Introduction: South Asia on the Move

The “new mobilities paradigm” (or “mobilities turn”) has been one of the most fertile attempts at trans-/post-disciplinary scholarship in recent social theory. Yet notwithstanding its strides towards topical and geographical diversity, there remains a relative lacuna of studies about non-Western lifeworlds and contexts. South Asia-home to nearly one-fourth of the world’s population, and with a diaspora spanning the entire world-has a particular experience of mobility that calls out for such a project. A special focus on mobilities, particularly from an ethnographic perspective, enables a more encompassing, intimate, and socially thick understanding of the region. Moreover, given the turn’s roots, primarily in the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, a perspective on and from South Asia helps to provincialize Western approaches to (im)mobility. After briefly charting the rise of the mobilities turn, this introductory chapter makes the case for precisely this sort of regional approach to South Asian mobilities and briefly introduces the chapters that follow it.