How does knowledge move? Investigating the epistemic mobilities of “climate migration” with diverse conceptual metaphors

Abstract

The production of knowledge is a mobile process. Efforts to conceptualise the mobilities of knowledge draw on a wide range of metaphors to conceptualise the ways in which knowledge moves and changes as it moves. In this paper, I present the theoretical origins and methodological implications – often tied to specific disciplines – of concepts in use. I distinguish between sedentarist metaphors (construction, transfer) and mobile metaphors (focusing on translation, contagion, friction, and circulation). I show that, although all these metaphors share a common attention to knowledge as mobile, they are neither synonymous nor interchangeable. They each structure how we think about and research epistemic mobilities in their own way. I find that mobile metaphors in particular are most compatible with, and can contribute to, the development of the mobile ontology that characterises the mobilities turn. I illustrate this using a case study of the epistemic mobilities of the idea of climate migration in the French context. From this example, I draw key lessons for studies of epistemic mobilities. I argue for a diverse, nuanced conceptual vocabulary of epistemic mobilities, leading to a nuanced, relational understanding of space, scale, and how to trace the mobilities of knowledge in practice.