Migration without Movement

Discourses of migration often figure the migrant and those who stay behind as separate identities marked by locational differences. However, what is often the case is that movement is inextricable from immobility, and those who stay behind also perform culturally specific forms of migration. This possibility of migration without mobility and movement without migration is central to Sudabeh Mortezai’s 2018 Joy. Throughout the film, the physical and psychological immobility of Edo Women migrants captures viewers within the constructive structures of irregular migration. Looking closely at the film’s presentation of the relation between those who migrate and those who stay behind, this paper examines the manners through which the migrant body remains tethered to the country of departure and the migration of others. To do this, I engage the Nigerian concept of arrival, where one is said to have “arrived” when a family member travels to Europe. As the film demonstrates, and as I will explore, the migration process produces a bodily split that renders the migrant legible for migration and illegible for mobility while also securing the societal mobility of those left behind.