An Im/mobility turn: power geometries of care and migration

Abstract

This special issue explores the analytical significance of immobility for understanding the inequalities that animate-and co-exist in tandem with-growing global mobility and migration. With a particular focus on the literature on migrant care workers, the collection examines how the socio-spatial mobility of these workers is blocked, stuck, and constrained, and how these immobilities are integral to their migration experiences. Extending Doreen Massey's idea of 'power geometries' to migration studies, we offer the concept of an 'im/mobility turn'-wherein the back slash highlights the connections between immobility and mobility -to emphasise how particular forms of movement are shaped by the regulations, inequalities, and disciplinary pressures that delimit that movement. In the current global context where antiimmigration and xenophobia are on the rise, and where temporary migrant labour regimes of all kinds are increasingly common, we argue that attention to the many forms of immobility that are evident in care work migration may offer clues for grasping how immobilities function in relation to contemporary migration politics more generally.

The mobility pathways of migrant domestic workers

“…Studies have paid growing attention to the myriad constraints that limit the capacity of labour migrants to settle in countries where they work (Belanger and Silvey 2019;Mountz et al 2013). As geographers Belanger and Silvey (2019) observe: 'Indeed, the very globalization dynamics that produce increased movement and linkages across space and time are emerging in tandem with new forms of exclusion, dislocation, immobility, segregation and stratification' (2).…”

“…As geographers Belanger and Silvey (2019) observe: 'Indeed, the very globalization dynamics that produce increased movement and linkages across space and time are emerging in tandem with new forms of exclusion, dislocation, immobility, segregation and stratification' (2). Scholarship on the exclusionary conditions of migration have accordingly documented the rise of xenophobic sentiments and the concomitant tightening of borders (Massey and Pren 2012); the constitution of migrants as noncitizens (Goldring and Landolt 2013) and the 'immobility turn' in migrant experiences (Belanger and Silvey 2019). Research on undocumented migrants has likewise focussed on migrant exclusion and examined the rise of 'deportation regimes' in countries as varied as the United States (De Genova 2005; Golash-Boza 2015), Canada (Basok, Belanger, and Rivas 2014), Israel (Liebelt 2011;Willen 2007), and Malaysia (Chin 2013).…”

Stuck in Motion: Inhabiting the Space of Transit in Central American Migration

“…I expand this to look at what it means for people to be stuck not in a single place but stuck in the space of transit, able to physically move around but unable to settle. It is commonplace now among scholars of migration to refer to “(im)mobility” to be able to state in one word both the condition of being able to move and its opposite (see Brigden and Mainwaring 2016; Conlon 2011; Dalakoglou and Harvey 2012; Salazar and Smart 2011; among others; Bélanger and Silvey 2019 specifically identify an “im/mobility turn”). This parenthetical implies that these states exist simultaneously, wrapped into each other.…”

Momentarily immobile: Backpacking, farm work, and hostels in Bundaberg, Australia

“…In this sense, the “ideologies of mobility” enforce a particular preference and encouragement of mobility as the ability, freedom, and choice of movement (Salazar & Smart, 2011, p. ii), whereas immobility is conceived as “sedimented ‘home’ cultures that do not move” (p. v). Yet as Adey (2006, p. 86) suggests, mobility needs to be considered such that if “everything is mobile, then these immobilities or moorings are indeed mobile too.” Bélanger and Silvey (2019, p. 3) propose the existence in research of an immobility turn, which “plays primary attention to the constraints, regulations, and limits simultaneously placed on migration, everyday mobility, and border‐crossings at multiple scales.”…”