What is it about?
This article explores the close relationship between imagination and human mobility. It argues that people do not move only because of economic, political, or practical reasons. Movement is also shaped by how people imagine other places, possible futures, different lifestyles, and alternative ways of being. At the same time, mobility itself influences how people imagine the world and their place within it. The article distinguishes between imagination, the ongoing human capacity to imagine, and imaginaries, the socially shared ideas, images, and narratives that people inherit and circulate within societies. These imaginaries influence how people think about migration, travel, home, borders, opportunity, and belonging. The paper also highlights that mobility and immobility are closely connected. Understanding why people move requires understanding why others stay put, are unable to move, or choose not to move. Drawing on research from anthropology, mobility studies, and cultural psychology, the article shows that imagination is not merely a form of escape from reality but an active force that shapes people's decisions, aspirations, identities, and experiences of movement across the world.
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Why is it important?
The article is important because it brings together two fields that are often studied separately: mobility research and the study of imagination. Rather than treating movement as a purely physical process, it demonstrates that mobility is also symbolic, emotional, and imaginative. People migrate, travel, stay, or return not only because of external circumstances but also because of how they imagine their futures and interpret possibilities. The paper is particularly timely because contemporary societies are increasingly shaped by global migration, digital connectivity, mobility restrictions, and unequal access to movement. It also challenges simplistic assumptions that mobility automatically leads to freedom or progress. By paying attention to both mobility and immobility, as well as to the imaginaries that shape them, the article offers a more nuanced understanding of human experience in an interconnected world. Its interdisciplinary framework provides useful insights for researchers, policymakers, and anyone interested in migration, belonging, identity, and social change.
Perspectives
One of the motivations behind this paper was my growing concern that discussions of mobility often focus too narrowly on observable movements while overlooking the imaginative dimensions that make movement meaningful. Throughout my research, I have repeatedly encountered people whose lives were shaped as much by dreams, hopes, expectations, and imagined futures as by actual travel or migration. This article therefore encourages us to see imagination not as a secondary aspect of mobility but as one of its central components. At the same time, it reminds us to be cautious about idealizing mobility. In a world where the ability to move is distributed highly unevenly, the most meaningful form of freedom may not be mobility itself but the possibility of choosing whether to move or remain where one is. Understanding this tension is essential if we want a richer and more humane understanding of contemporary life.
Professor Noel B. Salazar
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: On imagination and imaginaries, mobility and immobility: Seeing the forest for the trees, Culture & Psychology, June 2020, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1354067x20936927.
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