This article revisits the social work–migration nexus by investigating the implications of the debate on mobility and transnationalism. The conceptual boundary between migration as single-directed movement and as an extended and multidirected process has been much discussed across the social sciences but not yet fully in social work. However, the dialectic of sedentarism versus mobility makes for a key challenge to the arrangements and the tacit assumptions of this field of research and practice. Building on an innovative analytical framework and on a variety of examples, we highlight the friction between sedentarism and mobility as central to social work with immigrants and their families.