In 1968 the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were forcibly displaced by the British to set up a US military base on Diego Garcia, in an act which Chagossians have contested for over 50 years. At the time, and to the present, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) attempted to legitimise the displacement by disingenuously claiming that the Chagossians were a mobile population of contract workers. Through archival analysis, this paper addresses the FCO representation of the islanders as a mobile ‘floating population’ of ‘contract workers’, linked to the figure of the ‘migrant’. At the same time, it problematises the legal contestation of the islanders’ displacement through a politicisation of stasis, linked to claims to ‘indigenous’ status based on long-held ties with the islands, as well as a discrete ‘Ilois’ or ‘Chagossian’ identity category. It argues that these debates reproduce distinctions between ‘migrants’ and ‘natives’ which obscure mobile political relations, including the imperial mobilities that constitute ‘national’ polities, as well as the histories of enforced mobility of enslaved and indentured labourers. Drawing on Glissant’s concept of errantry, the paper highlights the need to multiply conceptual and legal frameworks and create additional frameworks that can recognise mobile forms of rootedness.

After introducing the topic of antifascism on the internet and the issues that scientific publications encounter when facing the web, the first part of this contribution in Contexts and Debates examined the first of three digital history projects connected to this topic, the Atlante delle stragi naziste e fasciste. In this following section, the attention is focused on two more publications: IF – Intellettuali in fuga dall’Italia fascista, a project tied to the issue of mobility for people persecuted by the Fascist regime; and Memorie in Cammino, a project that approaches its content and the user’s interaction with it in an entirely non-linear manner, reconstructing the lives and actions of those who resisted the regime.

In Bangladesh’s southwest delta, climate adaptation unfolds less through mass migration or master plans than through everyday routes. In August 2023, 40 young people from 5 flood-prone villages mapped 120 geotagged journeys to water points, schools, clinics, markets, and cyclone shelters. Their stories reveal “routes of care” patterns of movement that sustain families and keep communities rooted under pressure. Three practices recur: staying, where repair and mutual support enable life in place; leaving and looping back, where seasonal departures strengthen ties through return; and protection, where circuits of water, health, and education provide survival. These everyday mobilities challenge the binary of migration versus immobility and explain why national strategies such as Tidal River Management and the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 succeed only when aligned with lived routes. Four design principles emerge: map real paths first, value staying as care, support looped mobility, and integrate water, health, and schooling.

Comparing educational experience, culture and academic practice within Europe can often be an interesting and rewarding exercise. The observations in this article are based on the author's experience of six and half years' teaching at two universities in Bavaria, the completion of a doctorate at the Free University Berlin, two degrees at the University of Edinburgh (one in history, the other in social sciences), and, most recently, two years' teaching in the Politics and Contemporary History Subject Group at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. The aim is to reflect on the experience of teaching in two different European academic systems, with a view to making some comparisons as well as observations on the changes which have taken place in the UK higher education system over the last two decades.

Based on 44 qualitative interviews with transnationally mobile people engaged in 28 different associations in Switzerland, this article tries to understand the motives behind the choice to volunteer, i.e. to actively and regularly engage in associations. These interviews reveal the great importance of associations in fostering inclusion in both the new living place and the place of origin. They further reveal that mobile people, no matter where they come from or why they are on the move, turn to associations for similar motives. In order of importance, they turn to associations to secure material advantages, to find ways of defining their identity in a manner that is both coherent and compatible with the host society and to socialize with people who are thought of as trustworthy.

Scholars have long been interested in what influences philanthropic behavior. However, little is known about the effects of length of residency on charitable gifts to local and non-local organizations. Using 2010 survey data from 470 older individuals, we examine whether donors’ geographic relocations influence philanthropic behavior and whether these moves are a bigger challenge for some types of nonprofits than others. We find variations in giving to specific types of nonprofits based on residency duration. The giving patterns we uncover add depth to our understanding of philanthropic behavior and inform nonprofit managers seeking to better understand older adults’ giving to local and non-local religious, human services, arts, and education nonprofits.

One reason for the low productivity of European political science and public administration departments could be a high level of national regulation, which shields departments from the forces of international competition. Higher education in Europe is not yet a single market in which students and staff compete for resources. In this article, I discuss a number of problems related to the current situation of limited competition and suggest ways to improve European political science and public administration. These include, among others, national deregulation of higher education and a Europe-wide system of assessment and accreditation.

A discipline cannot pretend to be such if political borders are reflected in its organisation, methodologies or practices. While pluralistic approaches are highly desirable, it is crucial for any discipline worthy of the name to professionalise itself. This article argues that in spite of imperfections, drawbacks and differentiated development, huge progress has been made towards this goal through the setting up of common standards, improved Ph.D. and post-doctoral training and international mobility. Cross-national organisations or pan-European programmes have played a major role in this (incomplete) transformation.

This article addresses the limited understanding of how variegated practices of everyday automobility shape – and are shaped by – ageing processes of older adults in urban contexts, focusing on Brescia, Northern Italy. While automobility, driving and driving cessation are often studied as functional aspects of older adults’ (im)mobility, their relational dimensions – spanning multiple and diverse practices – remain largely under-explored. The research examines how older adults navigate the contradictions and challenges of urban life, health conditions and social structures through relational automobilities. Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic study, the article highlights how automobility serves simultaneously as a resource, a limitation and a medium for forging and sustaining social, emotional, geographical and material relationships. The findings reveal that diverse practices and experiences of automobility are deeply embedded in affective economies, interdependencies and the biopolitics of ageing, shaping – and being shaped by – the lived experiences of older adults. By conceptualizing automobility as a socio-material and relational process, the article aims at bridging critical gerontology and mobilities studies, offering new insights into how ageing and mobility practices co-produce ageing selves and conditions of being (im)mobile. This study contributes to ongoing debates in critical gerontology by problematizing dichotomic understandings of older adults’ experiences in terms such as independence versus dependence and mobility versus stasis, while also informing urban policies aimed at fostering inclusive mobility practices. This article emphasizes the need to address the socio-material and relational networks underpinning automobility, offering a nuanced perspective on the interplay between mobility, ageing and urban life.