Introduction: Reconfiguring essential and existential (im)mobilities

Abstract

The Introduction to this Special Issue, themed ‘Navigating Hurdles and Reconfiguring (Im)mobilities in Times of Corona' departs from a reflection over what constitutes a ‘crisis', and accordingly reflects over the notions ‘essential’ and ‘existential’ that have been devised extensively in research, as well as in official and colloquial discourses, to describe diverse types of mobilities. The Introduction engages with the concepts of ‘crisis' and ‘emergency' that set the tone of the social reality during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it aims to conceptualize the paradigm shift of (im)mobilities reinforced at the outbreak of the pandemic within the wider debates around ‘crisis' and ‘emergency', further scrutinizing the official and colloquial discourses assumed during the pandemic. Accordingly, the Introduction discusses the concepts of essential, non-essential, and existential mobilities as understood amidst and outside of the critical times of the pandemic. In doing so, it offers a theoretical basis from which the discussion of the Special Issue departs. Finally, the Introduction engages with the concept of ‘pace' as a theoretical lens to understand (im)mobilities, and proposes the concept of ‘reconfiguration', as a tool that enables us to focus on the agentive actors' discourses and practices to reconstitute a meaningful life, and navigate the (im)mobility regimes forged amidst the critical times of corona.

Emergent (im)mobilities amidst critical times

This special issue explores the entanglements between the paradigm of (im)mobilities enforced during the Covid-19 pandemic, and individual agentive efforts to navigate it. It stems from the panel ‘Navigating hurdles and pacing (im)mobilities in times of corona’, which was co-convened by Chrysi Kyratsou, Noel B. Salazar and Marta Kempny, and which took place at the EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) 2022 biennial conference, hosted in July 2022 by the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. The for our lifetimes novel predicaments produced by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and, perhaps even more, by the management aimed at curbing its spread, made unquestionable the need to maintain and extend the discussion beyond the conference. This has, indeed, happened, especially given the resonance of the aftermath of the pandemic, and the precedents formed that continue to linger.

The predicaments of the outbreak and management of the pandemic revolved tangibly around the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’, each of which foregrounded the (perceived) exceptional conditions determining the lived social reality at that time and justified the responses to them. The concept of ‘crisis’ refers to a turning point, when cracks in the existing order that suggest its decay become noticeable, and subjects experiencing this may also realize their different interests, or experiment with different alternatives (see Hage, 2015). Here, we should also note the banality that underpins the usage of the term ‘crisis’ across contexts (Hage, 2012), as well as the continuity (Cabot, 2015) and even chronicity that may characterize it (Vigh, 2008).

The protracted duration, the succession of events, as well as the lingering effect of a given crisis, in conjunction with the widespread usage of the term, make one wonder about the radicality involved. Yet, what are beyond doubt are the sharp human dynamics of crises, whose intensities ‘makes it hard to plan research’ into them, and hence we tend to know little about them (Salazar, 2020). In that lies the noted ambiguity of a crisis, being a source of great distress for those affected and, simultaneously, an opportunity to get uniquely in-depth insights into humans and societies (Salazar, 2020). Our special issue aspires to enhance such insights by focusing on the multiple and, at times contested, understandings, practices and experiences of (im)mobilities as expressed, challenged, and eventually reconfigured amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

Athanasiou (2018), starting from a multitude of examples centred on the crises of Greek society in the 2010s, reflects on the governability of a crisis by devising a ‘state of emergency’. As she argues:

neoliberal governments use the ever-present emergency of crisis, with all its accompanying affective apparatuses of fear and insecurity, in order to legitimize the necessity to take action in the direction of managing uncertainty and establishing a new and secure normality. Crisis necessitates the realism of constant management – both preemptive and reparative.

Athanasiou’s entanglement of a ‘crisis’ with a ‘state of emergency’, as a response of the latter to the first with the aim of reinforcing normality, foregrounds the intensely emotional aspects of the process, dominated by fear and insecurity. Their affectivity is fundamental in enabling the multifaceted management of the crisis. The need for a ‘constant’, ‘preemptive’ and ‘reparative’ management – considered in conjunction with the always lingering effect of intense emotions – further contrasts with the temporary character usually associated with an ‘emergency’: its effects after all, tend to be lasting.

The concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’ were traced palpably and maybe foremost in the regulation of humans’ (im)mobilities in ways that radically questioned what had been taken for granted so far, at least for certain parts of society, that is, those who were endowed with the privilege of exercizing their right to mobility without facing considerable constraints. Regulations revolved around the axis of ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ mobilities, devising pre-existing categorizations for each, and reinforcing whether they would be allowed at all, and if so for whom, when, where and how (Salazar, 2021). As Salazar notes, ‘as far as mobility is concerned, situations labelled as “crisis” bring societal categorizations such as essential versus non-essential mobilities, which usually remain unspoken, explicitly to the fore’ (2021: 21). After all, a crisis and any governability response to it, emerge within pre-existing contexts, urging for a stirring of their fundamental elements. A ‘crisis’ ‘becomes a complex assemblage of power relations’, while the ‘normative administrative discourses’ deployed for its management prove its character as non-exceptional, but rather ‘ordinary, systematic, canonical, and foundational’ (Athanasiou, 2018: 19). The paradigm of (im)mobilities reinforced the inherent limitations of established regimes of mobility within a nevertheless rigid spatially grounded (b)ordered logic of the nation-state, as a predominant form of organization of the modern world. In a way, this reinforced paradigm confirmed an already noted ‘proliferation’ of international borders brought about by the convergence of a multitude of factors and forces (cf. Wilson and Donnan, 2012: 1). It further prompted new understandings over the actual necessity of maintaining certain states of (im)mobility to fulfil sometimes individual and sometimes collective visions and expectations of leading a meaningful life. This new paradigm of (im)mobilities exacerbated the conditions within which asylum-seekers, refugees and forced migrants had to exercize their own right to mobility (cf. DeGenova 2017), as demographic groups whose positionality has always been marginal to the destination/ host society, and whose (im)mobilities therefore have been subject to specific regulations. The discussion developed through the contributions to our special issue starts from the foregrounding of all these aspects of distinct forms of (im)mobilities, as realized, navigated and challenged in pandemic times.

Having in mind the relevant anthropological debates around ‘crisis’, but also the disciplinary objective to be critical of the narratives framing social reality, our special issue has aimed to distance from discussing the materialities of the ‘crisis’. After all, a ‘crisis’ not only involves a re-enactment of established discourses in a context perceived as critically new, but also inherently entails a ‘critique’ ‘with reference to questions of what counts as crisis and how critical responses are articulated’ (Athanasiou, 2018: 15). As Cabot argues, drawing on the etymology of ‘crisis’ in Greek, it also marks a point of ‘reckoning’, a point of ‘judgement’, when ‘many of us seem to agree that our worlds are changing – though we may not know why and how – and we engage collectively (though often in wildly differing ways) in questioning the past, present, and the future’ (Cabot, 2015). Thus, and considering the disciplinary scope of anthropology, as well as the privileged understandings it can offer in studying ‘crises’ in specific, as well as discourses around them, we aim to explore their reverberations with individuals, who, as agentive actors, have found themselves in the position of making decisions and judgements regarding the hurdles that emerged in leading everyday life as they used to. From there, the special issue focuses on debating the shifting meaningfulness of (im)mobilities, as forged by the ‘crisis’. It is from this that any agentive action for negotiation and navigation is initiated. We thus assume a focus on the ‘crisis’ that aligns with how it was embodied by human actors, who then, in turn, adopted their own tactics and strategies to live their everyday and plan for their future as appropriate to the current circumstances, carefully balancing the stakes and ensuring that their lifecourse maintained its viability and meaningfulness.

