Time, Migration and Forced Immobility

Abstract

This series showcases original research that looks at the nexus between migration, citizenship and social change. It advances new scholarship in migration and refugee studies and fosters cross-and inter-disciplinary dialogue in this field. The series includes research-based monographs and edited collections, informed by a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Tacking towards freedom? Bringing journeys out of slavery into dialogue with contemporary migration

“…They often began uncertainly, perhaps starting with episodes of 'petite marronage' or 'laying out' (Camp 2004), and continued as a protracted series of journeysas in the case of Henry Bibb (1849), who made frequent and unsuccessful attempts to runaway as a teenager before undertaking a more successful journey to Canada in his twenties, or that of Harriet Jacobs (1861), who spent seven years hidden in a coffin-like space in her grandmother's attic, waiting for an opportunity to flee north by boat. Likewise, and in line with the body of research showing that asylumseekers' journeys are rarely direct and unidirectional (Collyer 2012;Collyer and King 2016;Innes 2015;Kuschminder and Waidler 2019), the majority of our interlocutors told of a series of journeys characterised by improvisation, serendipity, reaction to danger, hardship, as well as periods of stasis (Yıldız and Sert 2019;Stock 2019;Schapendonk, Bolay, and Dahinden 2020). Like enslaved people who ran from slavery in the past, our research participants moved in fits and starts, taking steps forward followed by steps back.…”

“…Such periods of forced immobility (Stock 2019;Turnbull 2016) not only often led people to rethink their initial plans but also sometimes helped them to garner the contacts and resources necessary to continue their journeys. Namazzi, who was sent to a detention centre in Nicaragua as she tried to get from Brazil to the US, explained: I met a Somali guy there.…”

“…Both the journeys of fugitives from slavery and those of our research participants illustrate the value of migration scholarship that both attends to temporal dimensions of mobility, and challenges theories of time that rely on the idea of linearity. As Griffiths, Rogers, and Anderson (2013) remark, 'the reduction of social worlds into linear temporal paths, let alone ones forever moving 'forwards', is intensely problematic' (see also Andersson 2014;Stock 2019;Schewel 2020 ). Our research participants, like people who fled slavery, were always guided by an ambition to improve their lot in life and in this respect, to 'progress'.…”

“…Because antislavery activists make a historical comparison with slave trading, their campaigns reproduce and bolster the fictional, statist division between 'trafficked' and 'smuggled' persons, as well as other administrative categories superimposed on movement by state actors in support of efforts to more closely control human mobility (Anderson 2013;Stock 2019). If they were instead to make the historical comparison with enslaved people's efforts to flee slavery, and engage more closely with the insights of critical migration scholarship such as that referenced in this article, they would be able to challenge these divisions and build alliances with no borders and migrants' rights activism, rather than with politicians seeking to restrict human mobility.…”

Methods as Moving Ground: Reflections on the ‘Doings’ of Mobile Methodologies

“…Following mobility might run the risk of either making assumptions for an entire community through a bias towards the one that is being 'followed.' In this regard, some scholars criticise the notion of transient and flexible communities in the context of so-called transit migration (Stock, 2019), as studies focusing on transit and onward movement overlook long-term community bonds in migrant groups in presumed transit locations. Other scholars encounter immobility and permanence in a presumed culture of mobility (Gaibazzi, 2015).…”