The purpose of this essay is to explore mobility, and particularly the politics of mobility, through specific figures who are formed through and marked by their mobility and immobility. These are the figures of the citizen and the vagabond. The paper builds on the foundational work of Zygmunt Bauman and his discussion of the Tourist and the Vagabond. In his accounts, the focus is on levels of volition in the mobility of the figures alongside the pleasure, or lack of pleasure, associated with mobility. In my account, building on citizenship studies, the figures are mapped onto a continuum of power and participation in civil society and everyday life. The paper is illustrated by historical and contemporary case studies including the identification of vagabonds in Switzerland during the fifteenth century, the policing of black bodies in Florida four hundred years later, and the selective production of citizenship in Malta in recent years. These are framed within a wider account of the the politics of mobility from within the interdisciplinary field of mobility studies.

Keywords: mobility; citizens; vagabonds; politics; figures