Mobilities, Categorization, and Belonging: The Challenge of Reflexivity

Adopting Rogers Brubaker's and Frederick Cooper’s considerations on appropriate language in the human sciences, this article discusses two ontological perspectives on human mobilities: the first apprehends migratory phenomena as if they were natural, capable of being grasped by essentialized concepts such as identity; the second argues for their interpretation as cultural phenomena and requires a terminology that is mobile, context-sensitive and reflexive. The latter, constructivist approach can firstly inform research that deconstructs dominant narratives and generic concepts of “refugee” or “migrant” by revealing what these supposedly universal and intangible concepts of belonging mean in a given situation and context. It can also help to bring to light alternative – and often forgotten – social figures (Sozialfiguren) as well as figures of thought (Denkfiguren), highlighting shifting and ambiguous ways of belonging and sociability. The cases of the “Forty-Eighters”, the “Ruhr Poles”, the “emigrati" or the " sans-papiers”, who all opposed the dominant categorisations, deserve to be integrated into the into ongoing cross-border debates on the “identities” of individuals, groups, or larger spatial entities such as Europe.

This introduction was originally published in French as “Mobilités, catégorisation et appartenance. Un défi de réflexivité,” Annales HSS 76, no. 3 (2021): 445–55.

Friedrichs, Anne und Severin-Barboutie, Bettina (2024) "Mobilities, Categorization, and Belonging: The Challenge of Reflexivity." Annales HSS: English Edition 2024, S. 1-10. doi:10.1017/ahsse.2022.18