Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This special issue advances and interrogates walking as a methodology and research method in the social sciences. Walking is something we do every day, as a lived experience, a source of knowledge, a means of dialogue and exchange with oneself, others, nature, the environment and as an aid to thinking, reflecting and memory. Social science is increasingly "on the move", underpinned by advances in digital methods, a focus on our mobile lives, and the growth of creative, sensory, arts-based multi-modal methods, used by sociologists, ethnographers, anthropologists, geographers, environmentalists, biographical researchers and arts based researchers.As an innovation in social research methods the turn to walking builds on and attaches to the previous "turns" in sociological research, such as the narrative, biographical, visual and sensory "turns" as well as the performative "turn". Walking also resonates with geographical traditions of embodied "field-work" and recognition of the social and spatial nature of knowledge production (Lorimer 2003;Dewsbury & Naylor 2002;Rose et al., 2022). There are important connections too, with walking, in the long history of social research that seeks to understand social inequalities, through, for example, the work of Engels, Mayhew and Orwell, the pioneering research by the Chicago School of Sociology with migrant and marginalised communities and gender politics in the writing of Virginia Woolf, the suffragette marches and gender based protest movements.As the papers in this special issue evidence, the act of walking engages all the senses, the importance of looking, hearing, feeling and we argue, the art of paying attention (Ingold this volume). Walking methodologies offer a powerful way of communicating about experiences and ways of knowing across cultural divides, time, and history. The walking body produces society and sociality is created in walking (

Encountering the hostile environment: Recently arrived Afghan migrants in London

“…Consequently, the UK asylum process has become 'one of the harshest to navigate in Europe' (Shepherd and Wilkinson, 2021: 211). The process is fraught with error and mismanagement and, therefore, tens of thousands of applicants slip through the cracks, without any legal recourse to sustain their livelihood (ibid; see Reynolds et al, 2023).…”

“…Asylum and immigration are politicised in ways that reflect but also reinforce media attention in the context of a 'nationalist and chauvinistic zeitgeist' (Shepherd and Wilkinson, 2021: 224). As one of our key informants from a local authority stated, 'immigration policy is performative' (see also Jones et al, 2017;Reynolds et al, 2023). Moreover, El-Enany (2020: 8) argues that UK immigration systems are an 'ongoing expression' of the British Empire, and as such have been consistently punctuated by exclusionary policies towards racialised peoples.…”