Mobility rules An anthropological introduction

In this introductory article, we critically analyze which rules govern human mobility and how mobility regulations and codes are resisted, transgressed, broken, and remade. To play by the rules of mobility means to follow habits and laws governed by social norms and institutional control. Our point of departure is that social and institutional mobility rules both abound and are intertwined and that they are routinely disputed by individuals, groups, and institutions. Drawing on ethnographic examples and the literature on legal anthropology, mobilities, and transnational migration, the article disentangles the specific mechanisms, principles, and symbolic power of mobility rules-written and non-written, legal and non-legal, formal and informal, codified and non-codified, explicit and implicit. In short, we address how people are navigating rules of mobility that operate in contradictory, ambiguous, and hidden ways.