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When people stay and things make their way: airports, mobilities and materialities of a transnational landscape

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 12:10 authored by Maria Abranches
This article explores different meanings of mobility and place by examining the interweaving of people, things and airports in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two airports – of departure and arrival of this migratory route – I look at the practices of sending and receiving objects by migrants in Lisbon and their kin in Bissau. The transnational yet grounded setting helps to provide a better understanding of the complexity associated with different forms of mobility – including corporeal, imagined and desired – and their key role in socially and relationally constructing a lived airport space, as well as wider social landscapes. Bringing in evidence from a less-explored setting – a small airport in a West African country – will particularly challenge some of the assumptions that tend to associate mobility with ‘modernity’ and fixity with ‘tradition’. It will show how people in Guinea-Bissau are, as much as migrants abroad, dynamically involved in global practices of movement – materialised in trading and reciprocating objects between two continents – through local performances of mobility that do not necessarily involve corporeal travel across borders.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Mobilities

ISSN

1745-0101

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

4

Volume

8

Page range

506-527

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Notes

Online First Article

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-08-06

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