Immobility as loyalty: ‘Voluntariness’ and narratives of a duty to stay in the context of (non)migration decision making

Abstract

In order to broaden research into different forms of immobility, this article explores how immobility can be motivated by a sense of duty to stay by using data collected from residents of São Paulo, Brazil who had decided not to emigrate despite having the capability to do so. This is in the context of the increasing out-migration that Brazil is experiencing. The article argues that immobility that is motivated by a duty to stay cannot easily be classified as either voluntary or involuntary. Instead, the term ‘active immobility’ is proposed. Staying from a sense of duty to small-scale imagined social object such as ‘family’ is well documented. However, when analysing how duty can influence immobility, variations in scale are particularly important since the larger a social object is the less tangible and more abstract it becomes and thus there is a greater likelihood that there will be contestation about what that social object ‘looks like’. This article thus focuses on how a sense of duty to large scale social and geographical imaginaries such as ‘country’, ‘nation’ and ‘people’ impact (non)migration decision making. Exploring a sense of duty to be immobile amongst stayers thus reveals not only the geographical dimensions of motivations to stay but also the contested nature of the social objects that people imagine themselves as loyal to. The context is the recent political crisis in Brazil starting with the lava jato [car wash] corruption scandal and culminating in the election of President Jair Bolsonaro. These events polarised public opinion and exposed the contested nature of geographical imaginaries such as ‘Brazil’ or social imaginaries such as ‘the people’.