Towards an understanding of mobility in social policy research

Abstract

Over recent years, there has been increasing attention to migration in social policy research. Uniting this research has been a focus on cross-national migration, and predominantly immigration. In the meantime, the relationship between human mobility and social policy at other scales and sites has gained much less attention. This is in spite of the salience of multiple forms of mobility and measures for restricting, facilitating or promoting mobility not confined to the territorial borders of the nation-state. This article proposes an alternative mobility perspective for social policy research that moves us beyond the limitations of current migration approaches. To do so, we draw on interdisciplinary mobilities theory and research. Empirically, we apply a mobility perspective to examine how systems of social provision are shaped by and shape mobility and immobility, in restricting, facilitating or promoting the movement of people. We argue that such an approach allows us to frame and address questions that place mobility and immobility as central to the social relations of welfare, advancing our understanding of how social policies can reduce or reinforce the inequalities of mobility.

Disentangling entangled mobilities: reflections on forms of knowledge production within migration studies

“…How are mobilities represented, categorised and interwoven, for example in the field of migration, social welfare or education policy, and what are the historical legacies and the consequences of this? A good example of social scientists using such an approach is the study of Bruzelius and Shutes (2022), who apply a mobility perspective in social policy research. By doing so, they seek to go beyond the limitations of current approaches in this field, namely a tendency to define and analyse the welfare state and its subjects through a lens that reproduces the nationstate logic.…”