10

Times of Immobility

Amandine le Maire, Annelies Kusters, Sanchayeeta Iyer, Erin Moriarty, and Steven Emery

The main focii of Mobility Studies is on movement and mobility. In Sheller and Urry’s “new mobilities paradigm” (2006a), immobility is often overlooked, sidelined, or seen as the polar opposite of mobility. Whereas mobility has often been associated with gaining social, linguistic, and/or economic capital, immobility has been associated with restrictions, lack of aspirations, and deficiencies in capital (Carling, 2002; Sheller & Urry, 2006a). In a bid to direct focus to experiences of immobility, Bélanger and Silvey (2020) suggest that a new turn is needed, an “immobility turn” that “pays primary attention to the constraints, regulations, and limits simultaneously placed on migration, everyday mobility, and border-crossings at multiple scales” (p. 3425).

In our research, we have documented examples of deaf people of different backgrounds who aspire to move on and through different scales (e.g., local, national, and international), experiencing a lack of access to resources such as money, languages, food, and information. Regulations at national borders make it very easy for some people, and very difficult for others, to be mobile (Sheller, 2021; Toomey, 2022).

Forms of systemic oppression can prevent international mobilities, most notably institutionalized racism and xenophobia. People may also have responsibilities and care duties that prevent them from being internationally mobile. Deafblind people, deaf users of mobility aids, and neurodivergent deaf people may be confronted with disabling environments (both material and social) when traveling. In this chapter, we look at how the MobileDeaf project’s deaf participants experience these various political, social, and material barriers to mobility, both in the form of large-scale international mobility (e.g., transatlantic travel to a conference) and micromobilities within the wider context of international mobility (e.g., moving through the conference venue).

International mobility is not only characterized by movements across space, but it also has specific temporal aspects; temporality is equally important in relation to immobility. In this chapter, we focus on how people, individually or collectively, understand and experience time in the context of (im)mobility and migration. For example, immigration policies and visa regimes operate as instruments of discipline, which often require certain types of migrants to wait for a very long time (Cwerner, 2001). Several of our participants were waiting for visas or the right to remain in the United Kingdom, and deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp can wait for years to be resettled. Some people wait for months for a tourist visa or are prevented from traveling to conferences due to visa complications, whereas others can travel visa-free. Thus, the border is “a timing device” (Sheller, 2021, p. 79), and not only a spatial one.

A key aspect of temporality in relation to mobility, especially in relation to conflict-induced displacement, transit, and forced migration, is uncertainty: “imperfect knowledge” and “the unpredictability of the future” (Horst & Grabska, 2015, p. 4). Imperfect knowledge is the lack of (often vital) information that will better enable survival, and it causes great levels of uncertainty in situations of instability. The unpredictability of the future is related to the fear of the unknown. In addition to experiencing uncertainty, migrants often express feelings of boredom and frustration due to immobility experienced during their journey, as well as their unfulfilled dreams about social or spatial mobility (El-Shaarawi, 2015). A relationship of power and domination exists between the people who wait and the people who make them wait. People who wait learn that they must follow the requirements of the structures in which the waiting is embedded to be able to receive what they need (Auyero, 2011).

Although institutions can and do exert power over people who are waiting, this does not mean that the people are passive or without agency in all areas of their lives. Those who are waiting can be active and productive in various contexts, including in their social time, while caregiving, during networking, and through political action (Ibanez Tirado, 2019). For example, during the time they are waiting to leave Kakuma Refugee Camp, deaf refugees often learn new languages and new skills and socialize with each other; furthermore, during the lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic, they used the time “stuck at home” to (re)connect with family and (new) friends in other countries. This shows that “waiting is a complex dialectical process involving both a sense of empty, idle, suspended time and a kind of emotionally and cognitively demanding, active, productive time, particularly as people draw upon their own social capital and the resources available in their local setting” (Rotter, 2016, p. 86).

In a bid to describe people’s attempts to be internationally mobile, it is vital to also look at the forms of capital they employ in their everyday mobilities, which can be expanded or mobilized for international mobility. Although considering capital and motility is key to the study of mobilities, it is also important to not lose sight of people’s aspirations to be mobile or to stay put. Even though immobility is often associated with constraints, immobility may have positive as well as ambiguous valuations. People may be immobile voluntarily. Based on the work of Carling and Schewel (2018) and Salazar (2021a), we distinguish between the following:

•Voluntary mobility (e.g., moving to a new country)

•Involuntary mobility (e.g., fleeing a country, often because of war)

•Involuntary immobility (e.g., being stuck in a refugee camp, failure to migrate)

•Voluntary (or acquiescent) immobility (e.g., deciding to stay in the refugee camp, changing plans after failed attempts to move abroad)

These classifications help to center aspirations within the study of (im)mobility. However, it also obscures the fact that voluntary mobility may cover hypermobility (the mobility of “those who are allowed, and encouraged to, travel for work or leisure”) as well as compelled mobility: The compelled mobile are “compelled, by design of the global economy, to move for work,” such as laborers leaving a country with a weak economy (Toomey, 2022, p. 1). The compelled mobile are also restricted by further visa regulations. Similarly, voluntary immobility is not always under compulsion or underresourced; for some, it may be a privilege that allows individuals to be rooted and stable.

Thus, the questions that have to be considered are “Who moves and who doesn’t; who has to move and who doesn’t; when and where; and who gets to choose when and how?” (Cresswell, 2021, p. 8). In asking these questions, we link the experience of (im)mobility to a person’s aspirations (motivation for mobility), as well as to their motility (potential for mobility, including their various forms of capital). These have complex relations to various forms of privilege. For example, when people felt immobile because of having to stay at home during the coronavirus pandemic, it made a difference in terms of comfort and space whether this home was a mansion or a tiny studio. However, if the person in the mansion was confined to bed, disabled by long COVID, they might be less mobile than the person in the tiny studio. The mass confinement and mass disablement of the pandemic have brought these various types of immobility to light, because immobility was suddenly the “‘good’ default thing to do as a responsible citizen,” and more people than ever had cause to reflect on what it means to be voluntarily or involuntarily immobile (Salazar, 2021a, p. 14). During the lockdowns, immobility (in terms of staying home) did not only restrict people—with a severe impact on mental health—but was also a privilege: The well-off could stay in their homes and rely on the mobility of others who had to expose themselves to the virus (e.g., to deliver food to shops and houses, to transport key workers) (Salazar, 2021a).

While focusing on aspirations and motility, and on different types of (in)voluntary (im)mobilities, we see that waiting practices and immobility happen on different spatial and temporal scales. For example, deaf tour guides and drivers in Bali spend a lot of time waiting for their clients to get through customs at the airport and to take multiple photos at tourist sites, angling for just the right “Instagrammable” photos. People wait in long queues to collect food in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Female deaf athletes wait for years after childbirth to engage in international competitions again. The emotional resonance of these various forms of immobility differs considerably, so we do not consider them to be comparable; rather, we use these examples to highlight the different temporalities of immobility. We also show how people contrast the immobility of certain people in these settings with the mobilities of others, and/or how they contrast current immobility with previous mobility in their own lives. Some experiences of immobility are exacerbated for deaf people because of their relative scatteredness and isolation from other deaf people (see Chapter 1).

This chapter is organized by spatial scale. We first focus on the experience of immobility on a local level: deaf people who feel stuck in the home or in a refugee camp after having migrated internationally. We then move to the crossing of national borders and the barriers to this and, finally, having crossed borders, to obtaining resettlement or residence permits. These two sections mostly focus on the experience of immobility in relation to migration; the final section focuses on immobility to, and during, transnational events and tourism. Within each of the sections, we talk about the everyday experience of immobility, as well as feelings of immobility when referring to longer time periods (pasts and futures). Thus, we talk about a variety of temporal scales within a structure arranged by spatial scales. Additionally, in each section, we show how (im)mobility on a local scale is connected to (im)mobility on other scales. Because we gathered most of our data prepandemic and focused on in-person interactions (see Chapter 2), we touch only briefly on virtual mobility.

(Im)mobility on the Local Level

This section focuses on people who move to a new country and then experience strongly felt tensions between mobility and immobility within that country. In common with the other MobileDeaf research locations, Kakuma Refugee Camp is a setting of international deaf encounters because deaf people living in the camp interact with others from different countries and with deaf people from the host country (in this case, Kenya). However, a big difference between this and the other settings was that after having fled their country (i.e., having been internationally mobile), the deaf refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp became trapped. Many of them are unable to return to their homeland due to safety issues. They cannot settle permanently outside of the camp because the host state does not want refugees to remain indefinitely in their territory. Some deaf refugees who had been at the camp for many years have been resettled in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom, for which they were selected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); however, most deaf refugees do not get the opportunity to move to another country. This describes the situation of protracted (long-term) displacement where none of the three durable solutions (i.e., return to country of origin, integration into host country, or resettlement abroad) are working (UNHCR, 2022).

Most of the deaf refugees interviewed by Amandine had been living in Kakuma Refugee Camp or other refugee camps for quite a few years, some of them for decades. Halimo, the deaf woman from Somalia, often told Amandine that she had an overriding feeling of immobility, of waiting, and of being stuck in camps:

I went to a refugee camp called Ifo [one of three refugee camps in Dadaab Refugee Complex], I came [there] in 1992, and was stuck there from 1992. I have been stuck here [in Kakuma Refugee Camp] for long years. I have been stuck as a refugee for a long time here. [There are] a lot of problems in refugee camps, a lot of problems for a long time.

Halimo described the camp as not only a place that is difficult to leave, but also a place where it is difficult to stay because of the living conditions. The unpredictability of what will happen in the future was strongly felt, alongside feelings of unsafety due to the violence that occurs in the camp.

