The geographies of mobility and migration in a globalizing world

The chapter discusses the importance of movement in our understanding of globalization and suggests ways to nuance a common assumption: that all kinds of mobilities are steadily expanding as globalization expands. The chapter contextualizes the evolution of the spatio-temporal dimensions of mobility and migration and its organizational dimensions, insisting on the agency of mobile individuals within a complex and multi-scalar policy framework. It shows how it has become very difficult to map contemporary moving patterns, which do not correspond anymore to arrows tracing direct trajectories from one point to another: the example of still-points on the migratory roads towards Europe, notably when migrants get ‘lost in migration’, held still for months or years in facilities where they are detained due to the lack of legal status. While pinpointing the contradictory evolution of mobility and migration, the chapter however insists on the fact that the mobile component of all socio-spatial processes has now been uncovered, forcing us towards mobile epistemologies that consider mobility as the rule rather than an exception within political and social constructs.