Nick Gill

Victoria Mason

Javier Caletrío

Whether precipitated by political or environmental factors, human displacement can be more fully understood by attending to the ways in which a set of bodily, material, imagined and virtual mobilities and immobilities interact to produce population movement. Very little work, however, has addressed the fertile middle ground between mobilities and forced migration. This book sets out the ways in which theories of mobilities can enrich forced migration studies as well as some of the insights into mobilities that forced migration research offers.The book covers the challenges faced by both forced migrants and receiving authorities. It applies these challenges to regions such as the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa. In particular, the chapter on Iraq to Jordan foced migration tests the sincerity of the concept of Pan-Arabism; the chapters on Bangladesh and Ethiopia deal with the more historically familiar variables of warfare and famine as drivers of forced migration.This book will be of value to practitioners in the area of human rights and to scholars of racial and ethnic politics, human geography and globalization.This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

Mobilities and Forced Migration

Thomas Birtchnell

Small in number but great in influence, mobile elites have shaped the contours of global capitalism. Today these elites continue to flourish globally but in a changing landscape. The current economic crisis—and rising concerns about the moral legitimacy of extreme wealth—coincides with stern warnings over the risks posed by climate change and the unsustainable use of resources. Often an out-of-bounds topic in critical social science, elites are thought of as too inaccessible a group to interview and too variable a minority to measure. This groundbreaking collection sets out to challenge this perception. Through the careful examination of the movements of the one per cent through the everyday spaces of the ninety-nine per cent, Elite Mobilities investigates the shared zones elites inhabit alongside the commons: the executive lounge in the airport, the penthouse in the hotel, or the gated community next to the slum. Bringing together the pioneer scholars in critical sociology today, this collection explores how social scientists can research, map, and ‘track’ the flows and residues of objects, wealth and power surrounding the hypermobile. Elite Mobilities sets a new benchmark in social science efforts to research the powerful and the privileged. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in mobilities, transport, tourism, social stratification, class, inequality, consumption, and global environmental change.

Javier Caletrío

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