Alongside the refugees’ sense of immobility and limbo while waiting, there continued to be a lot of mobility within Kakuma Refugee Camp and even outside the camp. Even though the Kenyan government does not recognize refugees as Kenyan citizens, refugees have the freedom to move outside and around the camp because there is no fence around it. This shows how immobilities “encompass forms of intensive and relevant movements that are lost when we are too focused on what is not moving” (Salazar, 2021a, p. 8). Mobility is not restricted by the formal boundaries of the camp for those with access to economic capital, whether through their families or by way of employment. Some deaf refugees in the camp work for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), in the schools as teachers, or in the food distribution centers and are thus able to earn a wage, accumulate their economic capital, and invest in physical mobility. However, refugees rarely have the necessary resources, such as money or a motorized vehicle, to be able to move smoothly through and outside the camp. As described in Chapter 3, Kakuma Refugee Camp is a huge, sprawling camp of 13.62 square kilometers (UN-Habitat, 2021), and thus ideally it requires some means of motorized transport to navigate. Walking inside and outside the camp is challenging due to the hot weather, the dryness of the desert, and the lack of shade; on wet days, people have to walk through thick mud. Successfully traversing the camp on foot thus requires a considerable amount of physical capital.

The extremes of weather and distance affect mobility within the camp, which in turn affects the frequency of deaf meeting spaces. When Amandine asked deaf refugees about the feasibility of big community gatherings, events, or sporting activities, she was told that distance, journey time, terrain, and weather conditions make these gatherings very difficult. One large event happened during Amandine’s fieldwork, which was cited as a rare exception. The Starkey Hearing Foundation, an American nonprofit organization, visited Kakuma Refugee Camp to distribute free hearing aids (le Maire, 2020). This event, described later in this chapter, gathered approximately 50–60 deaf people from different parts of the camp, in contrast to the smaller deaf spaces Amandine observed in various places.

The smaller deaf spaces provided evidence of various deaf mobilities inside the camp. Deaf mobility within the camp included movement into deaf educational spaces and to the homes of other deaf refugees. Some deaf people would walk for several hours to meet other deaf people, and some of them would leave the camp and go even farther to the adjoining village to attend courses or church services where Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) interpreters were present (see Chapter 3). The examples of deaf mobility within the refugee camp in the conditions described demonstrate the physical labor involved in building social networks, and the physical and emotional labor in maintaining them. Additionally, the distances covered suggest that deaf refugees were actively seeking, and committed to taking advantage of, opportunities to engage with others and expand their knowledge and skills, however labor intensive the process was. These examples illustrate the value of social and cultural capital to deaf refugees and the effort required to build them.

Not only could deaf refugees move outside the camp to some degree, but some could also go elsewhere in Kenya, and even abroad. For example, Atem had moved to Kakuma Refugee Camp from South Sudan, but he later returned to his home country and stayed there for extended periods before returning to the camp:

I stayed here in 2002 until eighth grade, and then, when I finished the eighth grade, I waited for high school but there was no place for me, so I decided to go back to [South] Sudan in 2006. I stayed in Sudan and waited in Sudan. I stayed at my family’s place. I called some of my friends to come, and then I went back here to Kakuma and I could go to high school and I graduated from high school in 2016.

Atem had hoped to move from an in-camp primary school to a Kenyan deaf high school outside of the camp; when that proved impossible, he instead spent time with his sick mother in South Sudan, and he stayed there for 4 years. After returning to Kenya in 2012, he was then able to begin his studies at Kedowa High School in Kericho, using a scholarship provided by UNHCR.

As exemplified by Atem’s story, refugees may move between the camp and their country of origin, and also within Kenya (see Figure 10.1 for a map showing some of the journeys outside the camp made by deaf refugees). The deaf units in some of the primary schools offer the opportunity to graduate with a primary education diploma, but in order to continue with their secondary studies, deaf refugees must move to a deaf boarding school in Kenya, where they come into contact with deaf Kenyans. Atem had met his girlfriend, a deaf Kenyan citizen, while at the deaf high school; after graduating, they continued a long-distance relationship with each other, Atem having returned to live at Kakuma Refugee Camp while the girlfriend remained living outside the camp. Many deaf refugees thus leave Kakuma Refugee Camp to develop their cultural, social, and linguistic capital, but upon graduating high school, most of them return to Kakuma Refugee Camp. Some of them may go on to become deaf teachers, using their linguistic capital acquired at high schools in Kenya; others may become cooks, continue their studies in adult learning education, or simply continue to wait for a positive response to their resettlement application. When Amandine interviewed him, Atem expressed a strong desire to return to South Sudan once it was safe to do so and once he had the economic capital to make the journey:

Figure 10.1. Deaf mobilities between the camp and other locations in Kenya and abroad.‎

Maybe later, maybe when the elections are finished, I would like to go back to South Sudan to see if there are still problems there, but if there are still problems, I’ll stay here in Kakuma. If there is no problem, I can go back to Sudan.

A person’s motivations for staying in the camp can be complex: There may be several factors impacting the decision to stay or leave, showing that motility (the potential or capacity to be mobile; see Chapter 1) does not necessarily correspond to actual mobility. Many stay and wait in the hope that the situation improves in their home countries. For some deaf refugees, the presence of education through KSL or the prospect of employment as teachers in the deaf units provides an additional motivation to stay in the camp—or even to move into the camp. To illustrate this point, John is one of the deaf teachers in Fashoda Primary School whose salary was being paid by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, he was informed that his work in the school would have to be terminated. When Amandine visited him in his house, he explained that if he was unable to continue his teaching job, he would have no other option but to leave with his family and return to his country of origin, South Sudan. However, a few weeks later, the LWF decided to continue to provide the wage for his teaching job, and he decided to stay longer in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Economic and/or cultural capital are important factors to be considered when exploring why deaf refugees remain at the camp or why some move out of the camp. This latter point is explored later in the chapter.

The sections above show that mobility and immobility are experienced simultaneously and on different spatial scales. Many people feel stuck in the camp because they cannot easily move out, but they are also mobile inside and outside of the camp, sometimes for long periods. Similarly, the experience of waiting can happen on different spatial and temporal scales. While waiting for resettlement, refugees must also wait for hours in queues to receive subsistence, to get assistance from the UNHCR Protection Delivery Unit, to register a birth, to receive necessary care in hospitals, and so on. For subsistence, they have to go to the Food Distribution Center nearest to their habitation in the first week of the month, bringing their food distribution card (issued by UNHCR once they are recognized as a refugee), which gives them permission to enter the center and to receive their ration.

Amandine visited a Food Distribution Center in Kakuma 1 (one of the four sectors of the camp) with Atem. Outside the center, a massive crowd was waiting in the hot sun. Some of them had been waiting since the morning: refugees have no way of knowing the time that the gates will be opened because this depends solely on the decision of the authorities on the day. This example illustrates another way that people in power control the refugees’ waiting time. Atem did not join the crowd near the gate; instead, he waited until some police officers had arrived to prevent violence between people who were fighting to enter. There was no clear queue, and people could not know whether they would be able to pass through the gate that day or whether they would have to try again another day. People thus experience confusion and uncertainty in the process of obtaining subsistence.

Passing through the gate was only the start of several stages of waiting in queues (see Figure 10.2, a map drawn by Amandine showing the various waiting places). After entering the gate, people had to sit in a place surrounded by barbed wire and wait for the soldiers to tell them whether they could go on. When the guards first shouted that the gates were open, the people who were waiting ran very fast, fighting to be in the queue to arrive at the identification office, where the identification number on their card would be checked and their fingerprints put through an identification machine. When the identification process was complete, refugees would go outside to be in line for entry to the food delivery place (see Figure 10.3). Here, their distribution card would be perforated. This was the work of a number of refugees, including Ken, a deaf Sudanese man who had been living in the camp for about 28 years. After this, refugees would finally arrive in another queue, at the front of which they could collect items such as ugali, sorghum, wheat, oil, yellow peas, and soap.

Figure 10.2. Approximate map of the Food Distribution Center in Kakuma 1.

The crowd obtaining food was chaotic and violent; refugees fought to be able to enter the gate, and some of them spat at the guards who were behind the gate. Refugees ran between each location, and some of them were violent to their peers. While in the queue, Atem explained to Amandine that he was afraid of the person waiting next to him because he was violent. He told her that due to the violence, it is mostly men who collect the food, and Amandine noticed that there were very few women in the queues. She also noticed that some hearing refugees complained at and insulted Ken when they gave their food distribution card to him, upset at having waited so long (up to half an hour) to have the card perforated, and they were apparently frustrated at communicating with him through gestures. As a refugee working in the distribution center, Ken was vulnerable to their aggression; meanwhile, the offices of the overseeing NGO were protected from the violence by barbed wire fences. This indicated a clear separation of power between the officials (who were safe) and the refugees employed by the NGOs (who were not). The waiting places were areas of compliance—a space in which one must just wait instead of attempting to negotiate with authorities (Auyero, 2011). There was nothing that refugees could do about the endless queues. Throughout this process, they were expected to be patient (Auyero, 2011).

Figure 10.3. The distribution center in Kakuma 1, where Ken was working.

The example of the visit to the distribution center illustrates that contained within the long-term act of waiting for resettlement abroad (about which, more below) is the requirement for people in refugee camps to actively wait in order to satisfy the most basic, daily needs of their own and their families’ bodies—often in violent queues and for hours, even a full day. Communication from officials tends to be minimal, and waiting for subsistence can thus be paired with severe bodily discomfort, communication problems, and violence. These experiences are likely to be exacerbated for deaf people: Deaf refugees faced additional uncertainties at the distribution center compared to their hearing counterparts due to the absence of vital information during the process, as well as greater communication difficulties with officials.

