Global Mobility and the Reconstitution of Localities

• In Event: Policy Mobilities and Education Policy Research

Abstract

Objectives
Over the past two decades, the number of people who have become globally mobile has grown enormously. People cross national borders for a variety of reasons – as tourists, as migrants and refugees and for education and business and of course employment. Much has been written about the globally mobile workers: why they move, how and with what consequences --and also how their identities are ‘transnationalized.’ Much less is known about the ways in which the mobility of a relatively few has the potential of transforming the social constitution of the entire communities from where they hail. This paper thus examines some of the ways in which the mobility of the mobile impacts on the lives of the immobile, especially the young, potentially reshaping their social imaginaries and aspirations.

Perspective or theoretical framework
In an earlier paper, the author (2011) has shown how cross-border mobility ‘transnationalizes’ the cultural spaces in which young people develop and enact their identity and social relations. This paper develops this argument further. Drawing upon recent theories of global mobility, transnationization of space, and globalization and youth cultures (Urry, 2007; Vertovec, 2009; Nayak, 2012), it explores how those many who are not mobile think about and relate to the experiences of the few who are, how the immobile too become embedded within transnational finance and communication networks, and how this transforms their beliefs, cultural practices, and their educational aspirations.

Methods and data sources
This paper is based on longitudinal ethnographic research conducted over a period of ten years in a village in Northern India, from which a small number of young men travel each year to work on the constructions sites in the global city of Dubai for a period of up to ten years. The data has been collected largely from in-depth interviews with a whole range of inhabitants in the village, particularly teenagers.

Results
In this paper, I argue that the remittance and its economic benefits are not the only outcome of the global mobility of a relatively small number of villagers. More profoundly, their cross-border mobility has transformed the social constitution of the village, including class, caste and gender relations. It has affected the young people in the village in particular, transforming their cultural practices, their beliefs and aspirations. It has relocated them in a space that is transnational, stretching their imagination beyond the borders of the village and the nation-state. This transformation is part of the dialectical logic of transnationalism, which suggests the need to understand youth cultures within the broader relational dynamics of global mobility.

Scholarly significance
The significance of this paper lies in its elaboration of the relationship between the concepts of global mobility and transnationalism. It shows how global mobility has created conditions under which new systems of transnational ties, interactions and exchange are forged not only 'from above' by governments and corporations, but also 'from below' by migrants and non-state actors. Most localities are affected by the broader dynamics of cross-border mobility, inviting new approaches to an understanding of youth cultures and education in the global era.

Author

• Fazal A. Rizvi, University of Melbourne