Moving Matters—Paths of Serial Migration

Moving Matters is a richly nuanced portrait of the serial migrant: a person who has lived in several countries, calling each one at some point "home." The stories told here are both extraordinary and increasingly common. Serial migrants rarely travel freely—they must negotiate a world of territorial borders and legal restrictions—yet as they move from one country to another, they can use border-crossings as moments of self-clarification. They often become masters of settlement as they turn each country into a life chapter.

Susan Ossman follows this diverse and growing population not only to understand how paths of serial movement produce certain ways of life, but also to illuminate an ongoing tension between global fluidity and the power of nation-states. Ultimately, her lyrical reflection on migration and social diversity offers an illustration of how taking mobility as a starting point fundamentally alters our understanding of subjectivity, politics, and social life.

Susan Ossman is author of Picturing Casablanca: Portraits of Power in a Modern City (1994) and Three Faces of Beauty: Casablanca, Cairo, Paris (2002). She has held academic positions in Morocco, France, the UK, and the US, and she currently teaches at the University of California, Riverside.