Immobility Phases

This paper advances the concept of immobility phases to capture the transitory, often precarious conditions experienced by individuals facing constrained mobility. Reframing (im)mobilities experiences through this lens highlights how people endure prolonged displacement, forced stagnation, and layered vulnerabilities, both physical and cognitive, while striving toward their intended destinations or preference. It argues that immobility is not merely the absence of movement but comprises active, temporally embedded phases shaped by structural constraints, alongside intersectional inequalities, war, insecurities, climate crises, psychological hardship, and material deprivation. Drawing on secondary data, this conceptual paper situates immobility phases within the broader migration narratives. The paper moves away from dominant approaches by introducing immobility phases as a critical concept that challenges the prevailing ‘mobility bias’ and binary framings of mobility and immobility to suggest a more reflexive understanding of (im)mobility in the context of climate (im)mobilities and violent conflict within migration studies.