In this article, the author poses questions about how contemporary travel relates to the origins of tourism and migration in colonial times, and under what mobility regimes it is embedded in the postcolonial world. Who has the right and opportunity to be mobile, for what purpose and to what destination, and whose mobility is unwanted and restricted? How are being a tourist, migrant and refugee evaluated differently on a moral level? In her reflections, the author refers to her own field research in India, her body of work in mobility studies, an anthropological critique of sedentarist optics, the anthropology of colonial heritage, and the postcolonial perspective.

Keywords: mobility regimes, colonialism, tourism, migration, refugees, anthropology of colonial heritage, postcolonial perspective, India