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Special issue on “Migration, Mobility and Sedentariness” in Geschichte and Gesellschaft, ed. by Anne Friedrichs (IEG Mainz)“Disembarkation platforms”, “transit zones”, "transit procedures", “detention camps in a no man’s land” – the question of how to govern migration has become a topic central to the political agendas of many European states again during the previous weeks. At the same time, filmmakers such as Christian Petzold have drawn our attention to the extreme predicaments that refugees in transit often face: Such migrants often have to decide whether to survive or to preserve relationships to close persons who are not permitted to move along with them. By transposing characters from Anna Seghers’ novel “Transit” (1947) to today’s Marseille, Petzold’s Transit (2018) uses surprising references to the present time hinting at the fact that neither the restriction of mobility nor the experiences of people in transit are new. What seems to be new, however, is the aggravation of the political tone in Germany - at least as compared to a time in 2015 when rights of migrants and asylum seemed to be given a more important consideration in German politics.[caption id="attachment_642" align="alignleft" width="300"] Globe designed by Peter Wagener and Anne Friedrichs[/caption]Anne Friedrichs (Leibniz Institute of EuropeanHistory, IEG Mainz) has edited a special issue on “migration, mobility and sedentariness” in Geschichte und Gesellschaft. She brings together contributions that explore transits between mobility and immobility in different historical contexts. Examining migration from a relational perspective enables new insights into the boundaries of the societal. Analyzing transitions between mobile and sedentary life phases and life worlds not only allows us to identify interpretative ambivalences and changes in how mobility is differentiated and evaluated. As we grasp that human movement and immobility are mutually constituted, we also gain insights into the different dynamics involved in shaping social life and societal order, as well as into the ways in which these processes intersect with one another. This new research perspective helps to achieve a better understanding of conflicts over the norms and values that define a collective or society, and thus contributes to a historiography that is sensitive to the historical variability of what is perceived as “distance” or “nearness”, and that considers different actors’ perspectives in its analytical categories. Table of contents TOC GG 44/2 (2018)The introduction develops this relational approach to migration both theoretically and methodologically. Four contributions from history and social and cultural anthropology present case studies from the early modern period to the present. They address the mobility of indigenous people as a basis of agency in colonial Spanish America; the organized journey of foreign workers recruited for the labor market in the Federal Republic of Germany; the contested categorization of Portuguese decolonization-migrants in the 1970s; and the affective dimensions in the life of Vietnamese women in Berlin at the beginning of the 21st century.Link to journal Geschichte und Gesellschaft 44/2 (2018)InhaltAnne FriedrichsPlacing Migration in Perspective. Neue Wege einer relationalenGeschichtsschreibungPlacing Migration in Perspective. New Approaches to Writing RelationalHistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167Sarah Albiez-WieckTranslocal Agency in Colonial Societies. Categorizing and NegotiatingBelonging of Indigenous Migrants in New Spain and Peru . . . . . . . . . . . 196Bettina Severin-BarboutieMultiple Deutungen und Funktionen. Die organisierte Reise ausländischerArbeitskräfte in die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1950er –1970erJahre)Multiple Meanings and Roles. The Organized Journey of Foreign Workersto West Germany (1950s to 1970s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223Christoph KalterRückkehr oder Flucht? Dekolonisierung, Zwangsmigration und PortugalsretornadosReturnees or Refugees? Decolonization, Forced Migration, andPortugal’s Retornados . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250Anita von PoserAffective lives im vietnamesischen Berlin. Eine emotionsanthropologischePerspektive auf Zugehörigkeiten, Alter(n) und (Im-)MobilitätAffective Lives in Vietnamese Berlin. An Anthropological Perspective onEmotional Belonging, Age(ing) and (Im-)Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285&#160;