ABSTRACT
Much of the research on global migration as it impacts understandings of health focuses on the way that migrant populations adopt, refuse or adapt to the cultural health beliefs and behaviors of the host nation-state in which they arrive. This chapter articulates a series of vignettes where mobile methodologies are used. In a mobile methodology, one focuses on not on the fixed artifacts and structures that make up a physical landscapes, but instead on the ways that individuals can navigate through physical and conceptual landscapes. Mobile methods reflect a commitment "to understanding through the local and particular". Competent participation in any social setting demands that those involved pay attention to, and make sense of, the visual availability of what is happening around them. Consequently, observation is not so much a sociological method as an inevitable and necessary part of everyday social life.
