Introduction: Migration, Death and Mobilities

Abstract

In contrast to the liveliness conjured by the terms ‘migration’ and ‘mobilities’, death is associated with stillness and immobility. Yet, just as the animated experience of migration and mobilities can be characterised by hiatus, waiting and even death, so too death and funerary-mourning rituals prompt a variety of mobile practices. For example, the dying may travel between home and other places of care; the dead body is typically moved between the place of death and sites of funerary care and rituals; the corpse or cremated remains may be transported over long distances for final disposition; in many beliefs the spiritual journey of the deceased continues after death; and mourners variously travel, process and perform religious or secular rites at the time of death and subsequent cyclical acts of remembrance, depending on customs. Therefore, mobilities are inherently interwoven with death and mourning practices. Further, as the quote above indicates, these already mobile funerary practices are additionally inflected by the mobilities of migration and can change with time, place and circumstances, including the relative inclusiveness of local cemetery-crematorium services. This volume brings lived migrant mobilities and immobilities into dialogue with the less familiar mobilities and immobilities associated with death, death rituals and the remains of the dead.