Abstract

This interdisciplinary special issue brings mobility scholars and migration scholars together to examine how places and mobilities are entangled. It asks whether using place as an entry point for studying human movements can reveal new insights into our understanding and conceptualisation of mobility. In this introduction we demonstrate, based on the contributions gathered in this special issue, how using place as an entry point for studying mobilities enables us to address some of the serious criticisms that have been raised against migration and mobility studies. We find that such an approach allows us to overcome ethno-national epistemologies, goes beyond migranticised research designs that takes ‘migrants’ for granted, and has the potential to conceptually ‘unbound’ place. Furthermore, we identify three transversal dynamics that play a crucial role for the ways in which mobilities become (unequally) emplaced, namely regimes of mobilities, temporalities, and imaginations. We propose that using place as an entry point to study human movements offers a framework for future research to explore the dynamic categories and experiences that emerge at the intersection between places and mobilities without falling back on well-rehearsed assumptions.

摘要

这一跨学科特刊将流动性学者和移民学者聚集在一起，研究地点和流动性是如何纠缠在一起的。它询问以地点作为研究人类运动的切入点是否可以揭示我们对流动性的理解和概念化的新见解。在本引言中，我们根据本期特刊中收集的贡献，展示了如何使用地点作为研究流动性的切入点，使我们能够解决针对移民和流动性研究提出的一些严重批评。我们发现，这种方法使我们能够克服民族认识论，超越将“移民”视为理所当然的移民化研究设计，并有可能在概念上“不受束缚”。此外，我们确定了三种横向动态，它们对流动性（不平等）安置的方式发挥着至关重要的作用，即流动性、时间性和想象力。我们建议，使用地点作为研究人类运动的切入点，为未来的研究提供一个框架，以探索在地点和流动性之间出现的动态类别和体验，而无需依赖于经过充分演练的假设。