Migration and (Im)Mobility

... mit Anna Xymena Wieczorek

1. Why a book on this subject?

The book questions the sedentariness of migration; which assumes that migrants remain sedentary in the country of arrival after initial migration. By developing three patterns of (im)mobility, it shows that this is not always the case. Based on the multi-sited research case of young Poles living in Germany and Canada, the book reveals the various configurations of post-migration mobilities, their contextual country-specific differences and their shiftings in individual trajectories.

2. What relevance does this subject have in the current research debates?

Research on the geographical movements of humans is currently reflected in the field of migration studies and the growing field of mobility studies. While both agendas overlap, they represent separate scholarly traditions. The book brings the two research fields theoretically and empirically together, indicating a first step to bridge the gap in the literature in both migration and mobility studies about how geographical (im)mobility is constructed within migration phenomena.

3. What new perspectives does your book open up?

The book opens up – what I call – the ›mobilities perspective‹ on migration, which promotes a processual, relational and constructivist understanding. It deconstructs the linear and binary logics on which many migration conceptualizations are built and which have become highly politicized. As an integrative perspective, the ›mobilities perspective‹ is, so I believe, indispensable for a fruitful study of migration and mobility phenomena and for creating a dialogue between the two scholarly fields.

4. Who would you preferably like to discuss your book with?

I would like to bring together migration- and transnational scholars with mobility studies scholars in order to discuss further ways of cross-fertilization between these research fields.

5. Your book in only one sentence:

A new reading of contemporary migration and mobility, which probes the biographical experiences of my respondents with established migration studies theories.