Open AccessA sojourner desires to return. A migrant plans to settle down. A transient moves on. The centre of a sojourner’s world is the home; the centre of a migrant’s world is their destination; the world of a transient is the world itself. While a sojourn is a typical pre-modern form of mobility, and migration is associated with the era of the nation state and citizenship, transient mobility became prevalent in the globalizing world of the twenty-first century, though it has by no means weakened the institution of the nation state.
All transient migrants are temporary migrants, but not all temporary migrants are transients. A temporary migrant may become a permanent settler, but a transient is forced to move on (for instance, as an unskilled contract worker) or refuses to stay (for instance, as a highly paid expatriate). Transient migration is temporary not only in the sense that it is not permanent, but in that it is against permanency.
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