Places and mobilities: studying human movements using place as an entry point

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.