Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes a methodological approach for anthropological studies of mobility that puts primacy on learning as the processual counterpart to culture. In short, studying people in motion to and in an urban area requires paying attention to how they learn to move.

Paper long abstract:

Though most people on the planet have not crossed international borders, contemporary discourse portrays a mass of people whirling from country to country and from countryside to city. This paper engages three main bodies of scholarship. Firstly, it builds upon the research on urban areas (Du Bois 1899; Park 1915; Wirth 1938) and on the role of cities in contemporary processes (Hannerz 1980; Harvey 1973; Pottier 1988; Sassen 2001). Secondly, anthropological studies of mobility have focused on the "complex assemblage of movement, imaginaries, and experience" (Salazar 2016). In a sense, these realms of the world mirror the material world, beliefs, and behaviors of a population as fundamental elements of culture. However, anthropological studies of mobility have often overlooked the processual part of culture: learning. Drawing upon educational anthropology, I propose that any ethnography of mobility should take into consideration how people learn to be mobile in the city.

This paper will draw upon my research among contemporary Haitian educational and labor migrants to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. I begin by presenting some of the elements of the regime of mobility (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2011) with which migrants must contend. Next, I describe some of the knowledge that some of them use on the way to and within the city. After examining these ethnographic examples, I point to their limitations as a way to propose ways to study urbanites. I suggest how studying the process of learning can reveal information about people's culture.