1- Presentation

The 21^st Century is often viewed as the century of migration, but this may not be accurate. Mobility is a common human phenomenon along history: since the first human groups that can be called modern in an evolutive perspective began their planetary odyssey, about 300 thousand years ago, departing from eastern Africa, we have not stopped moving.

So, why is mobility such a cradle of conflicts? When and how did certain areas of society decided to set limits to our characteristic need to move? Migration acquires new meanings in a geo-political order defined by borders among nations limiting the movement of populations that traditionally traveled through different geographic regions. This way, moving from one country to another becomes a matter of power and resources, making visible every kind of inequality—socio-economic, political, ethnic, cultural.

Waves of human collectives, each one bigger than before, escape from poverty and hunger, from racism, from economic systems built solely over capital, from autocracies that systematically violate human rights, from global warming and the rising sea levels, from violence unleashed by other human groups.

The most worrying fact about this phenomenon is its overwhelming reality crossing borders that try to sop it, as well as migration policies and territorial chauvinism of many kinds trying uselessly to contain it.

Understanding migration allows us to make global distribution processes visible, as well as inequalities and other problems, therefor helping the decision-making process and its implementation. But it also allows us to approach migrations not only through the conflicts that accompany them, but also from a perspective of development of human nature, of growth and opportunity, as are those kinds of human mobility related to the flow of knowledge, for instance, in the university.

Especially from the university offices related to internationalization, we seek to see mobility as a positive element, relevant for our activities and our future, to address the need to broaden our knowledge to build up the image of an intensely interconnected world. Seen in their wider scope, studies journeys, doctoral residences, academic and student interchange configure a meaningful flow of people and wisdom that comes from and goes to every point in the planet.

Borders on the territory can only be seen by humans: they are artificial creations over uninterrupted lands and waters.

UNAM Internacional 7^th issue includes articles that address each of these problems and themes, along with other realities related to human mobility, seen through the internationalist and inter-disciplinary lenses.

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