Pacing and reconfiguring

The concept of ‘pace’, as an analytical lens that enables insights into ‘the dynamic relationships between people, space and time’ (Amit and Salazar, 2020: 2), sets the tone for the initial conversations around (im)mobilities ‘in times of corona’. Living at a time when (social) distancing and isolation, along with an indefinite postponement of certain facets of human activity integrally entangled with mobilities set the rhythm of the everyday, the concept of ‘pacing (im)mobilities’ sheds light on the dynamics that defined the merging of socialities spatially and temporally expressed and experienced.

The key dipole – ‘essential’ vs ‘non-essential’ mobilities – pertaining largely to the measures suggested by public health policy-makers to prevent the spread of the pandemic, shaped the matrix upon which individuals’ agentive decisions and actions materialized. It shaped a dynamic that superseded that of a protracted postponement of an unconditionally mobile present. It rather resonated with the discourses of the ‘crisis’, in the sense that it suggested a generalized evaluation of individuals’ mobilities, reinforcing a standardization of their value and implemented top-down. In turn, it urged individuals to employ their judgement and enact the relevant policies in place, thus appropriating their behaviour and choices. At the intersection of the two, and critically interrogating the narratives pertaining to each category, and the respective permission or prohibition determining its feasibility, the question of these narratives’ meaningfulness , and how this is produced, prompts us to shift our attention beyond the dipole of ‘essential’/ ‘non-essential’. More specifically, it encourages us to see how certain mobilities acquired an ‘existential’ dimension and were transformed into ‘essential’ and ‘existential’ mobilities.

As Salazar (2018) argues, the meaningfulness and gravity of mobilities is determined at an individual and societal level. Socio-cultural processes that ascribe meaning to mobilities are entrenched in power relationships and these processes are reflected in those actors whose legal jurisdictions allow them to distinguish between ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ mobilities (Salazar, 2021: 21). The vast variation between types of mobilities ascribed to either category is further complexified by the factors determining people’s agreement (or not) with these (Salazar, 2021: 22). While (non-)essential mobilities tend to be applicable on a macro-level, from a socio-economic point of view, existential mobilities intertwine with individuality and perceptions around the entanglement of (im)mobility and achieving quality of life, or, perhaps even more importantly, a purposeful existence (Salazar, 2021: 23). However, experience and research prove the essential character that mobilities otherwise framed as ‘existential’, may have, while, as we shall see throughout the contributions in this special issue, certain ‘essential’ mobilities may acquire an existential character. Hage argues elaborately for the merging of the essential with the existential by complicating the relationship between personal aspirations and the social expectations, and foregrounding the decisive role that leading a purposeful and fulfilling life has in people’s mobilities (Hage, 2009: 98). The intricate balance between the at times mutually constitutive categories is closely examined under the lens of our special issue, so that the factors determining it and its meaning are understood in depth.

To that end, the contributions of this issue unfold the discussion around the concept of ‘reconfiguration’. From an etymological point of view, this concept entails reflection on a previous order, consideration of an actualized change, and experimentations with possible rearrangements of the pre-existing elements of that set order in alternative ways, so that an adjustment to the new conditions is successful. ‘Reconfiguration’ is a term infused with the qualities of ‘crisis’ and ‘critique’, that enables someone to wonder about the subjects whose social realities have been subject to presumably radical change, and who attempt to regain their sense of control and of meaningful living (and moving) through their agentive actions. If a ‘crisis’ marks a radical shift in the equilibrium of a certain order, ‘reconfiguration’ entails ‘critique’, by means of a ‘critical response’, a reckoning as to what has happened, and decision-making over what has been done, and will have to be done, to rebalance. Therefore, we may understand ‘reconfiguration of mobilities’ as a response to the materialities of the pandemic crisis and the (im)mobilities regime that was enforced, and as a conceptualization of the agentive efforts of (im)mobile subjects to regain a sense of the meaningfulness of their circumstances. This concept underlines the agentive entanglements of the socio-political and the personal. It does so by showing the in-between ground being shaped constantly by the essentiality that imbues mobilities for existential purposes with meaningfulness, and the existential dimensions that mobilities otherwise deemed ‘essential’ may acquire. The concept of ‘reconfiguration’, in other words, maintains open channels for the transformation of meaningfulness for each type of mobility, enabling us to understand mobilities as a spectrum, rather than a rigid dipole. The case studies discussed in the contributions to this special issue start from a range of spheres of everyday life entangled with (im)mobilities. Having looked at expressions of ‘crisis’, they examine the ways in which human actors navigated the new circumstances and agentively carved pathways to reconfigure their (im)mobilities, reconstituting their meaningfulness and a fulfilling life.

