Turning the Mobility Turn: On the Past and Futures of the Anthropology of Im/mobility

This Chapter discusses the “mobility turn” in European anthropology through the lens of the ethnography of West Africa and the West African diaspora. This has provided us with an epistemic anchor to resist Eurocentric tendencies in some mobilities scholarship, as well as to find alternative ways of tracing pasts and futures in the anthropology of im/mobility. After describing how each of us engaged with the “mobility turn”, we critically re-turn to Africanist anthropology’s longstanding preoccupation with (human) mobility. This is not simply a search for a myth of origin in the anthropology of im/mobility. Rather, our goal is to re-turn to questions arising from a region – West Africa – that is “good to think” of and with im/mobility. And thus to inspire anthropologists to find analytical resources in their field sites. We illustrate this point through the widespread notions of the stranger and hospitality in West Africa.