Short Abstract:

This panel invites papers that explore the everyday mobility that underpins so many people’s lives in the Global South; analyses of the impacts of development interventions on the mobility practices; how the concepts and practices of development can better engage with mobility.

Long Abstract:

Much research has shown that migration and mobility play a critical role in the lives and livelihoods of millions of marginalised people. Almost any socio-economic development entails changes in patterns of mobility, enhancing, diverting or blocking different routes and destinations. Despite the everyday quality of much migration, across the world the migration of people is frequently associated with crisis, either as a symptom of critical development failure, such as war or economic collapse, or as a cause of crisis, as the mass movement of people creates acute pressure on societies or depopulation. As a result, development research and policy has been biased towards analysing and responding to migration as a problem. Moreover, because so much of the migration of poor people is irregular, largely conducted out of sight of the state with no documentation, it has been sidelined in a global development agenda that recognises the benefits only of ‘safe, orderly, regular and responsible’ migration.

This panel invites empirical and conceptual papers that will open up a broader discussion of the interface between development and migration, looking beyond the drama of crisis. This may include explorations of the everyday, unproblematic mobility that underpins so many people’s lives in the Global South; or analyses of the impacts of development interventions on the essential (unproblematic) mobility practices – how far do they enable, prevent, or divert? We also need to consider how the concepts and practices of development can better engage with mobility as fundamental part of human life and flourishing.

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