Einleitung: Ethnisierung und (Im)Mobilitäten in historischer Perspektive

Abstract

English and German-speaking migration studies of the last years have criticized the methodological ethnicity and the migrantization of mobilities. New methodological and theoretical frameworks were developed in order to decolonize the study of mobilities and make it more inclusive. This special issue puts forward that the study of past (im)mobilities would also benefit from this shifting of perspectives that is primarily based on a time-diagnostic. In doing so, it focuses on the term ›ethnicization‹ that enables to take into account both the use of ethnicizing categories by institutions or states in order to steer and/or stop (im)mobilities and the self-determined recourse to such categories by individuals, and to discuss the relationship between the two phenomena. Hence, the articles of this special issue examine the empirical inter-dependencies between ethnicization processes and the prevention, enforcement or self-determination of mobility.