Mobility

Abstract

The concepts of migration and mobility clearly intersect, but they are not synonyms. While migration by definition entails mobility, migration studies has privileged studying other aspects of the migratory process. This article analyzes migratory (im)mobilities and methodologies to study them and it critically reflects on the usefulness of mobility studies as an analytical lens to study human migration. Lack of empirical data suggests that we need more systematic comparative studies of how migratory mobilities are generated in everyday life and facilitated as well as constrained by specific mobility circuits and institutions.

Free mobility, locked rights: the posting of construction workers from Portugal

“…Hence, to some extent, the posting of Portuguese workers today reinforces the 20 th -century pattern of Portuguese emigration waves but with the important feature that family reunification never happens. Being posted in different locations through time but always with no local familial connections makes 'being away' a permanent status where the personal and family time is everyday missed (Nies, Roller and Vogl, 2017) and therefore the right to settlement is denied (Salazar 2019) and the sense of rootless is prevalent (Vickers et al 2019):…”

La puerta norte del “sueño chileno”. Ciudad fronteriza, asentamiento de migrantes y precariópolis en Arica, Chile

“…Subyacente a las dinámicas descritas ocurre el fenómeno global de la movilidad, entendida no solo como el proceso migratorio implícito a las ciudades, sino como la condición actual de movimientos de bienes, servicios, ideas, personas e intercambios en la superficie terrestre, que modifican e instalan una velocidad transformadora no observada antes en el devenir de la humanidad (Salazar, 2019).…”

“…En este sentido, este lugar ha adquirido más bien las características de un asentamiento móvil. La migración, entonces, no se produce bajo una lógica origen/destino prefijado, sino que más bien es la movilidad de una masa de fuerza de trabajo que está en la búsqueda de poder asentarse, aunque esa finalidad sea indeterminada (Salazar, 2019).…”

On imagination and imaginaries, mobility and immobility: Seeing the forest for the trees

“…Scholars have used a multitude of denominators, partially overlapping with one another, to denote various forms of mobility (Salazar, 2018b). The concepts of migration and mobility, for instance, clearly intersect (Salazar, 2019), but they are not really synonyms (even if some people, including in this special issue, use them as such). While migration by definition entails mobilities, most research on migration has privileged studying the causes and impacts of migration on points of departure and (settlement) destinations, so before or after the physical migratory movement (Hui, 2016).…”