The visit to the Food Distribution Center was a regular occurrence for people in Kakuma Refugee Camp. By contrast, the visit of the Starkey Hearing Foundation was a one-off and deaf-specific event, and it is an example of how immobility and humanitarianism, or “charity,” are entwined. The aim of the foundation’s visit was to provide deaf refugees with free hearing aids. The foundation’s media coverage of this event (see Figure 10.4) highlighted the perceived need for its mission, emphasizing the lack of hearing aid support previously offered to refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp. The event was set up in collaboration with the LWF and took place in an LWF primary school, in which hearing aids were distributed over the course of a day. The recreational area of the school was filled with a number of large white tents, with services offered such as information about hearing aids, the checking of people’s ears by nurses, the checking of people’s basic level of audition, and the distribution of reused ear molds and reused hearing aids (Figure 10.5). The Starkey Hearing Foundation event was controversial in nature. On the one hand, some deaf refugees do wish to be able to hear, and the Starkey Hearing Foundation believes that it can offer this through providing hearing aids, which are often presented as a quick fix. However, the reality was that many of those at the Kakuma Refugee Camp event received an uncomfortable, poorly adjusted device with which they could hear only a little or not at all. Some wore these hearing aids for only a day before discarding them because without access to long-term audiology follow-up care—and to an ongoing supply of batteries—what little benefit (if any) the deaf refugees gained from these devices could not be sustained. In this example, the immobility and poverty of some (i.e., the deaf refugees) triggers the mobility of others (i.e., representatives of the Starkey Foundation). However, despite publishing emotive media footage and seeking help from Hollywood’s A-list in order to “help the helpless,” the foundation’s approach and execution demonstrated a stark lack of understanding as to the reality of the lives of deaf refugees as well as refugees in general.

Figure 10.4. The Starkey Hearing Foundation filming the event at Kakuma Refugee Camp.‎

Figure 10.5. The distribution of used earmolds by the Starkey Hearing Foundation.

We now move to the other setting in which we studied international migration: London. Although the settings and circumstances are very different from Kakuma Refugee Camp, there is a common theme: People can suddenly experience a keen sense of immobility in the new host country. Some new migrants feel they are suddenly restricted based on their sex, class, deafness, and new responsibilities; the coronavirus pandemic added a further, acute restriction. Next, we give examples from Sanchayeeta’s research with five Indian women who moved to London to join their new spouse, each of whom she interviewed multiple times (see Chapter 2).

Moving to a new country can be associated with, or co-occur with, a sudden loss of freedom, including new restrictions associated with becoming a wife. Meera experienced this new restriction when she moved from India to marry. She was no stranger to other forms of restriction, however; public life in India is male dominated, and moral policing of women’s movements is common, both by families and by husbands monitoring and controlling female bodies to ensure that they conform to the Indian core value of “respectability” (Phadke et al., 2011). Whereas men hang out in pubs, loiter on the streets, and are generally visible, there are far fewer spaces where girls, women, and transgender people can do so. Meera is from an affluent background, and her (hearing) family had relocated within India so that she could attend a good deaf school, demonstrating the role of economic capital and motility in ensuring access to education. However, while Meera was attending the school, she was not allowed to go anywhere outside its domain, except on school trips—another example of how motility does not necessarily translate into mobility. Outside of school, Meera’s mobility was restricted by her family. She was not allowed to travel without them, leaving her feeling trapped. The one exception was that she was permitted to travel around and outside India with a theater group that she had joined when she was 13, even visiting the United States with them when she was 24. Her late teens and early 20s thus featured increased national and international mobility. However, when she moved into her husband’s family home in the United Kingdom, she felt as trapped as she had with her own family:

[W]hen [I got] here, I felt I was trapped, just like I was with my family back in India. My husband went out regularly to party, etc. My in-laws were out as well. I was trapped at home bringing up our children, I had no time for going out. I only went to work, then back home, and all over again. I worked hard to pass my driving test, my citizenship, I had to do these all by myself, with no help. I was sick when I did the driving lessons. I felt everyone, friends treated me like […] a servant. […] I felt […] depressed.

Meera’s British Indian deaf husband had the privilege to go out and socialize with deaf people; meanwhile, Meera was positioned in a gendered role wherein she was responsible for the household chores and childcare while simultaneously having to “integrate” within British society by passing particular milestones (e.g., obtaining a driving license). As explained in Chapter 8, her accumulated responsibilities affected her ability to acquire British Sign Language (BSL). Patriarchal culture and values shaped the division of labor in her in-laws’ household. However, Meera observed that her two elder, hearing sisters-in-law were not active with household work and that she alone bore that burden. She analyzed the reasons in an interview:

[My] husband and I, we argued. [My] mother-in-law intervened, and he went [to a party]. I had to quit my work because they were complaining. What we were arguing about was [that] they have two older sons, their wives don’t help, they never cook. Why did they expect me to cook for them? They thought that, because I am from India, they can tease and oppress an Indian? No, we are equal […] We argued, I stood my ground. The elder wife, I told her to get up and help with cleaning up dishes. I stood my ground and became more assertive, [I said] if they abused me, I would call the police, if they continue to abuse me, I can do that. They backed off; they can’t treat me like that. They thought deaf [people] are dumb; they thought, because I’m from India, they could use Indian women […] British Indians are different, [but] Indian women they oppress. Why? Because we are weak? No. I roll up my sleeves to send a message to deaf Indian [women] that they must be strong and equal to the deaf people here.

Over time, middle-class Indian women such as Meera have increasingly expressed the desire to work outside the home and to be treated as equal to their male counterparts in a relationship (Twamley, 2012). However, some British Indian men and their families, including Meera’s husband, tend to view a woman from India as a bearer and maintainer of traditional gendered values and beliefs (Charsley et al., 2016); thus, they burdened her with the household work, especially after she had had children. Meera’s mother-in-law had the expectation that she could now “retire” from her domestic duty because it could be passed on to Meera. Meera came to realize the position she was in, and she challenged her in-laws for exploiting her. However, by emphasizing that the three women should share the burden for the household, she also did not challenge the assumption that only females are burdened with chores; this, she viewed as an (Indian) “cultural” expectation.

The fact that some of Sanchayeeta’s Indian participants did not have the freedom to have social contacts outside of their homes, whereas their husbands had the privilege of socializing with deaf people, is an example of gender-disaggregated immobility between men and women (Adeel & Yeh, 2018). Gendered roles were not the only cause of the local immobility experienced by Meera: She flagged her ethnicity as an Indian-born person and her deafness as additional factors in her treatment by the family.

Meera’s experience of being kept at home as a child and then again as a married woman (after a brief period of increased mobility as a youth) was echoed by several other Indian participants. Shahina, a highly mobile woman from a wealthy family in India who now lives between the United Kingdom and Dubai, had experienced many attempts to enclose her, and rebelled against them. She studied in America and experienced differences in her level of freedom between India and the United States:

When I grew up, I was a strong rebel. Like the time when my grandmother told me that I am not allowed to go out, I ignored her. My aunt said the same thing, I ignored her too. They complained to my father, and I told my mother that I didn’t want them to control me. She told them to leave me alone. When I got back from America, I knew I didn’t need anyone to accompany me. I told my parents that I didn’t want a bodyguard to accompany me. They said OK and removed him; I was happy. Once when I visited [family], my relatives lived in a residential enclosure. I wanted to go outside and my grandmother said, “Don’t go out!” She was so worried, and I was annoyed. We had an argument. I was like that after I got back. They were angry many times because I wanted to be independent. I don’t want people to control me. […] My grandmother said I used to be sweet and now, she blamed America. That America is bad! [laughs] I just ignored her.

When Shahina returned from the United States to visit her family in India, she experienced a shift in her spatial freedom as her family tried to render her immobile locally. Her parents had visited her in America and had witnessed deaf people’s ability to be independent, which may have shaped their decision to support her against her female relatives. There also is a class angle here: Shahina’s parents were able to travel due to the family’s wealth. Looking at this example over a longer temporal scale (i.e., taking a life course perspective) shows that, as in Meera’s example, there were periods of increased freedom in strong contrast to other periods—that is, experiences of immobility when motility and actual mobility were in conflict. Meera and Shahina felt trapped at home, which was felt to be “safer” and/or was the site of chores that they were required to do for their family. Meera felt trapped as a new wife in the United Kingdom, whereas Shahina experienced the opposite: Being internationally mobile, she experienced freedom abroad, then attempts to restrict her freedom within her home country.

Sanchayeeta’s data collection started during the pandemic in 2019; one impact of pandemic lockdowns was a gendered recalibration of the domestic space to accommodate the range of its new uses, for example, the relocation of workplaces into the home (McIntyre et al., 2022). During three periods of lockdown in 2020–2021, Sanchayeeta’s participants had different experiences of navigating the lockdown restrictions, ranging from the forced mobility associated with working as a key worker (and thus exposure to the COVID-19 virus) to having to homeschool children in isolation. Shahina, who had been hypermobile between India, Dubai, the United States, and other countries before the pandemic, suddenly found her mobility restricted once again. Another participant, Seema, had just moved to London from India; plans to move away from her family-in-law fell through due to the pandemic. Instead, she and her husband were stuck in her mother-in-law’s house with a newborn baby and limited space.

