This article presents the author's response to a Special Section on international academic mobility. Universities--in all corners of the globe--are busy scoping, planning and advertising mobility programmes, as an essential component of academics' and students' learning experience, whilst governments and regional bodies around the world are promoting mobility as crucial to learning in the new global economy. The outcomes of some academic mobility schemes, however, are often un- or under-stated. Given the under-specification of mobility in policy discourses, it is tempting to think of "mobility" talk as little more than an "evocative keyword for the twenty-first century." However, as is clear from the intensifying focus in policy and programmes, and from the papers presented in the Special Section, the author contends that the idea of "mobility" is also creating its own effects and contexts by being strategised, materialised, institutionalised and performed in a wide variety of ways. Additionally, mobility is being mobilised by policymakers and families as an essential experience for all learners and teachers. Yet, as the Special Section has revealed, everyone has limited ways of understanding what is entailed in this experience of academic mobility. The author believes there is much work to be done in this area of mobility in the academy.