The nexus of (im)mobilities: hyper, compelled, and forced mobile subjects

ABSTRACT

This essay theorizes three types of mobile subjects: the hyper mobile (those who are allowed, and encouraged to, travel for work or leisure), the compelled mobile (those compelled, by design of the global economy, to move for work) and the forced mobile (those who move for survival but often end up contained, incarcerated or detained). I explore how these travelling subjects are simultaneously intimate, enmeshed, and disconnected. Theorizing the relationships between mobile subjects, which I term the nexus of (im)mobility, illuminates how settler colonial logics, racial hierarchies and capitalist accumulation produce mobility today. Bringing Black and Indigenous theories together with mobilities studies, I present case studies to investigate the ways that structures of private property, nation-states and their borders, tourism, and concepts of whiteness/Westernity as superior work together to normalize categories of (im)mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• migrants
• refugees
• tourism
• colonialism
• borders
• capitalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. So much thanks and gratitude to the external reviewers for their help with this article, as well as to the editors of the special issue, especially Laura Barraclough. Thanks also to Yi Chien Jade Ho, Sharmeen Khan and Deanna Del Vecchio.

2. Examples are numerous; Canadian industry and military are present in countries that produce the most refugees in the world, including Eritrea, where Canadian mining firm Nevsun cooperated with the authoritarian government to create dangerous, violent and forced working conditions, and Afghanistan, where Canada perpetuated war for over a decade .

3. A search of pictures of the Float Down reveals that the vast majority of participants are white; the town of Port Huron is 84% white.

4. These words were seen by the author in advertisements for Fathom aired on TVs in the Toronto subway between 2015–2017.

5. Fathom’s website is now defunct; it has been archived by the Way Back Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20150607231810/http://www.fathom.org/what-is-impact-travel/