Friday, July 10, 2015
J101 (13 rue de l'Université)
While scholarly research on migration has proliferated and human mobility around the world differentiated, the concepts used to study migration remain constrained with references to the past cross-border mobility patterns. This paper aims to fill this gap by matching the past scholarly research on the concept of migration and its uses with current trends in migration particularly in the post-Cold War era. The paper seeks answers to the following questions: How did conceptualization of mobility across borders change since the 1990s? In what ways and to what extent are there continuities and ruptures between how earlier types of mobility and the current ones are studied across disciplines? What are the implications of this transformation for future studies on mobility? The argument of the paper is that new types of movement call for new types of conceptualizations and classifications for mobility which will inform how states regulate movement across and settlement within their borders as well as how different actors engage with mobility related challenges. The paper is organized as follows: First, it identifies and classifies conceptualization of mobility through a review of scholarly articles in SSCI journals between 1991-2014 and documents on migration produced by international organizations. Second, it discusses the change in conceptualization and research on mobility and the extent to which they intersect with (or contradict) the change in empirical evidence on types of mobility across disciplines and across states. Fourth, it concludes with a discussion on new concepts for studying mobility for the future.
