Per una sociologia della mobilità umana

Abstract

Migration studies focus on two distinct objects: on the one hand, the geograph-ic mobility of people; on the other, their incorporation in the receiving socie-ties. The latter is the prevailing focus, in academic and public debates as well as in empirical research of the last decades. My attention rather revolves around the first one, developing a sociology of human mobility. Analytically, the study of human mobility can take two different albeit converging perspec-tives – one centered on social actors, the other on regulation systems. In this article, I summarize research that I have carried out on the global regulation of transnational mobility, and particularly on visas and land borders. These find-ings offer new evidence on the North-South divisions of the planet, also re-vealing nuances in the distribution of the chances of transnational mobility and free movement across the world.