The conceptual limits of the ‘migration journey’. De-exceptionalising mobility in the context of West African trajectories

Joris Schapendonk · Matthieu Bolay · Janine Dahinden

105 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Diaspora, migration, transnational identity Migration and Labor Dynamics Migration and Exile Studies

Abstract

The ‘migration journey’ has proven to be a fruitful lens to question the simplistic notion that the outcome of migration solely depends on a momentous go/no-go decision in the countries of origin. At the same time, we argue that the normative/sedentarist principles of migration studies produce the risk to approach the journey as an exceptional phase of mobility, in-between presumed place-based lives. This paper therefore aims to explore the conceptual limits of the migration journey literature. To challenge the notion that the migration journey is fundamentally different from pre- and post-migratory mobilities, we combine two empirical research projects that have followed the im/mobility trajectories of West Africans. The first project focuses on the trajectories of itinerant gold miners within West Africa, the second concentrates on the im/mobility of West Africans within Europe. By juxtaposing the empirical insights of these seemingly different contexts, we stress the need to embed migratory movements in a continuous field of mobility practices across spaces in Africa and Europe. This results in our plea for a research agenda that does not see ‘migrancy’ as a pre-given marker of difference, but as a normative artefact of mobility regimes.

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References

1973The Strength of Weak Ties 2023The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 2006On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World 1992National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees 2012Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe 2014Expulsions 2014Expulsions: brutality and complexity in the global economy 2016A plea for the ‘de-migranticization' of research on migration and integration

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