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Can we think about the role of media and information and communication technologies in the lives of forced migrants through the lens of immobility? The dominant focus in the communication studies literature is on mobility, movement and connectivity. Migration studies and anthropology however offer productive ways to conceptualize the mobility–immobility spectrum as well as the imaginative dimensions of (im)mobility. Building on two studies that were situated at the temporal and geographical edges of the 'European refugee crisis' – a 2015 study in a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey and a 2017–2018 study with Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees in Belgium – this article develops a conceptual framework of media and immobility in the context of forced migration. It coins the pair concepts affective immobility and symbolic immobility to highlight and understand practices of disengagement with media and information and communication technologies, agentic disconnectivity and feelings of symbolic fixedness.

AbstractThis paper explores the motivations and barriers behind the decision of economically disadvantaged Moldovans to refrain from migrating for better economic prospects. Drawing on 30 qualitative interviews with voluntary stayers, it uncovers a range of individual‐level characteristics that impede migration aspirations. These findings highlight the heightened sensitivity of lower‐wage stayers to their perceived social status abroad, their limited adaptability to new cultures and environments and their lower willpower to endure the challenges of long‐term gains. Moreover, this paper sheds light on their contentment with modest material gains and their aversion to migration risks. At the structural level, it emphasizes how social inequalities act as barriers for specific social groups, particularly the economically disadvantaged. These empirical insights challenge prevailing assumptions about the dominance of economic costs and network abroad in migration decision‐making, offering a fresh perspective on the social factors and costs shaping stayers' choices.

Globalization theorists frequently claim that the disembedding of social relations across various dimensions renders obsolete the former object of sociology, namely 'society'. The exceptional change to social life arising from globalization demands that sociality is viewed in more fluid and complex ways than in the past. A closer examination of classical concepts of the social would reveal more nuanced and multidimensional concepts. I suggest that globalization does not entail the stretching of social relations beyond recognition, but reconfigures spaces and identities according to powerful dynamics. Classical theory emphasizes the embeddedness of exchanges and flows in social and cultural relations. This will be exemplified with reference to migration, which both epitomizes globalizing tendencies and illustrates its limitations. Along with mobile subjects there are immobile subjects (racialized migrants) policed by actual and threatened violence, who have been underplayed in globalization theory. The paper concludes that concepts of the 'social' may need rethinking but central to this should be an understanding of the interlocking of mobility with the circulation of capital, commodities and cultural practices.

This research note looks closely at transnational mobility as a lived experience in the city of Kathmandu, Nepal. It sheds light on the lives of aspirant migrants to show how uncertainties around mobility shape their everyday lives in the city, whereby immobility is not juxtaposed against mobility but is rather interwoven with it. (Asien / GIGA)