In this paper we discuss findings from our ethnography investigating how volunteering in local associational life is changing, asking whether structural factors fixed in localities remain important, or whether as others have suggested, volunteering is becoming disembedded from place. Across two locations we observe how situational variables including belonging, identification and interaction remain important determinants of volunteering, and how the relationship between people and their localities has distinct meanings. In one locality, people participated as volunteers because they had a strong sense of belonging, in the other, they often volunteered because they wanted to belong. We conclude that local voluntary association is important in forming bridges between people in 'places' and wider society, but find that differing notions of belonging mean that localities are not equally situated to operate as effective conduits. We conclude that understanding these dynamics is important for outside agencies in delivering support and public services.

Migration is a form of spatial and social transplant from one local and national context to another. Migration trajectories often expose the underlying intersections of social relations and social hierarchies that underpin cultural and social national environments. Migrants who encounter those complex structural inequalities must learn to negotiate classed, gendered and racialised social relations and seek the most suitable social positions within new systems. This article builds on Amartya Sen’s capability approach to conceptualise migrants’ embeddedness in the framework of social inequalities and explores the relationship between individual choices, resources and entitlements. It points towards patterns of advantage and disadvantage that frame migrants’ opportunities and draws tacit analytical, theoretical and methodological links that have the innovative potential for the study of migration. Building on the parallels between studies in the fields of social inequalities and migration, this article argues that Sen’s analytical and conceptual approach provides innovative insights into migration experiences, and Sen’s unique reasoning opens up new avenues for the discussion of migrants’ social justice.

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Life stories of mobile individuals provide us with unique perspectives on the condition of modern societies. This article aims to establish the link between narrative accounts of mobility and the conceptual framework of migration studies. Drawing on autobiographical narrative interviews with 91 transnational individuals, this article presents three categories of mobility narratives, emphasizing the specific narrative form and socio-cultural discourse within which they are embedded. It is argued that the perception of power relations underpinning social experiences that can be observed in three distinct narrative archetypes: the story of the guest, trader and explorer. These empirically derived categories aim to systematize the conceptual framework for studies of individual agency and social relations in cross-border mobility contexts and contribute to the debate on methodological nationalism.