Being locked down in a house with her hearing British Indian mother-in-law affected Seema’s mental well-being. Seema felt watched by her mother-in-law, who frequently checked up on whether she was doing the chores. Because Seema felt she was constantly under surveillance, she felt tense around the house, and this put her off doing chores such as cooking. She lacked the freedom to do what she liked, including drinking alcohol. Seema often retired to her bedroom between 8 and 9 p.m. and stayed there in order to avoid her mother-in-law and to have a private space with her baby daughter. She walked around her neighborhood either in the mornings or afternoons to have space away from her mother-in-law. Seema was emotional as she told this to Sanchayeeta. She did not feel that the house was her home. She missed Sindhi dishes (her regional food), and she missed her family badly. Despite her homesickness, she was not able to fly to India to visit her family, nor was she able to have her family over. For people like Seema who had migrated just before the pandemic and who experienced the pandemic during significant life changes (a new husband, a new baby, a new mother-in-law), the sudden stuckness-at-home—in combination with homesickness—could feel overwhelming. The pandemic also affected her sense of connection with the city she lived in and with her deaf networks in London. Instead, her ongoing connections with her sister in California and her parents back in India provided her with emotional support during the pandemic.

The pandemic thus impacted these women’s feelings of immobility. Aisha’s story illustrates how her process of building up social capital in London was prolonged in the temporal sense. When she lived in Mumbai, Aisha was not allowed by her mother to travel outside of Mumbai to socialize with deaf people, but she was allowed to travel within the city. She is a sociable person and loved to visit people in their homes and to attend festivals and events with her friends. However, when she moved to London, she had limited opportunities to develop relationships within its deaf community or to maintain her existing relationships with other deaf female Indian migrants (see Chapter 9). She also observed that deaf people in London tended to arrange in advance to meet outside their homes, whereas she was used to socializing with deaf people in their homes without the need to plan. She found herself isolated at home, especially when her husband was working long hours, and she expressed feelings of stuckness:

I would like to be involved in the British [deaf] community […] I am actively learning BSL, but certain people are too busy to meet me because of their family obligations. I realized since I got married, I have been busy too, and I noticed these women are burdened with household duties [like me]; we Asian women [experience] the same. Some white people aren’t aware of this. I don’t mind meeting some [of them] but COVID [has restricted us from meeting up]. In 5 or 10 years’ time, I may be happily involved in the community, but at the moment I’m still new. I still have a strong attachment [with my friends] back in India. It is still a strong part of me. I have only been here for 2 years.

There are multiple layers to Aisha’s narrative. The coronavirus restrictions were a central theme. Even though the pandemic was restrictive for the majority of people, it led to a surge in localism in the sense of engaging in (or resurrecting) relationships with neighbors (Cresswell, 2021); this was not necessarily the case for deaf people, for whom there were often additional barriers. Deaf people typically need to travel greater distances to meet other deaf people. In Chapter 4, we showed that deaf spaces are dispersed across London and that few of these spaces consist only of local people. Mobile deaf lives are not local lives. The pandemic thus delayed Aisha’s chance to develop relationships with deaf people, specifically the other people in her English and BSL courses. Like Meera, Aisha felt household obligations restricted her time for socializing with deaf people, and especially with Indian women—she was particularly keen to interact with this demographic, but all had limited time to socialize due to the domestic expectations placed on them. She experienced the different mobility of Asian deaf women in the United Kingdom, contrasting them with white deaf women.

Aisha was living with her deaf in-laws at the time; hence, she had access to BSL and was not cut off from social interactions within the home. However, she craved the wider socialization that she was used to in India, and she could not invite people over to her in-laws’ home. Aisha thus wished to be mobile herself outside the home and for other people to be mobile in her direction (i.e., to visit her at home), and she keenly felt the double effect of immobility when neither was possible. She had been working hard to increase her linguistic capital in the 2 years since she had moved to London (see Chapter 8), but the pandemic slowed down the process of expanding her social capital within the city. Being immobile during the pandemic not only prolonged the time needed for “integration” as a migrant, but it also prolonged her sense of having strong ties to India. Because the pandemic was a global event, her friends in India also spent more time online and, as she was restricted to the home, she was still able (or even more able) to build up or maintain social and cultural capital through the internet, such as via various WhatsApp groups in which she could remotely keep up with topics related to deaf people, her own learning and professional development, as well as her use of Indian Sign Language (ISL). This challenges the oppositional nature of mobility and immobility, and it shows that “being immobile can be affirming and empowering” (Wang, 2022, p. 1), as well as a translocal experience (see Chapter 9).

Other interviewees described the positive aspects of being immobile. Rita had a positive experience during the “stay-at-home” period:

During the lockdown I jumped for joy, I was so happy to stay at home! I was excited to think what we would do at home with the family. I was so happy. I went shopping to buy food, went with a mask on. I didn’t go out socially. I was thinking what we would do at home. […] Cleaned up the house, threw away unwanted things. Got new things. [Pauses] I was so happy for a year. One year of the lockdown! So happy! When the BBC News announced that shops, etc., will open in May, I was miserable returning to work. […] Looking back, the time of the lockdown was lovely and at a slow pace, [there were] nice long hours. When returning to work, time goes by rather too quickly, when [you’re] busy.

Of the five women interviewed by Sanchayeeta, Rita had been living in the United Kingdom longest; she moved to London about 20 years ago after marrying her British Indian deaf husband in India. She had thus been long settled before the pandemic started, and she had more control over her life in the United Kingdom than when she was in India. Rita did not have strong relationships with people outside her family circle, and this period of “acquiescent immobility” at home with her family brought her joy. The slow pace of time during the lockdown gave her respite from her everyday life, which she felt was going by too fast, and permitted quality time with her husband and children as well as with her in-laws.

Rita was involved in a Hare Krishna group through her husband, and the religion was embedded in their everyday lifestyle and practices. They had been actively involved in this group (consisting of a mix of deaf and hearing people) and had traveled to various places in the United Kingdom to participate in religious activities. During the pandemic, Rita became more involved with deaf Hare Krishnas in India through collaborating on moral stories. In this way, she not only engaged in translocal connections but also expanded her ISL skills, as she had not had the opportunity to socialize with Indian deaf people growing up because she attended a school with no other deaf students. This is another example of how, for Indian deaf migrants, the pandemic led to strong connections, and even new connections and skills development with people back in India.

National Borders and Bureaucracy

Having discussed experiences of immobility in a new country and how these experiences co-occur with (local or virtual) (im)mobilities, we now move to the experience of immobility on the national level. Returning to Kakuma Refugee Camp, we focus on some of the barriers to crossing national borders. Resettlement is unlikely for most refugees in the camp, who are immobile while waiting for a positive response from UNHCR; however, Amandine learned from deaf refugees still in the camp of 10–20 others who had been resettled in different countries. Deaf refugees in the camp thus have concrete examples of resettlement, which instill hope in them.

Chris, a participant in the London migration subproject, was one of those resettled, showing the unexpected connections between our seemingly disparate fieldwork locations. Chris had fled the Burundian civil war in 1996, arriving first in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and detained there while his passport, visa, and papers were checked. The Kenyan government had wanted to send him home, but after he explained the reasons for his escape from Burundi, they sent him to Kakuma Refugee Camp. During his time in the camp, Chris formed a community with deaf people from different countries in Africa, such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda; together, they used ASL. Growing up in Burundi, he had attended a deaf school and learned ASL there. Chris engaged in discussions with UNHCR about the possibility of setting up a deaf unit in a school; this was the unit created in MPC1 (see Chapter 3). He communicated with hearing people by writing in English, which was frustrating for him because he was more fluent in French than in English. In Kakuma Refugee Camp, his everyday life was relentlessly the same, and there were no opportunities for him to work; because of this, he wanted to go to the United Kingdom. After 5 years of living in Kenya, Chris was successful in his application to UNHCR, and he arrived in the United Kingdom in 2000. He initially struggled with language barriers because he had to learn a new sign language, BSL, which he learned at City Lit (as described in Chapter 8). At the time of the interview, Chris worked as a social worker with deaf people.

Back in Kakuma Refugee Camp, some of Amandine’s interviewees believed that the reason deaf refugees like Chris were selected for resettlement was that they were more intelligent and talented than others. They believed that growing their cultural and linguistic capital—for example, by learning ASL and English—could help them be selected for resettlement (see Chapter 8). Ken believed that unmarried deaf people would have more chance of being selected by UNHCR, an assumption that could be based on seeing other single deaf people being selected. For Halimo, building up social and economic capital within the camp was associated with her hope to be resettled (see Chapter 3).

Deaf refugees had many questions relating to resettlement, and they sought information from other deaf and hearing refugees, governmental representatives, and NGO workers about the various criteria that need to be met in order to be selected by UNHCR. Refugees are selected according to their situation of need, in terms of risk and insecurity (their need for physical safety, such as in the case of torture or gender-based violence), medical reasons, injuries and disabilities, and not having another solution available for repatriation, local integration, or family reunification (Jansen, 2011). Through his discussions with international and Kenyan researchers and refugees, Jansen (2008) discovered that corruption is present in every aspect of the resettlement process. There are thus systemic issues that individuals have to overcome in order to be resettled. “Active” refugees who are working for UNHCR or who have a good social or professional network with people working for UNHCR could have a greater chance of obtaining resettlement (Jansen, 2008). This shows the value of social capital in the process of resettlement.

