In this presentation I revisit debates about the socio-cultural importance of place and permanence in a hypermobile world order. I zoom in on everyday practices of a municipality located in the Austrian Nock mountains region which is at once characterized by a long history of cross-border mobilities and pronounced support for nativist ideas and parties. I shed light on the experiences and perspectives of village inhabitants who detest liberal ideals of cosmopolitan forms of belonging, instead insisting on tropes of indigeneity and place attachment (Heimatverbundenheit). By looking at the ways people came to weaponize ideas of slowness and permanence politically, I address a deepening chasm between scholarly imaginaries about mobile, cosmopolitan identities and people’s lived experiences in an increasingly fragmented global political arena.

Dr Annika Lems is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the ANU's School of Archaeology and Anthropology. She has previously headed an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany (2019-2022) and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland (2015-2019). She is the author of 2 monographs: "Being-Here: Placemaking in a World of Movement" (Berghahn, 2018) and "Frontiers of Belonging: The Education of Unaccompanied Refugee Youth" (Indiana University Press, 2022)

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