Key figures of mobility: an introduction

Abstract

Figures of mobility, from nomads to flâneurs and tourists, have been used to describe both self and other in the social sciences and humanities for a long time. They act as a conceptual shorthand in contemporary scholarly debates, allowing social theorists to relate broad‐scale phenomena to the human condition. This repeated usage highlights how these figures have become ‘keywords’, in the sense given by Raymond Williams, which typify much of the vocabulary constituting the study of human mobility today. In this general introduction, I lay out the overall conceptual framework behind the various contributions to this special issue.

A post‐socialist legacy in transnational families: Russian and Polish women in Finland

“…These families have captured the theoretical interest of a branch of anthropology engaged in scrutinizing phenomena that transcend national borders and nation-state imaginaries (Appadurai 1996;Hannerz 1996Hannerz , 2010Salazar 2017;Vertovec 2009). We understand transnational families to be flexible and gendered communities that 'live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely "familyhood", even across national borders' (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002: 3).…”

“…We understand transnational families to be flexible and gendered communities that 'live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely "familyhood", even across national borders' (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002: 3). These families have captured the theoretical interest of a branch of anthropology engaged in scrutinizing phenomena that transcend national borders and nation-state imaginaries (Appadurai 1996;Hannerz 1996Hannerz , 2010Salazar 2017;Vertovec 2009). By their existence, transnational families challenge methodological nationalism; by their nature, they represent an elusive phenomenon, capable of unending mutation and reconstitution over time (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002).…”

The Many Faces of Displacement. Pervasive Violence and the Dissolution of a Liveable Life in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan

“…In the face of the growing gap between these morally charged positions and the many faces of displacement as an experienced condition, there is an urgent need to revisit the multidimensional reality of displacement and flight against the many assumptions and qualities ascribed to the refugee. Similar to other key figures of mobility (SALAZAR 2017), such as the migrant and the exile, the refugee has become a problematic "concept-metaphor" with shifting meanings and a tension between universal claims and very particular contexts (MOORE 2004, p. 74). The argument presented builds on important critical perspectives that have discussed the scholarly objectification of the refugee and the simplification of displacement as an experienced condition (ZOLBERG, SUHRKE, and AGUAYO 1989;MALKKI 1995;PETEET 2007).…”

Towards an anthropology of global inequalities and their local manifestations: social anthropology in 2017

“…Debates around the ontological turn have continued to run strong Bruun Jensen and Morita 2017;Carey and Pedersen 2017;Green and Laviolette 2017;Laidlaw 2017;Lebner 2017;Pickering 2017). But other 'turns' have also featured, including the mobility turn (Salazar 2017), the media turn (Fader 2017), the earnest turn (Mayblin 2017), the punitive turn (Koch 2017a) and the infrastructural turn (Bruun Jensen and Morita 2017; Carey and Pedersen 2017). To the extent that this piece speaks to a particular turn, it engages perhaps most closely with what Ortner (2016) has called anthropology's 'dark turn': an anthropology that 'emphasizes the harsh and brutal dimensions of human experience, and the structural and historical conditions that produce them', a shift that Ortner attributes to the 'increasingly problematic conditions of the real world under neoliberalism ' (2016: 49-50).…”