There was a lot of misinformation about resettlement and UNHCR’s selection process. For example, deaf refugees did not know whether it is based on random selection or on criteria connected to a refugee’s vulnerability, language abilities, cultural background, nationality, or family configuration, or as the result of networking with UNHCR workers. In Kakuma Refugee Camp, deaf refugees, especially women, would often go to the Protection Delivery Unit (PDU) in the hope of being resettled by UNHCR. Amandine visited this place multiple times. Halimo, the deaf Somali woman, asked Amandine to come with her and two of her friends. The place was full of people, many of them waiting in front of a gate with barbed wire fences; these kinds of waiting situations in the camp were not restricted to the Food Distribution Center. Both of these spaces were gendered: Women spent more time waiting at the PDU than men, in contrast to the male-dominated Food Distribution Center. Figure 10.6 shows deaf refugees from Sudan or Somalia in colorful clothes sitting on the ground in front of the PDU and forming a circle to chat together. Amandine took the picture from inside the PDU because she was allowed by the guards to enter alone; this was due to her privilege as a white person. In addition, Amandine found that if she asked the guards, she was also permitted to bring deaf refugees inside the PDU with her. This example shows how white privilege impacts on the duration of waiting, both for the white person themselves and for the nonwhite people associated with them; Amandine’s whiteness gave her differential treatment and, by extension, determined who else did not have to wait.

Figure 10.6. Deaf and hearing refugees sitting waiting together near the UNHCR Protection Delivery Unit.

After passing through the gate, Halimo and her friends could wait on wooden benches under a corrugated iron roof for protection against heavy rain or the heat of the sun (see Figure 10.7). After waiting for hours, they were finally let into another place with a bench, where they waited to enter the room in which they could meet with the officers of the PDU. During the hours of waiting, and particularly outside the PDU where there were fewer hearing people in close proximity, deaf people would discuss matters regarding resettlement procedures and various UNHCR regulations and exchange gossip about people living in the camp: illnesses, births, fights between different ethnic groups. In this space, deaf people built and maintained social capital; thus, in this context, waiting was “doubly relational” because people created or mobilized a set of relations or networks to help them tolerate boring and tiring hours spent waiting and to share information with others (Auyero, 2011). Some hearing women would join the circle if they recognized some of the deaf people, and they would converse with them through gestures and mouthing in the ethnic languages that particular deaf refugees were familiar with.

Figure 10.7. The waiting place in the UNHCR Protection Delivery Unit with chicken wire fencing.

For many refugees, the purpose of the PDU was unclear and confusing. Deaf refugees would go there to report violence or other problems occurring in their homes or with family and neighbors. They would complain in the hope of improving their life circumstances in the camp, and in the hope that UNHCR would believe that they were in danger and urgently in need of resettlement. In the process of reporting issues, deaf refugees would describe their traumatic life stories and their issues with living in the camp, including situations in which they were being oppressed by hearing refugees, or complaints about their food or shelter. All this was with the aim of proving to UNHCR that they were eligible to be resettled or should be a priority compared to other refugees. As Amandine noted the confusion about the purpose of the PDU, she asked the guards in the waiting places to explain, using written English. The guards clarified that the aim of the PDU is not to select people for resettlement in different countries but instead to protect the inhabitants of the camp. The misunderstandings and misinformation about which offices in the camp are there to provide information and services in relation to achieving international mobility (in the form of resettlement) create barriers for refugees in the camp—especially for deaf refugees, who also experience linguistic barriers to accessing this vital information.

Some deaf refugees asked Amandine to accompany them to the PDU because they wanted her to facilitate communication with the UNHCR officials. During those meetings, Amandine supported communication by noting in English what deaf refugees signed to her. This was not an easy or quick process. For example, when accompanying Halimo, Amandine often had to interrupt her to ensure accuracy because Halimo had the tendency to go off on a tangent. Managing this was arduous at times, and it made the process complex. Amandine was rather uncomfortable in this role because there were concepts with which she was not familiar or even aware, and the bureaucratic language and its meanings were hard to get across to the deaf refugees. Amandine also faced problems in translating for other deaf refugees because they did not always engage with the questions being asked, and they would instead reply with a narrative that detailed their hardships and problems. However, for some deaf refugees, Amandine’s translation helped them to better understand the processes and to therefore communicate better with the UNHCR officials.

Some deaf refugees had very good English literacy skills and did not need Amandine’s presence for translation purposes; however, they too kept asking Amandine to accompany them. The reason for this was probably to leverage her white privilege and/or because they still believed that Amandine had an official relationship with UNHCR, noting that she could easily circumvent long queues and be the first person to enter the office. Kenyan officials were cooperative and appeared to take the refugees’ concerns seriously during meetings in which Amandine was present; communication between the deaf refugees and the officials was thus made easier by her presence, even though Amandine is deaf and sometimes struggled with written English herself because French is her first written language. Some deaf refugees preferred a member of their family to speak for them, at which point Amandine left the room; this demonstrates that deaf refugees used Amandine’s white privilege strategically, for example, to bypass queues and not necessarily to overcome communication issues.

In the case of deaf people wishing to be resettled in locations abroad, deaf refugees perceived themselves to have several strategies: staying single, learning ASL and English (see Chapter 8), frequenting the PDU, exercising patience while waiting, trying to get information from other deaf refugees, and making use of the linguistic knowledge and positionalities of other people. Regarding the lack of clarity about where to get services and information and the search for solutions for accessing information and communicating, there are similarities with the bureaucratic process that many deaf migrants face when they arrive in the United Kingdom. Most deaf migrants have to navigate this process in a new language environment; those in London move across numerous fields dominated by spoken and written English, including their place of work, their place of education, medical institutions, social services, their community or neighborhood, and their local deaf center and/or deaf community gatherings. Signing deaf migrants are immediately disadvantaged in fields where there is no sign language (interpreting) provision, especially when they have little or no knowledge of English.

Fareed’s story gives an example of the bureaucratic and language barriers faced by a lot of migrants to London. Fareed faced confusion in navigating the visa process in the United Kingdom. He is originally from Lebanon and planned to move from there to the United States with his father, brother, and uncle using a U.S. visa. Before traveling to the United States, his father and uncle had been advised by an Arabic lawyer to get a fake paper stating that they were from Iraq instead of Lebanon, with which they would be able to apply for refugee status. Although they were not fleeing war, they were looking for a better life, and they believed the lawyer’s advice that this would make their mobility more straightforward. As a result, they paid him $500 in U.S. dollars to “ensure” that they would get refugee status. They had their tickets ready to fly to the United States, but they had to fly into London en route; there, they became stuck due to problems with their papers. Fareed explained in an interview with Steve how he had felt in this situation, finding himself suddenly stuck in the United Kingdom:

This left us in a terrible situation. We didn’t have any information and didn’t know where to turn or who to turn to for help. As deaf people, we [my brother and I] had problems accessing any advice, we were very disheartened and struggled to find anyone or anywhere to help us. We didn’t know anyone either.

Fareed was confused throughout the process of interacting with the U.K. authorities because he had initially planned to go to the United States and felt himself to be stuck in the United Kingdom. Ultimately, he had to stay there, and he tried to find a network of people to help him settle in the country with his family, initially by asking around in a pub where deaf people gathered (see Chapter 7).¹

Other deaf migrants had more successful support mechanisms in place when obtaining a visa. When Aisha agreed to marry her future husband who lived in the United Kingdom (and whom she had gotten to know online), he was able to fill out the paperwork for her. She had to wait for a long time before obtaining her visa, never knowing when she would get it:

How long did it take? About 6 months, so when that was done, my future husband contacted me and told me to go to the visa office in Mumbai for an interview. I went and I answered their questions. Then I had to wait for a while until my visa was validated. While we were waiting, it was very difficult to make any wedding plans, as we couldn’t be sure what the outcome would be.

During the waiting process, Aisha could not make any wedding preparations and did not even know when she should give her notice at work. She had told her boss about her intention to move, but she did not want to tell colleagues she was moving until she knew for sure; this placed her in professional and social limbo. The process of obtaining a visa can involve a long period of waiting, sometimes a very lonely one; international mobility here is preceded by a keen sense of time being stretched out.

The process of getting a residence permit has become more complicated for some deaf people since the decision of the United Kingdom to exit the European Union (i.e., Brexit). Deaf people who need BSL (or other sign language) access to understand the nuances of Brexit can feel confused and excluded. A scheme for settlement has been introduced for EU citizens who live and work in the United Kingdom, granting them the same access to work, study, benefits, and public services as British citizens. To find out more about the settlement scheme and to meet deaf EU citizens in the United Kingdom, Steve and Sanchayeeta did participant observation at a 2019 event for disabled and deaf people from EU countries, titled “Brexit and You,” at which BSL interpreters were provided.

During the question-and-answer sessions, deaf attendees came to the front and signed their questions, which were wide-ranging—some about how Brexit would impact motility, and others about access to information: “What happens if my application for pre-settled status fails?”; “Can I still go on holiday in European countries, and do I need to pay for visas?” (asked by British passport holders); “Can my friends from a particular European country come and settle in the United Kingdom?”; “Where do I go to get help with communication if I don’t understand how to use the smartphone app [for EU citizens to apply for settled status]?” Although the information given was repetitive and concise, questions continued to be asked about the application process, which showed that some deaf people had not fully understood the information provided. Steve and Sanchayeeta noted that the panel did not take into account the needs of deaf people attending help centers for support with their application—where there is a high likelihood that the staff would be unable to sign and would have inadequate deaf awareness training. Even in centers with support provided in BSL, not all deaf migrants are fluent in BSL; this makes the implementation of individual applications challenging because the applicants are without any support. There was much apprehension among deaf people about conducting the application process independently, given cuts to support services. The lack of support when navigating both bureaucracy and language barriers led to feelings of (impending) immobility and stuckness—and of uncertainty, because vital information was missing. Deaf people therefore often turned to deaf networks to gather information (see Chapter 7).