Contributions

The articles revolve around two axes, in dialogue with each other, namely essential and existential entanglements of (im)mobilities (Cangià; Marshall; Bosbach; Badder) and active challenges and resistance to certain modes of imposed immobilities and forging of mobilities (Terry; Zelenskaia; Fradejas-Garcias and Loftsdóttir).

Flavia Cangià focuses on the phenomenon of ‘South-Working’, or ‘Lavorare dal Sud’, as it is called in Italian, which describes return mobilities to Italy or to hometowns from other Italian regions, of people who had been living elsewhere, primarily for career-related purposes. As Cangià argues, this phenomenon pre-existed the pandemic, but it intensified at the outbreak of the pandemic and throughout, particularly due to the option for remote work that was created by digital technologies and revised workplace policies. Her article considers the consequences of this shift in the post-pandemic world, as the return phenomenon highlights the implications of mobilities and digitalism. Cangià foregrounds the ways in which the returnees’ motivations and choices to enact such mobilities traverse established boundaries set by work, life and movement. In doing so, the returnees illustrate an attempt to exercize a ‘critique’ of pre-existing (non-)essential mobility regimes, as challenged during the pandemic crisis, and to reconfigure their meaningfulness accordingly under essential and existential terms. Her contribution starts from the negotiation of diverse forms of mobilities in the pandemic context, and reflects on the lingering effects of returns at a local level (economically and socially). Furthermore, it reflects on the reconceptualization of professional and personal life trajectories – previously perceived as distinct – emphasizing how these trajectories can be efficiently merged thanks to digitalism, and the value of doing so – even in the post-pandemic world – so as to lead a meaningful life. This is achieved by returnees regaining control over the temporal and spatial dimensions of their work and personal life spheres, as enabled decisively through digitalism.

Tom Marshall unfolds the discussion around the (non-)essential and existential dimensions of (im)mobilities, as exemplified in the case of postgraduate research students in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland during the pandemic. The intersection of the spatio-temporal aspects, with a heightened emphasis on the temporal dimensions of (im)mobilities, and the individuals’ capacity to be in control of them with regard to how they carry out their everyday activities, is foregrounded again. The entanglements between professional and personal life, and the complicated implications of lack of control over them due to the imposed immobilities as a result of the pandemic crisis, are examined. Marshall frames the stage of being a PhD student, as a transitory phase, integrally connected to the individual’s aspirations to the post-PhD stage of self, professionally and personally. Therefore, the impediments to the successful completion of their PhD research, as a result of an imposed ‘emplaced immobility’, acquired existential gravity, resulting in hurdles to overcome in fulfilling their choices at present, and protracting indefinitely the materialization of their envisioned future self. Marshall emphasizes the PhD students’ various strategies for regaining control over their everyday life, of which their PhD was a cornerstone, in terms of navigating bureaucratic hurdles, ensuring completion of their project, maintaining a sense of well-being, and ensuring that they ‘move forward’. The contestations around regaining a sense of control and reclaiming a sense of mobility, understood as fulfilling desired plans, highlight the essential nature of actualizing the vision of self from an existential point of view.

