The editors begin with the photograph on their cover, an empty and gleaming train carriage that could be almost anywhere, and use it to work through what a mobilities perspective actually asks. Where did this vehicle come from, who rides it, who maintains it, who is kept off it, what infrastructure lies beneath it, and how would anyone go about researching it?

They are explicit about what the book is not. Celebrations of speed, frictionlessness and borderless flow, written largely by people whose own movement is unimpeded, obscure more than they reveal.

What replaces them is a body of work spanning sociology, geography, anthropology, history and cultural studies, concerned with how movement reshapes economies and government, provokes fear and regulation, and produces stark inequality between undocumented migrants and business-class elites. Seven recurring themes, from the qualities of movement to questions of method, organise the volume's seven sections.