The im/mobilities of ‘sometimes-migrating’ for abortion: Ireland to Great Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper furthers the concept of im/mobilities through an investigation of the reproductive mobilities of women migrating for abortion from Ireland (north and south) to Great Britain. Where more often the focus of reproductive mobilities concerns the movement of people and matter in order to reproduce, there is less (although some) attention to movement aligned with the prevention of reproduction. We consider the variegated im/mobilities of conception not brought to birth, in the frictional movement of people, things, ideologies and imaginations in staying with and moving beyond the dichotomy of mobility and immobility. We engage in transdisciplinary dialogue between mobilities and migration studies. Hence, underlying this exploration is the concept of the ‘sometimes-migrant’, used to challenge binary oppositions between mobility and immobility, broader conceptualisations of ‘migrants’ as ‘exceptional’, and more specifically the notion of travelling for abortion as ‘abortion-tourism’. We adopt the call to focus on different incarnations of the ‘sometimes-migrant’ in the form of women travelling temporarily across national borders of intermittent porosity in order to seek care that is not available in their own country. Intersections of migration and mobilities reveal the ways women are im/mobilised through geopolitical and cultural practices at local and global scales.     

Forum 4: the environmental privilege of borders in the anthropocene

ABSTRACT

Mobility can indicate a powerful or privileged relationship with one’s environment. The ability to exercise mobility or not (of oneself or others) is an exertion of power that demarcates where particular people belong and under what kind of environmental conditions. This essay focuses on the significance of borders in creating environmental privilege in the Anthropocene. Environmental privilege is accrued through the exercise of economic, political, and cultural power that enables the construction of exclusive environmental amenities such as clean air and water, open space, and safe neighborhoods. For years, environmental justice scholars have revealed the burdens and oppressive conditions associated with environmental inequality, but few studies consider the flipside of that reality. We argue that environmental privileges enjoyed by some rest upon the manipulation of the mobility of others – human and nonhuman. We believe border making will come under greater pressure as the effects of climate change increase, and the volume of resources required to maintain exclusive spaces intensifies. Continued mass migration will bring heightened anxieties about national identity and calls for greater border enforcement, despite the reality that borders – both literal and figurative – consistently fail to alleviate migratory pressures while exacerbating the effects of climate change and environmental injustice. Our research shows that greater ecological instability increases efforts to create privatized places as pristine spaces untouched by global turmoil, thereby reinforcing those social forces that produce environmental injustices in the first place.     

Everything changes to stay the same: persistent global health inequalities amidst new therapeutic opportunities and mobilities for Filipino nurses

ABSTRACT

The global migration of Filipino nurses has received significant attention, yet little is known of these healthcare workers’ experiences and mobilities within the Philippines. I explore the experiences and narratives of Filipino nurses living in Manila, some of whom have no desires to migrate. I uncover the often novel forms of therapeutic mobilities undertaken by these nurses, focusing on call centre nursing and entrepreneurship as key alternative career pathways within the realms of ‘therapeutics’. Through interrogating the various mobilities undertaken by nurses – physical mobilities and migration, socioeconomic mobilities and occupational mobilities in the form of a career change – it becomes clear that international physical mobility is no longer key. Nevertheless, Filipino nurses continue to provide care in global contexts in novel ‘therapeutic’ industries and doing so allows them to increase their socioeconomic mobility.     

The politics of leisure and labor mobilities: discourses of tourism and transnational migration in Central Java,Indonesia

This article presents narratives and tropes of transnational tourism from a less considered perspective: rural migrant-origin villagers of Central Java. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cilacap and Yogyakarta, I analyze how and why some former temporary labor migrants depict their typically harsh experiences in terms of tourism and leisure. Addressing the tendency in current research to approach labor migration and tourism as mutually exclusive or unrelated class categories and experiences, I consider the ways in which former migrants and non-migrant villagers evaluate or identify labor migration in terms of gender, class, religious, and ethno-national subjectivities associated with ‘tourist’ and/or ‘migrant’ categories. Popular and commercial imaginations of leisure travel and tourism importantly shape the subjectivities and positionalities of precarious labor migrants. Foregrounding the relations between tourism and labor migration reveals the multi-scalar ways in which associated discourses and infrastructures of both mutually shape and constitute global socio-economic inequalities.     

