Involuntary Immobility: On a Theoretical Invisibility in Forced Migration Studies

Abstract

This study of two seemingly counter-intuitive phenomena—‘involuntary immobility’ and ‘socially fortuitous wartime migration’—seeks to reveal important limitations in the theoretical framing of the interdisciplinary field of forced migration/refugee studies. In the Mozambican context, I demonstrate that the forms of disruption and disempowerment usually attributed to wartime movement were more often produced by involuntary immobility than by migration per se; even while wartime migration paradoxically resulted in forms of empowerment for at least some social actors. I argue that the implicit conflation of migration with displacement that currently serves as the definitional point of departure in forced migration/refugee studies, not only renders invisible an entire category of people who suffer a form of ‘displacement in place’ through involuntary immobilization, but also distorts our analysis of the experience of wartime migrants themselves.

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