Conceptualizing migration and mobility in anthropology: An historical analysis (original) (raw)
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Anthropological takes on (im)mobility: Introduction
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2011
In this introduction, we outline the general conceptual framework that ties the various contributions to this special issue together. We argue for the importance of anthropology to “take on” mobility and discuss the advantages of the ethnographic approach in doing so. What is the analytical purchase of mobility as one of the root metaphors in contemporary anthropological theorizing? What are the (dis)advantages of looking at the current human condition through the lens of mobility? There is a great risk that the fast-growing field of mobility studies neglects different interpretations of what is going on, or that only patterns that fit the mobilities paradigm will be considered, or that only extremes of (hyper)mobility or (im)mobility will be given attention. The ethnographic sensibilities of fieldworkers who learn about mobility while studying other processes and issues, and who can situate movement in the multiple contexts between which people move, can both extend the utility of the mobilities approach, and insist on attention to other dynamics that might not be considered if the focus is first and last on (im)mobility as such. In this special issue, we do not want to discuss human mobility as a brute fact but rather analyze how mobilities, as sociocultural constructs, are experienced and imagined.
'Because Life it selfe is but motion': Toward an anthropology of mobility
Over the last two decades, mobility has gained new prominence within anthropology, particularly in theories of globalization, immigration, and subjectivity. At stake in all of the recent ethnographic and archaeological work on mobility is not just how anthropologists conceptualize mobility, but also how we conceptualize the political. Many discussions of mobile subjects have seemed to challenge traditional understandings of the political that are synonymous with a monolithic state and a stable, sedentary subject population. Yet, we maintain that there are still challenges to a coherent anthropological theory of mobility and its relation to the political. To address these challenges, we forward a conceptual framework of mobility that is grounded in the practices, perceptions, and conceptions of movement entwined with processes of emplacement. Illustrated by case studies from the Late Bronze Age (1500 – 1150 B.C.) South Caucasus and nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, the conceptual framework that we detail understands mobility as a mediator between political subjects and political institutions, thus making it possible to examine how subjects and institutions are continuously remade in relation to each other.
Not Only Moving Bodies: Contested and Transforming Concepts in Migration Studies
2017
This text is focused on migration to the American and European continents. It deals with the conceptualizations of the terms transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, the source space, target space, country of origin. It shows the changes in the usage of these terms over the past hundred years and also indicates some changes in the migration and post-migration situations. For its interpretation, I have chosen the discussion on immigration, which took place in the United States of America during World War I and compare the argumentation then with the contemporary conceptualization of the terms. I have selected the empirical examples of the changes in contemporary migrations from my own research work and from other surveys, which inter alia also took place in the Czech milieu.
Migration has long been a major topic in archaeology and as long as culture history framed archaeological understanding of material culture, migrations have been seen as the stuff that (pre)history was made of. As New, processual and post-processual perspectives have steered attention elsewhere in more recent decades, migration has rapidly dropped off the archaeological agendas. A lack of interest does not mean, however, that people in the past did not migrate and scientific advances in physical anthropology have forced the issue back on the agenda. The case of the so-called ‘Lady of York’ who probably hailed from North Africa, is an evident case in point. In other fields, like the ancient Mediterranean or the post-medieval northern and central Atlantic, the combined archaeological and literary evidence leaves little doubt about large-scale and sustained migrations, voluntary and forcibly alike. The question is therefore not so much whether people migrated – they clearly did. The aim of this issue is accordingly to look beyond the mere observation of large-scale movements or migrant networks and to examine not only the reasons that motivated people to migrate but also the consequences for both migrants and their host societies. This issue is therefore not so much about finding ‘hard evidence’ of actual migrants and migrations, although that is certainly part of the equation, but it rather represents an endeavour to explore the diversity and complexity of mobility and migration in the past, both recent and distant, and to investigate the many dimensions of these broad processes. The emphasis of the issue thus falls on local actors, practices, contexts and networks that sustained migrations and enabled mobility of, within and between communities in order to highlight the social and economic dimensions of migration and mobility.
Migration, Mobility, & Displacement
Migration, Mobility & Displacement is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It seeks to publish original and innovative scholarly articles, juried thematic essays from migrant advocacy groups and practitioners, and visual essays that speak to migration, mobility and displacement and that relate in diverse ways to the Asia-Pacific. The journal welcomes submissions from scholars and migrant advocacy groups that are publicly engaged, and who seek to address a range of issues facing migrants, mobile and displaced persons, and especially work which explores injustices and inequalities. We welcome submissions and inquiries from prosepctive authors. Please visit our website mmduvic.ca, or contact the editor for more information.
Migration: The Movement of Humankind from Prehistory ro the Present
Andre Deutsch, 2019
MIGRATION covers many types of migrants including explorers, slaves, pilgrims, mineworkers, labourers, exiles, refugees, sex workers, students, tourists, retirees and expatriates. The text is supplemented by a series of vivid maps, evocative photographs and powerful graphics. Robin Cohen explores a long span of time and many regions and themes in migration.
Confluent Spheres Adrift: Unthinking Migration and Social Transformation in a Modern/Colonial World
2009
The key role played by human migration in the making and remaking of the world as we know it is rarely acknowledged. In recent times, migration is seen as a ‘problem’ to manage, a ‘challenge’ to static/predetermined capitals, resources, boundaries of ‘cohesion’ and the security of equally static socio-political entities. The popular portrayal of migrants and border control has made it increasingly difficult to see human mobility in any other light. Given the framing of mobility from such a container or static point of view, any adequate understanding of mobility remains in the background of trends in the politics of power and knowledge. In the specialist field of migration research, mobility is similarly defined as the movement of human beings from one particular locality to another. This intrinsically linear description is, at best, partial. Is migration really only a fixed process of going from A to B or of moving from one single point of take-off to a destination point in a vacuum? Even if we factor in what is tellingly described as ‘return migration’ or the ties migrants weave in the process of mobility, the ontic sources of the fundamental assumptions remain hidden. Since the forms and contents of the dominant discursive frames had to emerge from somewhere the roots of those frames become as important as the phenomenon itself. This is why my focus in the dissertation is on migration as a quasi object of the geopolitics and nexus of power and knowledge in the specific cultural environment characterised as ‘modern’.