Introduction: Across Landscapes of Hierarchy and Belonging - Social Meanings of Spatial Im/Mobility
Creators: name: Lagace, Martha
name: Atanasova, Daniela
Publisher: name: Stichproben - Verein zur Förderung und Publikation wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten aus den Afrikawissenschaften
Year: 2023
Subjects: Globalgeschichte
Global history
ÖFOS 2012 -- GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (6) -- Geschichte, Archäologie (601) -- Geschichte, Archäologie (6010) -- Globalgeschichte (601023)
ÖFOS 2012 -- HUMANITIES (6) -- History, Archaeology (601) -- History, Archaeology (6010) -- Global history (601023)
Sozialgeschichte
Social history
ÖFOS 2012 -- GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (6) -- Geschichte, Archäologie (601) -- Geschichte, Archäologie (6010) -- Sozialgeschichte (601029)
ÖFOS 2012 -- HUMANITIES (6) -- History, Archaeology (601) -- History, Archaeology (6010) -- Social history (601029)
Afrikanistik
African studies
ÖFOS 2012 -- GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (6) -- Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften (602) -- Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften (6020) -- Afrikanistik (602001)
ÖFOS 2012 -- HUMANITIES (6) -- Linguistics and Literature (602) -- Linguistics and Literature (6020) -- African studies (602001)
Mobility
Immobility
transnational mobilities
social mobility
spatial mobility

description: Where does spatial mobility take people socially? This question matters in African studies for understanding and explaining the coexistence on the continent of intense diversities (of languages, culture, and social systems, for example) alongside commonalities and shared understandings, all drawing on millennia of moving (Manning 2018: 221). It also matters for attending to social forces bringing people together or accelerating inequality. For mobility and migration do not take place only in geographical space, but invariably carry implications for a person or group’s social positioning and identity. This is evidenced in the fact that mobility often continues long after the act of actual physical movement has been completed, especially if moving involved the crossing of borders, as between countries, and boundaries, as between social spaces or social groups (Salazar 2018). This movement reverberates at the level of memory, identities, belonging, social connections, imagination, and imaginaries, as temporalities of past, present, and future intertwine and converge. At the same time, mobility takes on a spiritual and moral signiicance in many African contexts and can often be the expression of dynamic cultures that continue to exert an influence across vast geographical distances including beyond the continent. Sociocultural and religious norms and practices travel (and transform) with mobile subjects (de Bruijn et al. 2001) both literally and through imagination and memory, which are kept alive by lasting ties and interactions. Yet, as some articles in this special issue will demonstrate, the continued impact of cultures across space and time is not self-evident but has to be negotiated and enforced by both mobile and less-mobile people in mutually beneicial relationships. One aspect of such relationships is resources, such as time and economic capital (after Bourdieu 1986), which can be set into motion and exchanged to fulill social norms and thereby ensure the maintenance of identity, a sense of belonging, and social status. These are all a matter of individ‐ ual perception and of ascription/recognition by others according to shared values, so that social hierarchies and groupings have both a subjective and an objective dimension (Noret 2020).