Psychology and human mobility: Introduction to the special issue and ways forward.

Abstract

In this introduction to the special issue on psychology and human mobility, we begin by outlining the particularities of the European sociopolitical context to which the studies included in this special issue refer. We discuss internal European mobility, overseas migration to the European Union, the refugee ‘crisis’, and its sociopolitical implications for the European Union. Subsequently, we discuss the ways that the different studies relate to and extend existing literature to new directions, focusing on three different facets of immigration addressed by the studies: (a) the ideological resources used in discourse to achieve certain political ends in relation to immigration, (b) the ways that a dialogical engagement with the social other is established or blocked, and (c) the perspectives of mobile people themselves in experiencing different forms of immigration. As a conclusion, we argue that the studies contribute to the field of human mobility by offering a methodologically plural, processual, and critical analysis of immigration and by showing four different directions as ways to advance the field further. These are: (a) the importance of understanding processes rather than states in the study of immigration, (b) the value of studying discursive practices but also moving beyond discourse to achieve methodological pluralism, (c) the need to engage with multiple perspectives involved in immigration and to understand how they relate to each other, and (d) the need to problematize the taken-for-granted categories that researchers use in studying immigration (e.g., locals/migrants, us/them).