Mobile displacement or displaced mobility?: Using transition theory to challenge migration-displacement binaries and biases

Abstract Within the context of increasing conflict- and climate-driven displacement and mobility, many people today neither fit neatly within ascribed labels nor access assistance in just one way. However movement continues to be presented in binaries within academia and by many humanitarian, development, and state actors. Here, we ask: when does displacement constitute mobility and when are mobile people in fact displaced? And, crucially, how do people define themselves in terms of their mobility (if at all)? We present an integrated theoretical framework combining Schlossberg’s transition theory with the characteristics of ‘coping’ versus ‘adapting’ and an exploration of ‘tipping points’. We argue that elements of coping and adapting can be meaningfully employed to differentiate between experiences of mobility or displacement within a larger heuristic of transitions, underscoring the malleability of situations which may in fact quickly ‘tip’ from mobility to displacement, vice versa, and back again. This framework in turn enables deeper exploration of the grey areas or ‘transitions’ between mobility and displacement, and can be used to further understanding of whether, how, and under what circumstances people may transition between voluntary migration and forced displacement. Using two distinct case studies of internally displaced people in Mozambique and pastoralists and semi-pastoralists in Ethiopia, we illustrate the transitions that can and do occur between migration and displacement, in both directions. We posit the importance of understanding mobility through a dynamic framework that prioritizes individual agency and perceptions and seeks to account for the nuanced and sometimes rapidly changing reality of displaced and other mobile people’s lives.