Christina Bosbach’s discussion starts from mechanized mobilities, as exemplified by the ferry connections between the Isle of Coll in Scotland and the mainland, arguing for the enhanced existential dimensions they have for the islanders. Her discussion balances between the narratives assumed by policy-makers around (non-)essential travel, primarily based on socio-economic criteria, and the existential dimensions that these very mobilities acquired through her interlocutors’ perspectives on their everyday life and the transformative effect of pandemic (im)mobilities. This existential dimension of ‘essential travel’ reinforced an essentiality in fulfilling it, while the usually mundane ‘essential travel’ acquired significant layers of existential meaningfulness. Furthermore, the slow-paced ferry mobility, instilling temporarily a sense of ‘stuckedness’, contrasts with the fulfilling sense of ‘moving’, that is, of serving a meaningful, existential purpose. The concept of a ‘lifeline’ is the lynchpin of the narrative, articulating the layers of meaningfulness for diverse types of mobilities. Bosbach shows how the concept of a ‘lifeline’ starts from framing essential mobilities (for sustaining the [socio-]economic life of the island), and shifts to reinforce their essentiality for leading a meaningful life, and thus fulfilling existential purposes. In doing so, the value put on certain forms of mobilities, and by extension the judgements made among individuals enacting them, are challenged.

Anastasia Rachel Badder’s discussion centres on the disruption of regular (physical) mobilities, and their entanglements with maintaining a desired pace in secular and religious mobilities. The latter are seen as integral to crafting a self that fits with the standards of the Liberal Jewish community in Luxembourg. The temporary halt imposed on non-essential mobilities by the curbs resulting from the pandemic impacted on the types of mobilities that were essential to fulfilling these (existential) goals. In turn, they prompted members of the community to reassess the central role of these goals in determining the progression of their personal trajectories in tandem with the social life of the community. The contrast between the increased efforts to maintain a ‘normal’ pace of life – rooted in mobilities, which was hard to manage in a pre-crisis manner – and the varying results in materializing this goal, foregrounded the limitations of rigidly distinguishing between diverse mobilities and, accordingly, structuring concepts of self and community around them. Eventually, the need to balance between reconfiguring their mobilities, along with reconfiguring their centrality in materializing themselves as members of the community, and keeping up the individual and collective pace of lifecourses, becomes apparent.

Christian Terry discusses the mobilities of so-called ‘privileged’ travellers – as distinguished from migrants and refugees, whose mobilities tend to be forced – amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Their choice to persist in materializing their pre-existing plans for mobilities that did not fit under the label of ‘essential’, at a time when non-essential travel was prohibited, indicates the essentiality with which these plans were perceived. Terry starts from rich accounts of his personal experiences, and those of other travellers, of maintaining their capacity to enact mobilities, navigating a bureaucratic maze that rigidly distinguished between essential and non-essential travel. The mobilities enacted in conjunction with the travellers’ profiles and motivations for travelling challenge this distinction, showing the need to assume a more agile perspective, and consider their existential weight. Terry’s discussion provides rich accounts of the measures in place to control the pandemic at an international level, their variability and gradual shifting throughout the critical phases of the pandemic, and their consistency in shaping rigid structures of uncertainty that impeded mobilities. Furthermore, the article provides insights into the practical ways travellers found to continue their mobilities and navigate this landscape of crisis. The contradictions between official discourses and vernacular practices, along with the conflicting perspectives around the essentiality of being mobile, are bridged through a constant reconfiguration in order to navigate the hurdles impeding travel.

Alena Zelenskaia pushes further the discussion by challenging the categories that were mobilized to distinguish between essential and non-essential travel during pandemic times, through considering the demands of the online movement ‘Love is not tourism’. Stierl’s concept of ‘resistance as a method’ serves as an analytical lens through which to interrogate the regulations of (im)mobilities affecting binational (including third-country nationals) families and relationships in Europe, as formed on a basis of their legal registration and official acknowledgement. More specifically, Zelenskaia considers the online campaign between 2020 and 2021, which protested on social media platforms the labelling of undefined categories of migrants, such as unmarried partners, as ‘tourists’. The article shows the complex implications of bureaucracy with regard to the official acknowledgement of personal relationships, and the consequent regulation of people’s (im)mobilities based on the (non-)essential travel dipole in times of crisis. It further offers insights into how these pre-existing categorizations of undefined migrants were devised to inform the measures brought in when the public health crisis broke out. Furthermore, it shows how this online campaign served as a critique of the whole framework, challenging not only the categorization of the mobilities that campaigners desired to enact, but also the categories under which they became identifiable as mobile subjects. Zelenskaia’s article foregrounds the power of imaginaries and imagination in mobilizing discourses and practices that reinforce immobilities, as well as the transformative effects of resistance in bringing refreshing insights into the entanglements between (non-)essential and existential mobilities.

