from across a variety of Western and non-Western contexts, the book challenges the Eurocentric focus in current debates and contributes to a more nuanced and more integrated global account of the welfare-migration nexus.

Patterns of im/mobility, collective identity and conflict are highly entangled. The im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa. These dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors from local populations, to migrants, government institutions and other intermediaries. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, this book aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Dynamics of non/integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. With ethnographic case studies from Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Bangladesh, East Timor and Indonesia, this volume provides a comparative perspective on the multifold dimensions of im/mobility in contexts where changing mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion trigger or settle conflicts and social identities are constantly re/negotiated. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Social Identities.

The impact of mobility and superdiversity in recent sociolinguistic research is well-established, yet very few studies deal with issues related to immobility. The chapters in this book focus on the sociolinguistic investigation of the dynamics between mobility and immobility as experienced by migrants, asylum seekers and members of minority or exploited groups. Central to the book is an exploration of how mobilities are affected by and in turn affect power relations and of the kinds of resources used by people to deal with (im)mobility processes. The book brings to light a new critical sociolinguistic imagination that is responsive to 21st century processes of (im)mobilities as socially, discursively and emotionally constructed and negotiated.