Borders, (Im)mobility and the Everyday

Dear Colleagues,

People are inherently mobile. As the ‘mobility turn’ (Urry, 2016) highlights, our everyday life is built around many forms of mobility: walking, exercising, traveling, meeting people, shopping, working, and returning home. Mobility is thus ‘central to what it is to be human’ (Cresswell 2006). Starting from the premise that mobility is part of our daily life, this Special Issue explores the many creative modalities through which people counter, reinvent, and (re)shape their lives in response to voluntary or forced (im)mobility. This includes but is not limited to economic and social migration, conflict, environmental degradation, bordering practices, and cross-border daily activities. The concept of bordering practices suggested here goes beyond the physical or statist frontiers. It essentially encompasses any political, legal, social, cultural, or ethnic racist barriers that exclude, separate, and prevent mobility, mobilization, and activism. In other words, theoretical and analytical attention here is on how borders are lived, or transformed into, spaces of activism, hospitality, solidarity, and humanitarianism against dominant states’ violent (re)bordering politics. By adopting a critical perspective on borders and mobility, we aim to investigate the modalities through which a variety of needs, activities, practices, and behaviors—both at the individual and collective level—transform and reshape the (daily) lives of diverse groups, including migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, IDPs, diasporic communities, border people, cross-border individuals, and communities.

This Special Issue aims to examine how borders and everyday mobility are experienced. How does mobility reshape borders and border communities? Which activism, if any, occurs along the borders? Which (counter-)practices of adaptation, resilience, or creativity emerge? Which rights, needs, or entitlements are activated, claimed, or created? In this Special Issue, we are keen to explore a variety of mobile and creative practices and subjectivities that reshape borders and border life. We welcome contributions from any geographical areas that engage conceptually, methodologically, or empirically with themes such as the following:

• Borders, (im)mobility, and creativity;
• Everyday cross-border mobility;
• Border activism and humanitarianism;
• Everyday (forced) displacement;
• (Im)mobility, dissent, and rights’ claims;
• Creativity in (forced) exile;
• Border-crossing, insecurity, and subjectivity;
• Border (in)security and responsibility;
• Border experience: everyday lives of cross-border refugees;
• Borders, b/ordering, and othering practices;
• Diasporic communities and transnational political practices;
• Climate change and (im)mobility;
• (In)security, (im)mobility, and creativity.

Contributions have to follow one of the journal’s three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Raffaela Puggioni
Dr. Sweta Sen
Dr. Christine Moliner
Guest Editors

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