Defining the contours of black motility

Abstract

This introductory article advances a Black motility perspective to deepen scholarly understandings of racialised mobility in a global context. Building on motility theory, we conceptualise mobility not simply as movement but as a socially structured capacity shaped by unequal access to resources, competencies, and opportunities. We argue that existing analyses of Black mobility remain overly constrained by Euro-American frameworks and often reproduce reductive narratives that position Blackness primarily through immobility, constraint, or forced displacement. In response, this Special Issue foregrounds the agency, creativity, and strategic navigation that characterise Black engagements with space across diverse contexts, including East Asia and the Caribbean. By bringing the ‘mobility turn’ into conversation with Black geographies, we propose Black motility as an analytical lens that captures both the structural limitations imposed by global racial hierarchies and the dynamic ways Black individuals and communities rework, resist, and reimagine these constraints. In doing so, we decentre dominant epistemologies of race and movement, highlighting how Blackness is continuously rearticulated across different socio-political and cultural settings. The contributions to this Special Issue collectively demonstrate that Black mobility is not only shaped by restriction but also by possibility, innovation, and the pursuit of alternative spatial futures. This introduction outlines the conceptual foundations of Black motility and situates the included articles within a broader agenda for rethinking mobility, race, and inequality in contemporary scholarship.

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