This research challenge explores the relationships between migration and other non-human mobilities such as the movement of goods, data and living beings. These relationships can be direct, indirect and metaphorical. It examines how broadening our approach and making connections with other forms of mobility and with the non-human that moves we can better understand how human movement impacts on and reflects eco-systems, socio-economic relations and technological change.
This research challenge traces movements of the human and non-human and the connections between them to help develop a systemic understanding of migration. For example, one of the primary drivers of the movement of people has been the search for markets, for land and for work; the movement of the COVID-19 virus has been enabled by human movement and has had an impact on human mobilities; the movement of data has both facilitated and restricted border crossings. We explore the materiality of mobilities to make connections and better understand the impact of policy and activist interventions.
Key research questions include:
- How are these movements, and our understandings of them, gendered?
- When is migrant labour an object and when is it a determinant of capital’s mobility?
- What role do cities, sub-national territorial formations and regional arrangements play in capitalism(s) and what does this mean for understanding flows of people?
- How does anxiety about climate change and its consequences affect attitudes to human movement?
Latest blogs related to this challenge:
- Instead of separating thousands more families – rethink UK family migration policiesBy Katharine Charsley and Helena Wray. Last week, new immigration rules were laid before parliament that will force thousands of British citizens and settled residents to live apart from their partner and even… Read more: Instead of separating thousands more families – rethink UK family migration policies
- Invisible: domestic workers’ commutes in Latin AmericaBy Valentina Montoya Robledo and Rachel Randall. Read the Spanish version here. Domestic workers make up one in every five working women in Latin America, totalling approximately 13 million individuals. In recent decades,… Read more: Invisible: domestic workers’ commutes in Latin America
- The ethics of mapping migrant violence through MexicoBy Sylvanna Falcón. From October 2021 through to May 2022 undergraduate students from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of California, Berkeley, participated in a human rights investigation with Human… Read more: The ethics of mapping migrant violence through Mexico
Linked projects:
Current:
- ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures
- Transnational Organised Crime at Sea: New evidence for better responses
- Hidden Narratives of Transnational Organised Crime in West Africa
-
Protecting the Rights of Migrant Workers in Hungary through Public Procurement
- Migrants and Systemic Resilience (Mig-Res-Hub) – A Global COVID19 Research and Policy Hub
Previous:
- (de)Bordering: Creative research exploring the politics of immigration and the
environment through planting - Re-visiting Child Sex Tourism, Re-thinking Business Responses
- Globalising Luxuries
- Migration, Development and Global Transformations (MDGT)
Research Challenge Co-ordinator:
Dr Juan Zhang, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology