SI N° 8 | 2022
Movilidad humana
Human mobility

Human mobility constitutes one of the topics of most outstanding attention globally due to its implications. Migrations have increased significantly with the diversification of origins and destinations. During the 21st century, human mobility has increased by adopting new modes of transportation. However, the motivation for contemporary international migration continues to have a prominent economic character. It is no less accurate than the number of displaced people, displaced for different reasons and forced to flee in search of protection, has also grown during the last two decades for various reasons of persecution. The above reasons reveal the increase in its volume and the expansion of the conditions that originate it, which is why it is a phenomenon that impacts on a global level.

Human mobility includes asylum seekers and refugees and people forced to move for environmental reasons, catastrophes, or war conflicts in any of its forms. For this reason, authors such as Zygmunt Bauman assert that the increase in mass mobility of refugees and asylum seekers has been by the growing list of "collapsing states" or already collapsed, territories without a state, without law, scenes of tribal struggles ( of cartels) and sectarian, of mass murder. In destination societies, migrants, refugees, or beneficiaries of international protection are strangers, generating different forms of reaction towards them, ranging from the most supportive to extreme rejection such as xenophobia, aporophobia, and other forms of discrimination. In host societies, the lack of consensus on how to deal with and manage the arrival of this foreign population is one of the main issues. For the receiving states, this phenomenon may represent an unprecedented situation for which their institutions are not prepared, while for their inhabitants, it may mean alterations in their daily lives. As is known, the poorest countries are the ones that generate the most significant human mobility. Still, at the same time, paradoxically, they are also usually the ones that host the most immigrants, refugees, and displaced people.

Even though considerable literature addresses human mobility, it is interesting to focus on analyzing the motivations behind the mass expulsion of the population in this particular issue. In other words, a comprehensive vision that attempts to explain and understand this phenomenon from the experiences of migrants and refugees and the perspective of the host population. In this sense, the articles must present an analysis of the meaning, the causes, the reasons –both subjective and objective– of human mobility and account for the implications that it may have for the destination societies.