We do not have to confine ourselves to dictionary definitions to see the
fractured ways in which mobility has been understood. More generally,
modernity has been marked by time-space compression and staggering
developments in communication and transportation. At the same time,
it has seen the rise of moral panics ranging from the refugee to the globa terrorist. The celebrated technologies of mobility simultaneously open up
the possibility of an increasingly transgressive world marked by people out
of place at all scales. This is the tension that runs through the chapters in
this book. Mobility is both center and margin—the lifeblood of modernity
and the virus that threatens to hasten its downfall.