Daily living spaces and the mobility/immobility continuum: the role of migrant children and adolescents in the American continent. A multimedia ethnographic project

Abstract

The article presents the theoretical and methodological approach behind a collective, interdisciplinary and transnational exercise of research and divulgation initiated in 2018 which aims to create an “Ethnographic Multimedia Mosaic on the experiences of children/youth (im)migrants in the Americas”. We posit that the importance of children and youth migrants can be read through the analytical triad formed by the notions of everyday life, multi-scale spatial production and the mobility/immobility continuum. By reinterpreting the empirical findings on two singular migratory experiences in contexts of mobility/immobility stemming from communities in the Andes region of Ecuador and the northern Mexican border, the article shows how children and young migrants deploy diverse tactics and strategies in response to the de facto mobility produced by the current neoliberal regimes border control. We aim to show how they set in motion diverse forms of mobility while reproducing everyday and imaginary forms of spatiality and temporality as a way of subsisting and resisting violence in present times.