Anthony D'ANdrea

This article introduces a collection of methodological reflections on mobilities research, and additionally discusses the general status of methodology in the scholarship. Fast advancements on empirical and conceptual levels of mobilities studies have not been equivalently matched by efforts on the methodological front. While microsociological and phenomenological approaches are predominant in the scholarship, large‐scale studies on mobility tend not to systematically analyse research frameworks used in the process of knowledge production. The articles featured in this special section examine some of the methodological challenges and innovations arising within several topical strains of mobilities studies. This introductory article argues that multi‐scalar and critical methodologies are necessary for further expanding the analytical and interventional possibilities of a mobilities research agenda.

This article focuses on a theoretical discussion about the interrelations between global hypermobility and subjectivity formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among expatriates that circulate through global circuits of countercultural lifestyle, the study initially evinces the cultural and conceptual significance of global nomadism. It then detects conceptual limitations for the investigation of fluidic and metamorphic formations in global studies. Through a dialogue between the anthropology of nomadism and philosophy of nomadology, the article then seeks to integrate tropes of fluidity, rootlessness and aesthetic reflexivity into an ideal‐type of postidentitarian mobility (neo‐nomadism), a device for investigating the cultural effects of hypermobility on self, identity and sociality. It includes methodological notes on nomadic ethnography. The article concludes that the neo‐nomad is both a phenomenon and a concept that allows us to rethink models of subjectivity formation in globalization.