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

Abstract

European migration studies have been criticised for having certain epistemological and theoretical underpinnings that reproduce hegemonic structures, especially the ‘national order of things’ and colonial legacies. In this article, we propose the concept of ‘entangled mobilities’ to address some of these challenges. Entangled mobilities as a theoretical lens enables us to study specific global and transnational processes, the ways in which they are historically and locally situated, and how they materialise in individual mobilities of differently positioned actors within an unequal political global economy. This lens helps us simultaneously overcome nationality- and ethnicity-centred epistemologies, confront colonial aphasia, and be sensitive to the multiple inequalities and mobility regimes within which human mobilities evolve. Furthermore, the prism of entangled mobilities provides an ideal methodological departure point from which to systematically examine how human mobilities are intertwined and interdependent and to reveal how they are embedded in and shaped by asymmetric, historically evolved power structures. We propose three pragmatic entry points for mobilising the concept: in specific places, in terms of the intersections and interdependencies of different mobile people, and in the context of the biographical trajectories of individuals. Finally, we invite scholars from other fields, such as policy research, to innovatively adapt this approach to gain alternative knowledge and address inequalities.

Future Paths in the Study of Migrant Descendants' Citizenship

“…They have argued that this can be done by steering away for "groupism" (Brubaker, Riniolo and Toivanen 303 2005) and from the ethnic lens (Glick Schiller and Caglar, 2016) when examining such topics. Also more recently, calls to "de-migrantize" migration research (Dahinden, 2016), to "migrantize the citizen" (Anderson, 2019), to adopt "doing migration approach" (Amelina, 2020) or yet the entangled mobilities approach (Wyss and Dahinden, 2022) have been suggested as remedies to move beyond the essentialised notions of ethnicity and group belonging. We find these observations of great relevance in conceptual approaches concerning citizenship, particularly in the context of (post)migration.…”

What Is the Nexus between Migration and Mobility? A Framework to Understand the Interplay between Different Ideal Types of Human Movement

“…We begin this article by discussing two strands of research on human movement: one focusing primarily on categories of migration, and the other concerned mostly with categories of mobility. The existence of these distinct bodies of literature expresses (a) the significant divergence among scholars about how to study the phenomenon of human movement and (b) the difficulty of establishing an overarching heuristic framework that makes it possible to situate the categories of mobility and migration -as they are used by researchers -in dialogue with each other (see : Bauböck, 2021;Wyss and Dahinden, 2022). We argue that the MMN allows us to lay bare the complex interplay between different migration and mobility categories.…”

Entangled Future Im/mobilities

“…Specifically, looking at mobilities-inadaptation, I examine the interlacing and circulation of mobilities deriving from "planned adaptation" from the national government with mobilities involved in "autonomous adaptation" from the farmers' side, both driven by diminishing water resources. I employ the analytical lens of "entangled mobilities" (Wyss and Dahinden 2022) to illuminate these interactions.…”