Mediated by the materiality of spaces

Abstract

This commentary considers how the special issue ‘Mobilising Language, Gender and Sexuality Studies’ contributes to recent developments in theories that demonstrate the importance of taking a posthumanist approach to sociolinguistics research. While the papers in the special issue show how mobile communities, including migrants, asylum seekers, sex workers and domestic workers, make sense of and participate in different activities in the world, this commentary shows that people in these communities also make sense of themselves with reference to different spaces – both real and imaginary, and both near and distant. Teasing out these aspects, the commentary suggests keeping research about posthumanism, the Global South and alternative ways of doing sociolinguistics at the core of the exploration of the complexities inherent in language practices, gender, sexuality, and individual and collective mobility, migration and resistance.