Barriers to obtaining a visa also often occur in relation to events organized internationally. Deaf people who are willing to travel to other countries for international events may experience late cancellations due to visa issues. During her fieldwork, Annelies observed event organizers announcing that people who had been invited and who had received funding were unable to be there. For example, at the Congress of the International Deaf Chess Federation in Manchester in July 2018, a number of delegates from Pakistan, Mongolia, and elsewhere had to cancel their congress attendance at the last minute because they were not able to secure a visa due to the strong border regulations of the United Kingdom. At the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI) conference opening in Paris, then-President Debra Russell announced that two people who had gotten a bursary to attend had not successfully received visas. At the Clin d’Oeil festival in France, its founder David De Keyzer said in an interview that certain areas of the world (e.g., Africa) were underrepresented there for many reasons: lack of funding, but also visa problems, because financial support from the festival is not sufficient to secure a visa. A married Indian couple working in the United States had wanted to attend the same festival but, whereas the husband had traveled to France direct from the United States with no issues with the visa procedure, his wife had first traveled to India to visit her family, and her visa application from India was rejected. Annelies learned about several other Indians who had wanted to attend the Clin d’Oeil festival but had gotten their visas rejected. At the opening of Clin d’Oeil 2019, it was announced that the next edition of Clin d’Oeil would take place in the United States, and the following one again in France, alternating every year. Some Brazilian participants were worried about securing visas if the festival took place in the United States, believing that getting a U.S. tourist visa would be more difficult than getting a tourist visa for France.

In short, even if attendees receive funding or have the economic capital to self-fund their participation in international events, and even if they have the necessary social and linguistic capital to navigate the application processes, they can experience barriers due to border regulations. Wahyu, the “Bali Deaf Guide,” was invited to Australia by his clients, but it turned out to be a very challenging process for him to enter Australia as opposed to his Australian clients’ ability to travel to Bali. One of Wahyu’s Australian sponsors had to write several letters to the authorities asserting that he would be financially responsible for Wahyu and that Wahyu had the support of several people in Australia. It took several months for Wahyu’s visa to be approved, whereas most tourists who visit Bali can apply and be approved for a visa upon arrival in Indonesia. Citizenship and country of residence can thus be deciding factors in rendering people internationally immobile or in causing them to be stuck waiting for a long time before they can go abroad. In other cases, deaf people want to stay in the country they are in (e.g., become a citizen), but they experience barriers. This further leads to imbalances of representation during global events, where deaf people from already underrepresented areas are excluded from attending (and, indeed, experience other barriers while attending, as explained in Chapter 9).

(Im)mobility on/Access to the International Scale

The previous section ended with a focus on temporary international gatherings, noting that bureaucratic processes can limit deaf people’s access to these even when they have access to the necessary economic capital. Access to economic capital in the form of funding was often discussed in these fields, especially in relation to sports. Access to funding sometimes operates on the national or local scale, such as national deaf associations sending out staff members or universities giving out travel bursaries. Generally, more funding is needed to participate as an athlete in the Deaflympics than to attend the Deaf Academics Conference, for example, due to the longer stay abroad (typically 5–6 weeks), resulting in higher accommodation costs and possibly unpaid leave from work. The need for sports equipment, and other costs such as support staff, also raise the level of funding required to participate.

The Deaflympics was called the World Games for the Deaf until 2001, the name change being one of the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf’s (ICSD) strategies for securing more funding from national governments. By signaling in its name that the Deaflympics was related to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and thus the wider Olympic movement, the hope was that deaf sports would be better funded. In some countries, this was successful. Pavel, the captain of the Russian chess team, gave the following narrative during the 19th Winter Deaflympics in 2019, where Annelies did fieldwork:

Now it’s good, but that wasn’t the case in previous years. This was because the label of “Olympics” was not yet attached to our games. Our government [in Russia] was highly focused on funding Olympic achievement, but because we weren’t part of the official movement, funding was very limited. A big step toward gaining that was us dovetailing into the movement and becoming the Deaflympics, and from that point forward you could see an exponential increase in support, so we were delighted to become part of the Olympics movement. Not only has it made a difference in the financial aspect, there is also the philosophy of the movement and the positivity and momentum that we can build on for future years. All that from being part of the Olympics.

Being in the Deaflympics helps to secure funding. Philip Gardner (Technical Director of Chess for ICSD) stated that at the 2018 International Chess Olympiad (an event independent of the Deaflympics), many participants were self-funding and only few had received financial support, whereas at the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, the number of chess players who had gotten support was higher, as well as the number of players (140 in total).

Nevertheless, in a lot of countries (e.g., the United Kingdom; see Harrison, 2014), government funding for international disability sport goes entirely to the Paralympics. It is often easier to get support if you are proven to be a successful athlete who has already won a medal at an international competition, making it harder for young athletes with unproven success to start doing elite sports on an internationally competitive level. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was drawn up in 2004 between the International Paralympics Committee (IPC) and ICSD, recognizing both as separate organizations with separate target groups; this has helped national deaf sports associations in some countries to put pressure on their governments to release more funding for the Deaflympics separately from the Paralympics. Several countries have struggled with this because deaf sports do not reach the standard of the Paralympics and are less well known by funders and governments. For some top deaf athletes, participating in the Olympics (rather than the Deaflympics) is more feasible in terms of obtaining funding; however, the level of the competition is much higher and deaf people often feel left out in terms of communication (Harrison, 2014).

Russia was often cited as a great example of support. Russian deaf sports is well funded, and when a Russian deaf person wins a medal, they receive a large sum of money, leading to a degree of financial security. However, in many countries, deaf sports associations do not know how to use the MOU to negotiate with their governments, or they have not been successful in doing so. At the 23rd Summer Deaflympics in 2017, the Ukrainians and Russians were awarded many medals, which shows disparity between countries in relation to funding and representation. Pavel narrated stories of hearing and hard of hearing people in Russia faking or manipulating their audiograms to ensure that their hearing loss was recorded as being just over 55dB in order to pass the threshold of eligibility to the Deaflympics. Privileged forms of deaf mobility are thus attractive enough for people to fake deafness or to exaggerate their hearing loss (see also Kusters, 2017a). At the end of the 2010s, deaf Ukrainians and Russians in the sports world were seen as privileged in terms of having their professional mobilities funded; at the time of writing in 2022, the reverse is true, with many Ukrainians experiencing acute suffering and forced migration, and international sanctions placing some restrictions on Russians’ mobilities.

The struggle for funding has led to a push for the professionalization of deaf sports. This has meant the privileging of athletes with mild hearing loss, and the involvement of more hearing people on the level of coaching and training (see Chapter 9). The professionalization of sports, and its relationship to the availability of funding, causes difficulties for some deaf sports professionals. Marijo, an elderly man from Croatia, described this situation when interviewed at the curling competition at the 2019 Winter Deaflympics:

In the past, deaf people coached in whatever way they saw fit, without regulation. But that’s not allowed now. At the national level, if you have no training and no qualification, then you cannot coach. It’s a hard-and-fast rule. In Croatia, I used to coach the deaf team, but now I am not allowed. You have to be qualified.

In this case, international deaf mobility turns into international hearing mobility to deaf international events, and it renders some deaf sports professionals less mobile as professionals. Also, where governments do not provide support, or where fundraising is not successful, deaf and hard of hearing individuals are often self-funding or are funded by their families. This has led to complaints in India, for example, that it is not necessarily the best deaf athletes who compete in the Deaflympics, but those with the wealthiest families. This shows the influence of class and economic capital on deaf professional mobility.

During the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, the impact of gender on international deaf mobility was often discussed. Because sports competitions are gender segregated, gendered differences were especially visible. Deaf sports are strongly male dominated (Clark & Mesch, 2016), and female athletes are less mobile in the international sports world compared to men for several reasons, including the necessary length of the stay abroad. The Deaflympics themselves last 10 days, but they are preceded by sometimes several weeks of stay at the location for training. It is often difficult for parents to arrange to be away from home for so long, an issue that disproportionately affects mothers. Furthermore, in team sports, the team members attending the Deaflympics are often recruited from different parts of a country, making international mobility in the sports contingent on earlier local and national mobility for training and preparation. It is often particularly difficult for women to commit to frequent training away from home in other parts of the country if they have care duties, especially following childbirth. This situation differs starkly between countries. Margareth Hartvedt, head of the national deaf sport organization in Norway, explained that Norwegian women experience fewer barriers to participation in international elite sports than those in many other countries around the world. Even so, she had taken a 15-year break during the period that she had three children.

It tends to be harder to create a new women’s team compared to a new men’s team. Women’s ice hockey has faced difficulties meeting the Deaflympics inclusion requirement of six teams from a minimum of two regional confederations (such as Europe and Africa), due to there sometimes only being teams from Europe. As a result of this, only a men’s ice hockey competition took place in the 2019 Winter Deaflympics. In ice hockey, 15 players are needed; in comparison, only five players are needed in curling, making it easier to meet the requirement. There were several female curling teams at the Winter Deaflympics. The number of participants in a team sport is also problematic for the sport of chess, in which teams of four players are expected from each country; for some countries, this is not possible. If the regulations allowed for a reduced number of players per team, it is likely that we would see a growth of chess among female sportspeople, and thus an increase in international mobility for women. In other words, regulations impose structural barriers to mobility on already underrepresented people.

