http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4599-3582
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ABSTRACT
This paper analyses the interrelationship between patterns of im/mobility on the one hand and the reconstitution of social collective identities and the related emergence or settlement of conflicts on the other. The main arguments are (1) that the im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa, and (2) that these dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, the contribution provides the conceptual background for a special issue that aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Established or emerging dynamics of (non-)integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. Conflict situations in contexts of mobility involve changes in the social understanding and renegotiation, reconstruction or reproduction of group identities and narratives with reference to certain socio-political and historical patterns. The legitimation of rights and access to various forms of citizenship and mobility need to be understood against the backdrop of emerging or established mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups, which trigger or settle conflicts and make social identities to be constantly renegotiated.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
* Conceptual paper.
1. Lucas (Citation2012) in his study investigated the social exclusion of certain economically and socially disadvantaged groups in the UK through the lack of transport.
2. Other actors can include, for instance, people smugglers and traffickers (see e.g. Derks, Citation2010, p. 922; Missbach, Citation2015), or recruiters.
3. Often, states fail to protect migrants’ human rights that are officially granted, but are not enforced in their everyday lives, e.g. by providing equal access to market economy and social goods (Dembour & Kelly, Citation2011). Such exclusion is what made Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’ so attractive for migration studies (Derks, Citation2013, p. 221). Agamben (Citation1998, p. 183) defines bare life to be a condition in which a human being is ‘stripped of every right’. As Derks (Citation2013, p. 222) put it, ‘it is a life that is excluded from the political order, and yet in continuous relationship with the sovereign power that produced it’.
4. See also Bal’s earlier analysis of migration in the borderlands between Bangladesh and India (Bal & Chambugong, Citation2014).
5. For Bangladesh see e.g. Gerharz (Citation2014, p. 115). For the so-called putra daerah issue in Indonesian see e.g. Bräuchler (Citation2015, chapter 2).