The Travellers and the Still: on the Politics of (Academic) Mobility

Sažetak

By shifting the analytical focus from the travelling/mobile subject of the discourse on travel/(academic) mobility to its still figures, the author is attempting to point to the cracks in the romanticized, elitist monolithic images of travel/mobility that open the space for the analysis of the politics underlying such discourses and practices. The metaphor of a still figure that is invisible in the (glorifying and unifying Western) discourse of travel, and emerges in the “new mobility” paradigm reveals a dynamic that can, if viewed from a new perspective, namely the perspective of those who stay still in a world of mobile travellers, and sheds light on the economy of power present in different ways in all travel/mobility practices (and discourses. The introduction gives a critical outline of the tendencies and problems in the Western discourse on travel and the topics within the “new mobility” paradigm. Furthermore, the author points to some politically relevant aspects of (the discourse on) academic mobility, which remain hidden behind its positive conceptualization.