The underrepresentation of women in sports not only applies to the athletes themselves but also (and even more so) at the level of national and international sports leadership. It is challenging to get enough women on international deaf sports boards, such as the ICSD board; not many women apply. At the ICSD congress in 2019, a young female Swedish delegate proposed a quota for women on sports boards: Every country would have a female delegate and a male delegate, and at least two members of the board were to be women. Her proposal was received with reserve, and it was voted down. When the location for the next (24th) Summer Deaflympics was discussed at the same congress, two Brazilian women presented a bid. One of the men on the ICSD board sneered, “See, we do have some women here after all!” and did not recognize the problem as structural (see This Is IS: Episode 6). Where women have been leaders in sports for a long time, this has often been due to the strategy of downplaying their gender and focusing on their deafness instead. Isabelle Malaurie, from France, a leading figure in the European Deaf Sports Organisation, said:

You’re right, there are very few women at the congress, and we need to change that. In my day, we had a few strong women. We weren’t many, but we were strong. The reason we were so strong is we weren’t focused on our identities as women, but rather on the work. We were selfless in our determination and in our work for sport. I was one of them. I didn’t concentrate on my gender, but rather on being deaf. That’s what drove us. Today, as women, we see the stark gender imbalance and the need to encourage more women to get involved. […] Clubs may say it’s impossible and they can’t find any women, but this is no excuse. They should persevere in their efforts to reach out to women and girls and not just drop the issue. […] It was never about gender to me, it was about helping deaf people through sport, and that’s what gave me the drive to work hard. When men oppressed me I stood up to them as an equal and I gained their respect. I had to continue working so sometimes I would have to reprimand them, they would apologize, maybe there would be a bit of an argument, but afterward I always gained their respect. We had to be on equal footing to move forward. So, yes, you needed to be strong, and that’s how I’ve made it this far. I was never intimidated by the power or number of men, I forged ahead by my own power.

In these male-dominated spaces of sports leadership, Isabelle downplays being a woman and foregrounds being deaf. This is reminiscent of our discussion of other deaf minoritized or marginalized people taking up this strategy by downplaying racial differences and letting racist microaggressions pass (see Chapter 9).

Gender discrepancies were also evident at DOOR International in Kenya, the translation center where Annelies did research. Here, most deaf Bible translators are men, as shown in the campus cafeteria in Episode 2 of This Is IS.² Paul, the director of DOOR, explained that women had worked at DOOR in the past but that there were “problems with women.” He claimed that women “worked slowly,” that men were attracted to DOOR in search of wives, and that there was a higher turnover of staff because women were more likely to leave after a short period of work (e.g., for marriage). Ingrid, from Costa Rica, who worked at DOOR as a consultant to the deaf translators, experienced a stark contrast between working in her own country and the DOOR workplace in terms of gender-related cultural attitudes. In this strongly international workplace, including all-male teams from South Sudan and Mozambique, women were rendered internationally immobile. Clarice was the only female translator from Africa who was working on campus at the time, and as she was Kenyan herself, she had thus not had to move internationally (although she had visited the DOOR campus in India).

The lack of international mobility for women was also raised in Erin’s research on tourism, especially in relation to women traveling alone internationally. In an interview with Erin, a white deaf woman from the United States, Kate, shared that she has had to choose countries carefully when traveling alone:

Men can travel anywhere, [but] when women travel alone they need to consider their safety more. When I decided to move to Africa for my internship, I chose to go to Malawi because it was one of the few countries that was safe for women to travel alone. Even though there were some awkward moments, overall I felt safe.

Similarly, another white deaf woman from the United States, Tonya, noticed that social media was overwhelmingly full of male travelers with no children and no responsibilities. She was looking to network with women who had shared similar experiences as solo deaf female travelers:

I think a lot of women feel overwhelmed and they don’t speak up. They are taught not to be selfish, and they sacrifice everything for their kids and everyone else except for themselves. That is why I specifically searched for them, but I found nothing. My [Facebook] group started with only 10 women, and really only two of them have actually joined solo traveling, and those two don’t have children.

Because she found hardly any deaf women motivated to travel solo, she finally decided to open her Facebook group to everyone, changing the focus from solo female travelers to “solo deaf travelers” and, in so doing, reached a total of 1,000 members. This example reveals the challenges that deaf women overcome in order to travel alone compared to men: For reasons including time commitments to family and a lack of confidence due to safety concerns, women’s mobility is curtailed. This further relates to the difficulty of finding role models and creating peer networks (see Chapter 7), as evidenced by the popularity of the “solo deaf traveler” Facebook page as opposed to the group set up specifically for deaf women who travel alone.

Embodied positionalities and corporeal identities, such as gender and disability, all shape individual (im)mobilities in international settings. People who present as cisgender or transgender women, or as feminine, are vulnerable to gender-based violence in certain contexts, and they often have to take this into consideration as they move around (or not). For example, Erin did not go out alone in Bali after 9 p.m. and avoided being alone in a hotel room if the door and locks did not seem secure; many of her participants who identified or presented as women made similar decisions.

People may experience other types of barriers when moving through settings they visit abroad, due to their embodied positionalities. Steffen, a deaf wheelchair user from Germany, emphasized the importance of tenacity, confidence, and assertiveness to get through infrastructural barriers, or barriers created by people:

One time, I was told that it was impossible to go to Africa as a wheelchair user. I didn’t care and flew there anyway. When I showed up, people were disturbed, not knowing what to do because there wasn’t a lift to get off the plane for disabled people in Nigeria. I waited patiently. Seeing me made them think. Four men carried me down. The next time I flew there, they found a way to bring me down. You can see that changes happen. I didn’t give up, I went there. They told me it was impossible, so I waited until something became possible. They were panicky, trying to think of something, while I only put a smile on my face and waited. They came up with something. Before my arrival they were making excuses, but when they saw me [arrive] from Germany, they had to come up with something.

Waiting and patience, in combination with agency, can thus be a conscious strategy to enable international deaf mobility; however, we also must acknowledge that Steffen’s positionality as a white man from Germany most certainly had an impact on how he was perceived and received by the people at the airport. Additionally, not everyone is equipped for tenacity in situations where they experience barriers to mobility, especially when overexhausted or overstimulated. Many deaf people with disabilities are simply not mobile internationally because of the range of potential social, physical, and psychological barriers. Steffen pointed out that many deaf wheelchair users are discouraged by their families to being internationally mobile. Having been elected to the WFD board at the XVIII World Federation of the Deaf Congress in 2019, he hoped to inspire them.

Deaf people in wheelchairs who are internationally mobile and do make it to events may experience multiple instances of sudden stuckness on a daily basis. This includes material barriers, such as a lack of ramps. Wheelchair users attending an event can face barriers on their journeys to, and also within, the building(s) where the event is situated, negotiating public transport, streets, pubs and restaurants where deaf people gather, and accommodation venues. Steffen explained his experience during the WFD congress:

The streets here in Paris are OK for a wheelchair user, but I was not able to enter the metro. Accessibility is a problem here. Buses and pedestrian streets are good. I want everything to be accessible. Pubs where deaf people go aren’t accessible—there are stairs or other barriers. That is disappointing.

For Steffen, he had been able to reach Paris itself and come to the conference venue, but certain places remained inaccessible for him, rendering him immobile in relation to the social side gatherings that many people consider central to the experience of the event (Chapter 7).

A person’s racialized presentation also has an impact on the spaces in which they are mobile and how these spaces are experienced. Brian, a black deaf tourist from the United States who was traveling in Bali, told Erin about his experiences traveling in different countries:

Mostly all is good, it’s very safe. When I went to Japan, they were staring at me because they had never seen a black person. They asked if they could touch my skin, which I was OK with. I didn’t feel angered by it, it was innocent. They took photos with me. When I travel, I don’t worry. Sometimes—such as in Colombia—I arrive at places and there are other people of color. I didn’t read it in a travel book or anything, but there [they] are—the same as me. I don’t worry. But, in America it is different. I worry there. If I travel by car to Mississippi, I am afraid. I don’t know if I can expect to be threatened with a gun because of my skin color. There are a few places like that. I don’t feel like that in other countries when I travel.

Brian interpreted people’s fascination with his skin color in places where there are not a lot of black people as an example of curiosity and wonderment. It is notable that Brian felt comfortable traveling in many other countries, but he did not feel the same way while traveling in his own country due to the militarized racism there. This example shows that people can feel freer to move around in another country than their own, and it is reminiscent of Shahina’s account, contrasting being free to move around abroad with her family’s attempts to keep her at home.

In a further exploration of his intersectional standpoints, Brian explained to Erin that although he has the social and economic capital to travel extensively, other black people in the United States have told him that they do not have the same capital to travel:

Last year I traveled to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. When I came back home, I went to the NBDA (the National Black Deaf Association) conference. Friends and people I met there asked how the traveling was, since they had seen it on Facebook and Instagram—they wanted to know how I traveled. I explained how I used online tools. One of my friends asked if I knew why everyone was looking at me—it is because black people never travel. For example, the deaf traveler Joel Barish is a white person, the owner of Seek the World is a white person. There are other white people too. Our community is not represented [online]. I am traveling and they see it is possible and that is why they ask questions […] Some suggested I should give lectures and explain about my travels and how it works. (#deaftravel, 01:31:08)³

Brian flagged issues of representation and social capital related to mobility, with the rarity of black deaf influencers from the United States leading to his feeling of responsibility to be a role model and share information with other black Americans who are interested in travel. His agency online is reminiscent of the story of the woman who wanted to network online with other female deaf solo travelers. Online networks are crucial for people, especially minoritized people, who wish to be mobile and access information.

Having been confronted with the international immobility of other black deaf people from his country, Brian attempted to support their mobility. Deaf people who are mobile internationally are also often confronted with the international immobility of deaf people in the countries they visit. When Erin did fieldwork in Yogyakarta, she went to see Borobudur Temple with two participants; there, she was surprised to be mobbed by smiling young Indonesian students asking for photographs. Erin felt like a celebrity and obliged them by posing for a succession of photos, mostly with young women in colorful hijabs. Later, she mentioned this experience to Gio, one of the deaf guides in Bali, and Gio explained that many young Indonesians do not have the means to travel, so they “travel” by meeting foreigners and gain (an appearance of) social capital by approaching foreigners.

A similar situation arose with a woman that the Travass deaf tour group met by accident when they visited an Indonesian restaurant in Lombok, an island off Bali. When the group arrived, they started giving Gio their orders so he could communicate them to the cook, who turned out to be deaf herself. In the film #deaftravel: Deaf Tourism in Bali, Gio and the woman are filmed talking for a bit. She explained to Gio that she had not been able to go to school in Bali because she needed to stay and work to support her parents (see #deaftravel, 01:42:00).⁴ Later, she asked for a group photo, like the Indonesian students in Yogyakarta. In the film, a marked contrast in deaf motility is seen within Bali.

Whereas the deaf woman in Lombok had not even been able to leave her island for an education, Indonesian deaf tour guide Wahyu was hypermobile within Bali because of driving tourists around in his own car. Through his work with deaf tourists, Wahyu has learned about the tourists’ home countries and sign languages; in that sense, his mobility through the island (with tourists) enabled him to expand his social and linguistic capital, and his cosmopolitanism. He has gained an understanding of where different people come from, as well as their cultural norms (which he could then comment on in interactions), without physically going to these other countries: The world has come to him (see Chapters 6 and 8). In a similar way, some deaf people travel to beach resorts from their village or from Denpasar, the capital of Bali, as the guests of tourists. James Kerwin, a tourist from Australia who goes to Bali regularly, treated two of his Balinese deaf friends by inviting them to join him at a resort in northeast Bali, about an hour and half away from Denpasar. They explained that they could not afford the gas for the motorcycle, which surprised James; he then helped to cover the cost so that they could enjoy the beach as well. Here, deaf Balinese people experience the benefits of social capital in the form of relationships with international tourists, which then translates into forms of economic capital.

Some deaf people in Bali thus “travel” through meeting (and photographing) tourists and by traveling with tourists: They participate in other people’s international mobilities to and through their country. In Bengkala, the “deaf village,” the deaf households that have received the most tourists have many photos of tourists and researchers (predominantly white) on their walls as a demonstration of their social capital (see #deaftravel, 01:11:38).⁵ These deaf Indonesian people may not themselves travel much (or at all) outside of their island or, on a smaller scale, outside of their village; in this sense, they experience immobility on the national or international scale. In an example of the inseparability of mobility and immobility, Wahyu has been more mobile on the island than many other Balinese deaf people, but through his daily interactions with tourists, he has strongly experienced his role as a local guide who passes on local knowledge (see Chapter 6). Additionally, by facilitating international tourists’ local mobility, he has been confronted on a daily basis with his own position as someone who is not as internationally mobile as his customers. Wahyu does not have the resources or the necessary paperwork to travel freely on an international scale, as is shown by his experience of travel from Bali to Australia—this was not as effortless an experience as that of Australians traveling to Bali. This example shows how people’s “mobility at one scale can coexist with their immobility at another” (Salazar, 2021a, p. 15).

The interrelation between immobilities on different scales becomes clear when we examine recent global events and their impact at the local level. A key example is the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting immobilizations. The pandemic and associated travel restrictions led to a sudden shift from overtourism to nontourism (Gössling et al., 2021), and this had a profound impact on Bali’s economy. All tourism stopped: Most (96%) of the hotels were temporarily closed, along with many restaurants and shops, leading to mass layoffs in all sectors. The closing scenes of #deaftravel, in editorial production in 2020 and 2021, show empty beaches, empty streets, and a stillness in Bali.

The layoffs impacted Balinese people’s ability to secure basic needs, such as food. As a result of this, Erin received many WhatsApp messages from both deaf and hearing people in Bali asking for financial assistance. She twice sent money to the hearing family that she had lived with in Bali, and she also supported efforts by Australian deaf tourists to distribute food to Balinese deaf people. During the pandemic, James established two GoFundMe campaigns to organize and pay for emergency food runs for deaf people in Bali, the first of which raised almost $5,000 in Australian dollars. James told Erin during a WhatsApp conversation that “it is a lot of work on me keeping tabs and maintaining the campaign and it actually costs me personally financially to pay back transfer fees so it is a huge job but done with love for Bali.” As Bali closed down to tourism, many of the deaf Balinese participants in Erin’s project moved back to their home villages, some on other islands, in a form of reverse mobility as economic opportunities diminished. Tragically, one of Erin’s key participants passed away, in part due to the economic impact of the pandemic restricting his access to necessary health care. Other participants suffered economically and professionally: Wahyu, for example, did not work for over a year. However, now that Bali is open to tourists again, there is a sense of cautious optimism.

Conclusion

Mobility and immobility are scalar, and they are experienced temporally. There are diverse experiences of (im)mobilities in relation to financial, social, and/or bodily resources at each scale. Black deaf people, deaf women, and/or deafdisabled people experience site-specific immobilities and feelings of discomfort depending on the material, social, and political contexts and safety considerations of the places they visit. The same goes for deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp waiting in lines to obtain food. On a larger scale and time frame, deaf refugees feel stuck in the camp, deaf migrants feel stuck in limbo during long visa procedures, and deaf female migrants and athletes may feel stuck at home with household and childcare responsibilities. “Stuckness,” then, is a central experience resulting from enforced immobility. Feelings of stuckness shape people’s temporal perspectives when considering their life trajectories. They may draw stark comparisons with their sense of stuckness in the present and their more mobile pasts and (hopes for) more mobile futures. In this chapter, our data show that immobility can be associated with particular stages of life (e.g., being a child, being newly married, having a baby, having childcare responsibilities). It also can be associated with being deaf and the scatteredness of deaf communities (wanting to expand local deaf networks but being unable to). But immobility can also be moment- and event-specific—for example, being stuck at home due to having missed out on a visa.

Access to various forms of social, cultural, and economic capital shapes experiences of (im)mobility, and (im)mobilities are also impacted by structural inequalities embedded within government policies (e.g., funding criteria, immigration procedures, visa regulations) and the policies of organizations (e.g., gender quotas on boards). In many instances, people can feel (and are) powerless against structural barriers. Yet, the experience of immobility can also translate into agency; people may actively go in search of information, call out abuse, or compel others to figure out how to make a space more accessible for them. When stuck or waiting, people are faced with domination from the authorities that make them wait or render them “stuck” by bureaucracy, yet the waiting period can itself be spent building up economic, social, and cultural capital. Additionally, people who experience others’ stuckness and immobility may be motivated to facilitate their mobility. Other people may be motivated to facilitate other deaf people’s mobility abroad by supporting them financially, by engaging in fundraising and (sometimes ill-conceived) charity projects, by networking online with them, and by positioning themselves as role models for deaf mobility.

Mobilities lead to international deaf encounters even for those who are not internationally mobile themselves. Deaf people with more localized mobility “travel” through meeting deaf people who visit their countries or villages. This illustrates that deaf cosmopolitanism is not necessarily related to international travel, formal education, and/or social class. Deaf cosmopolitanism is, above all, an openness to difference, and the ability to engage in calibration in languaging and sociality (see Chapter 8). The examples here show that when deaf people who are hypermobile come into contact with deaf people who are less mobile, it does not automatically follow that the former have a “more cosmopolitan” attitude.

Mobility and immobility are entangled because people experience both (multiscalar and multitemporal) mobility and immobility at the same time. For instance, being a resident of a refugee camp does not necessarily mean being “stuck” within the camp, because people are often able to leave and travel outside of the camp; rather, the stuckness is felt in relation to a person’s life trajectory and long-term opportunities. In their everyday lives, deaf refugees are mobile within the camp as they go about their daily routines, but these daily mobilities also involve waiting: waiting for food to be distributed (a short-term impact), but also waiting for access to information about residence permits, visas, and so on, that they believe will affect their long-term mobility. The time spent by people waiting is thus experienced on different time scales. In a different example, Wahyu is hypermobile within Bali, but his mobility is constrained by national borders and visa regulations. This is how temporality, scale, and mobility are entwined: A person can be very mobile and yet immobile at the same time.

Furthermore, one person’s immobility only exists in contrast to other people’s mobilities. People notice how others around them are more (or less) mobile than they are: Refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp remember others who have been resettled elsewhere; wives who have emigrated from India observe that their husbands move freely in the city while they remain at home; tour guides, quintessential deaf cosmopolitans, meet and befriend deaf people from all over the world while staying put in their country; conference attendees are reminded of those who are “not here” because of visa problems, or they learn about side events they cannot access. People’s mobilities are also facilitated by other people’s immobilities: Local hosts in a Balinese village must remain immobile to welcome tourists, while the tour guide facilitates other people’s mobilities by capitalizing on their own positionality as a local. For some, the freedom to move relies on the constraints of others (Toomey, 2022).

In sum, the distinction between mobility and immobility is relative (Salazar, 2021a). The examples have demonstrated the temporal dimension of (im)mobility: It can be experienced for extended time periods, in the moment, and in contrasting time periods within a person’s life trajectory (i.e., in terms of their past life, present life, and future aspirations). People are never entirely immobile or “stuck” in absolute terms, but they experience both mobility and immobility at the same time to various degrees. Immobility is experienced when comparing it to moments of greater mobility or to people who have greater mobility, whatever the scale and time frame. Immobility may even be valued or aspired to. The data we collected and analyzed illustrate that deaf international (im)mobility is dialectical, meaning that two opposing things are true at once.

1. There are a lot of gaps in Fareed’s story. It is not clear how he managed to obtain support and get residence. This is perhaps due to Fareed being uncertain about how much to share with Steve because Fareed had traveled into the United Kingdom undocumented.

2. https://mobiledeaf.org.uk/promote_video/two/

3. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h31m08s

4. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h42m00s

5. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=01h11m38s