Abstract
ABSTRACT This article explores meaning making in mobilities research by deconstructing the duality of experience and representation. In so doing, it situates language as a form of social action and not a mere representation of preexisting acts of mobility. Drawing on case studies from ethnographic field work in southeastern Senegal, this article examines routines of verbal creativity among West African migrants as well as the life of a migrant who must balance his social investment between linked sites. Viewing representations of mobility instead as articulations helps capture language as a form of social action and reveals an emergent process of site-making in which migrants constitute the sites they act across. This approach to meaning making and representation in studies of (im)mobilities helps resolve several theoretical tensions and offers insights on how to study mobility with an attention to linguistic practice.
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