Socio-Material Infrastructures of Mobility: Rethinking Migration and Circulation in African Contexts

Abstract

This article examines the interconnections between materiality and circulation in African contexts as an introductory context for the Special Issue: “Acteurs, circulations et matérialités en Afrique / Actors, Circulations, and Materialities in Africa”. Informed by the concept of migration infrastructures introduced by Xiang and Lindquist (2014), the paper explores the relationship between migration infrastructures and circulations through material objects, mobility practices and institutional arrangements as discussed in the contributions in the Special Issue. The main argument developed here is that mobilities and migrations are embedded in what we conceptualize as socio-material infrastructures of mobility, understood as an assemblage of objects, technologies, practices and forms of knowledge that shape mobility processes. This perspective moves beyond approaches centered on flows or transport infrastructures by emphasizing the relational and material conditions through which mobility is enacted and governed. Mobility and immobility are shaped by socio-material infrastructures that organize movement. The five contributions to this Special Issue illustrate how diverse material objects form complexes of meaning and shape interactions between mobile subjects and their social, economic, and political environments across diverse African contexts. They highlight the importance of grounding migration studies in empirical settings and of rethinking mobility through its material dimensions.