Finally, Ignacio Fradejas-García and Kristín Loftsdóttir shed light on aspects of the migration crisis that unfolded between 2020 and 2021 in the Canary Islands, Spain, in parallel with, and perhaps exacerbated by, the pandemic crisis. They focus in particular on the decisive role of ‘cause-lawyering’ as undertaken by various actors (lawyers in migration working within (in)formal structures, as well as ombudsmen, activists, friends, or migrant families), who support the navigation of migrant (im)mobilities by advising them on their human rights, and relevant national and international laws and regulations. In doing so, the authors shift the readers’ attention to the (im)mobilities experienced by migrants crossing international borders into Europe. The authors situate the migration crisis (with regard to primarily the severe restrictions on migrants’ mobilities) during the pandemic crisis within the pre-existing regime of regularization of migrants’ (im)mobilities. The concept of ‘resistance’ underpins their argumentation, by means of framing the agentive actions of migrants and ‘cause-lawyers’ towards navigating the reinforced (im)mobility regimes. Their contribution interlaces the disruptions and continuities of these (im)mobility regimes and diverse ‘crises’ through the operationalization of the (non-)essential dipole and its entanglements with the existential dimensions of the motivations that have driven migrants’ and cause-lawyers’ practices of resistance to these regimes, and consequently their agentive attempts to reconfigure them.

Conclusion

The capacity of anthropological knowledge and methodologies to offer insights into humans and societies experiencing and navigating overlapping and intersecting crises (in our case, a public health crisis and a crisis of mobilities) shines through the contributions in our special issue. Equally novel are the insights into the individuals’ agentive efforts to navigate the complex situations shaped at the outbreak of crisis, and find a new equilibrium around which to resume their disrupted activities and unfold their life trajectories. These insights are enhanced by the wide range of focus of the case studies that serve as a backbone of the discussion as it unfolds throughout our special issue, and further by the beneficial consideration of theoretical conceptualizations that are not limited to those within the discipline of anthropology. The latter enable nuanced conceptualizations around the terms ‘(non-)essential’ and ‘existential’, and, most importantly, their in-between interrelationships and the necessity for their reconfiguration. In short, the predicament of ‘reconfiguration’ not only pertains to the thematic scope of our special issue but also refers to the theoretical contribution it makes.

Throughout the articles, there is a dialogic interconnection between the pre-, during, and (envisioned) post-crisis contexts, as facilitated by the discourses and the practices assumed, and the imaginaries described. The authors illustrate aspects of a pre-existing order of (im)mobilities, as established before the crisis, and how (im)mobilities came to be regulated in times of crisis. Furthermore, they show how their interlocutors came to reconfigure their (im)mobilities as a critical response to the crisis they were experiencing, thus complexifying its consequences. These extend to a reconfiguration of our way of thinking around what is perceived as essential, non-essential and existential, before, during and after a crisis.

The ethnographic insights into the diverse types of mobilities and the diverse types of reconfiguring the reinforced immobilities consistently propose taking on a research scope that maintains distance from the rigidity of distinguishing between different types of mobilities as (non-)essential and existential. Rather, focusing on the ground shaped between the spheres of personal and social life as a result of the enacted reconfigurations, we should assume a scope that favours flexibility and reflects a more holistic approach. Such a scope should incorporate the dense layers of meaningfulness that distinct types of (im)mobilities retain for those performing them. Accordingly, our methodologies should be tailored appropriately in relation to the complexities outlined by the agentive actors with whom we work in our research, so that they enable us to unveil this flexibility and the density of meaningfulness that underpins our field while in crisis, and so that the knowledge we produce advances the critique of our disciplinary knowledge.