Human history is a history of mobility. For millennia, people have crisscrossed continents and oceans for a better life or to escape persecution. Millions of others were transported to labour as slaves or under other forms of coercion. When people moved, their values, knowledge, and ideas moved with them. Human mobility has transformed the planet, formed and reformed societies,
and created the world in which we live. Mobility is also at the heart of contemporary governance. Immigration is a major preoccupation in many
countries. Migrants crossing national borders are a small fraction of movements within them. Migration to the west is merely the tip of larger mobilities within Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Mobility can be a necessity, asset, or privilege. What makes people move? How is mobility experienced and how do spatial and social mobilities relate? How do they intersect with race, class, gender, indigeneity, ethnicity, and other markers of inequality and difference? How do states regulate borders, border zones, and movements across and within their territories? How are refugees and migrants governed? How do policies towards ‘foreigners’ impact on citizenship and democracy? Such questions underscore how understanding mobility is important both for its own sake and for the perspective it offers on the world.
- Teacher: Alessandro Ambrosino
- Teacher: Gopalan Balachandran