The contradictory politics of the right to travel: mobilities,borders & tourism

ABSTRACT

The freedom of movement and right to travel are intrinsic to the growth of international tourism. Notwithstanding the inchoate nature of the right to tourism, the entitlement to travel and to pursue tourism without hindrance is firmly established in advanced capitalist societies. Moreover, the right to tourism has been recently enshrined in the 2017 United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics. Tourists’ ease of mobility contrasts starkly with the movements of less privileged forms of mobility that may be variously constrained by racism, xenophobia and restrictive border controls. This paper contends that rather than a mere reflection of accumulated political rights (citizenship), such unequal and differentiated mobilities are conditioned by a complex assemblage of discursive frameworks and structural forces that are played out in specific historical-geographic contexts. Accordingly, we argue that the rights associated with global tourism must be analysed in the context of the contradictory politics of global mobility, or indeed in terms of the ‘mobility crisis’. This ‘crisis’ is one that is rooted in and shaped by the cumulative legacy of past colonial orders, global capitalism and geopolitical realignments, in addition to multi-scalar systems of governance through which borders are constituted, managed and policed.     

Intertwined therapeutic mobilities: knowledge,plants, healers on the move between Laos and the U.S.

ABSTRACT

We investigate the notion of therapeutic mobilities through the case study of transnational health care practices and medicinal flows within the Hmong diaspora between Laos and the U.S. Drawing upon narratives of traditional healers, pickers, and plant sellers, as well as a collection of postal registers, we highlight how therapeutic mobilities follow the routes of migration and organize the practices of healing among Hmong in receiving countries, particularly in the U.S. Through the different and multidirectional aspects of therapeutic mobilities, we illustrate how transnational healing touches upon questions of cultural identity within the Hmong diaspora. Therapeutic mobilities not only involve border-crossing, they also strengthen existing bonds within the Hmong diaspora. Similarly, herbal treatments not only achieve a therapeutic function, they also represent a range of meanings and values for patients. We explore the fabric of therapeutic mobilities through the prism of translocality and medical pluralism.     

Forum 1: Migrant climate in the Kinocene

ABSTRACT

In this intervention, I put forward five short theses on the topic of ‘Anthropocene mobilities.’ My aim is not to unpack every concept contained herein but rather to provide a provocative introductory synthesis of five big ideas about Anthropocene mobility for further discussion. 1) We are living in the Kinocene, 2) The ontology of our time is an ontology of motion, 3) We need a new movement-oriented political theory to grapple better with the mobile events of our time. We need a kinopolitics, 4) Climate change is a weapon of primitive accumulation. 5) The Kinocene presents us with the danger of new forms of domination (a new colonialism, a new climate capitalism, new states, and new borders) but also with the opportunity for a new revolutionary sequence.     

A family affair: Evidence of chain migration during the mass emigration from the county of Halland in Sweden to the United States in the 1890s

This paper examines the influence of individual and household factors on an individual’s propensity to emigrate from Halland, a region in south-west Sweden, to the United States during the era of mass migration in the late nineteenth century. The study has a case–control design, using individual-level longitudinal data for a group of emigrants (cases) and a group of non-emigrants (controls). Results indicate the importance of a family’s emigration history; individuals whose relatives had previously moved to the United States were more likely to emigrate themselves. In addition, the results also show how this impact varied between groups and how other factors relating to the individual’s life situation affected the migration decision. Thus, this paper shows how chain migration and migration networks play important roles during times of mass migration.     

Replacement Migration: A Questionable Tactic for Delaying the Inevitable Effects of Fertility Transition

This article critiques a recent U.N. Population Division report, Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? The report explores the use of increased immigration to bolster future population size and change age distribution patterns in a group of developed countries. Fertility rate declines and lengthening life expectancies associated with demographic transition inevitably yield an aging population and a falling potential support ratio (PSR), a situation which some demographers and economists view with alarm. As the U.N. report itself suggests, replacement migration can only temporarily delay population aging and decline. These issues are ultimately better addressed through changes in retirement policy. Population projections should be used only with great caution in designing long-term demographic policy. In particular, some assumptions used to make the U.N. projections are questionable, and even minor changes in those assumptions would yield substantially different policy conclusions. Replacement migration also raises difficult environmental questions by moving large numbers of people from low to high per-capita consumption nations. Modest population decline, particularly in more developed countries, may have significant local and global environmental and climate policy benefits.