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Paper short abstract

Based on a study of Swiss and German migrants, this paper shows how long-term immobility is enabled by mobility. It argues that the ability to stay is mediated by return options, everyday mobility, and the capacity to convert movement into stability.

Paper long abstract

Although anthropological debates on mobilities increasingly reject binary oppositions, mobility and immobility are still often treated as coexisting or alternating states. Based on ethnographic research with Swiss and German migrants in their neighbouring countries, this paper puts forward the argument that long-term immobility is actively produced through mobility, rather than occurring in its absence.

The paper examines a group commonly associated with privileged hypermobility. Rather than constant movement, participants orient their lives towards stability by remaining in the same region, settling long-term and minimising disruptive relocations. Nevertheless, mobility remains central to these projects, not as circulation, but as capacity, option and horizon. Regular visits to the country of origin, maintaining the possibility of returning in situations involving care, crisis or failure, and making fine-grained adjustments to everyday mobility make long-term staying both feasible and desirable.

Theoretically, the paper frames immobility as an achievement produced through selective and anticipatory mobilities across multiple scales. It argues that the capacity to remain emerges not from the absence of mobility, but from its continued availability as a latent possibility. This potential mobility underpins participants' desire to stay, motivating investments in local relationships, place-based knowledge and everyday belonging.

By foregrounding immobility as a relational outcome rather than a residual category, the paper contributes to anthropological debates on (im)mobilities by demonstrating how privilege operates not only through movement, but also through the capacity to convert mobility into stability over time.