Defining the contours of black motility
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24226163 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Derrace Garfield Mccallum (0000-0001-5805-5475, Aichi Prefectural University), Adrienne Lee Atterberry (0000-0003-1147-4642, University of Massachusetts Lowell) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-05 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2026.2654968 |
| OpenAlex | W7160278579 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 44 |
This introductory article advances a Black motility perspective to deepen scholarly understandings of racialised mobility in a global context. Building on motility theory, we conceptualise mobility not simply as movement but as a socially structured capacity shaped by unequal access to resources, competencies, and opportunities. We argue that existing analyses of Black mobility remain overly constrained by Euro-American frameworks and often reproduce reductive narratives that position Blackness primarily through immobility, constraint, or forced displacement. In response, this Special Issue foregrounds the agency, creativity, and strategic navigation that characterise Black engagements with space across diverse contexts, including East Asia and the Caribbean. By bringing the ‘mobility turn’ into conversation with Black geographies, we propose Black motility as an analytical lens that captures both the structural limitations imposed by global racial hierarchies and the dynamic ways Black individuals and communities rework, resist, and reimagine these constraints. In doing so, we decentre dominant epistemologies of race and movement, highlighting how Blackness is continuously rearticulated across different socio-political and cultural settings. The contributions to this Special Issue collectively demonstrate that Black mobility is not only shaped by restriction but also by possibility, innovation, and the pursuit of alternative spatial futures. This introduction outlines the conceptual foundations of Black motility and situates the included articles within a broader agenda for rethinking mobility, race, and inequality in contemporary scholarship.
Black agency · Black diaspora · Black geographies · Caribbean · decolonial epistemology · East Asia · mobility turn · Racial hierarchy · Regional disparities · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Migration and Exile Studies · Race, History, and American Society
Teaching English at the intersection of language, race, ethnicity and nationality
Seeing Africans in China
Subcultural capital
‘Down here … Haitians are winning’
The cultural foundation of African Chinese trading networks
In the Wake
“You’re out of your place”
Black Moves
Redefining Japaneseness
The Impact of Donald Trump’s Presidency on the Well-Being of African Americans
Covid-19 as a Mirror
Afro-Asian Intimacies
Landscapes, spatial justice and learning communities
Media, performance, and pastpresents
Mobilities I
Toward an expanded approach on Black mobilities
Race and Color
The Pluralities of Black Geographies
Introduction
Culturally Responsive Teaching through Spatial Justice in Urban Neighborhoods
Operationalising the Concept of Motility
The Right to Enter Every Other State' - The Supreme Court and African American Mobility in the United States
Black matters are spatial matters
The New Mobilities Paradigm
Motility
Geographies of Mobility
Multiple precarity and intimate family life among African-Chinese families in Guangzhou
Racialised mobilities in China
On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place
Theorising mobility justice
Norms to be prejudiced
Examining Race in Jamaica
| Citations per year | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |