From Involuntary Immobility to Mobility Struggles: Aspirational and Behavioural Pathways under Mobility Constraints

A substantial share of the global population aspires to migrate but remains unable to do so—a condition described as involuntary immobility. Existing research has primarily identified the drivers of this phenomenon, leaving underexplored how people live through and adapt to experiences of immobility, and how their migration aspirations evolve over time. This paper advances a longitudinal perspective on involuntary immobility. It introduces the concept of the mobility struggle to theorise how individuals transform their aspirations and efforts to migrate after experiencing a perceived or revealed inability to move. Drawing on existing scholarship and original interviews with individuals from El Salvador, Nepal, Senegal, and Syria, we distinguish three ideal-typical pathways that may follow experiences of involuntary immobility: persistence, reconsideration, and disengagement from migration. We argue that these pathways are rarely linear or mutually exclusive. Rather, the mobility struggle is often a recursive process in which individuals repeatedly experience involuntary immobility and reconfigure their aspirations and efforts over time. Integrating insights from migration studies, psychology, and our own empirical material, we examine mechanisms across four domains that shape how individuals make sense of and respond to involuntary immobility: motivation, alternatives, and capabilities; attributional style and social norms; interpersonal relationships; and life-course dynamics and critical events. By highlighting the temporal and processual nature of involuntary immobility, this article offers a dynamic framework for how migration aspirations are sustained, modified, or abandoned, and concludes with directions for further research on involuntary immobility and its consequences.