Abstract
AbstractYouth temporary mobility occurs for purposes such as volunteering, Erasmus exchanges and linguistic stays. Although it is increasingly common, a large proportion of young adults are not mobile. This study is based on a large‐scale survey among young adults in Switzerland. It draws on the concept of motility to analyse the barriers to temporary mobility, where motility may be defined as a set of mobility resources that refer to three dimensions: access (e.g., financial means or time), skills (e.g., languages and self‐confidence) and appropriation (e.g., level of interest). A typology places nonmobile young adults on a continuum between ‘stillness’ (no desire to move) and ‘stuckness’ (unable to move) and identifies four groups: ‘the constrained’ and ‘the financially challenged’ are often constrained to a varying extent by their socio‐economic background, their educational pathways and their family network. ‘The locally anchored’ and especially ‘the satisfied stayers’ face fewer constraints and draw more on their own agency to be nonmobile.
Highlights
Until recently, nonmobility has been studied as the counterpart of mobility
This paper addresses temporary mobility, which is increasingly popular among young adults for university students
This article aims to fill this gap by addressing the following research question: How can the nonmobility of young people be best understood in an era of mobility? We extend existing research by analysing a large-scale survey dedicated to temporary mobility among young adults
Summary
Nonmobility has been studied as the counterpart of mobility. It is assumed that being nonmobile in our hyper-connected societies results from constraints. 1), a major drawback of the current mobility literature is its focus on mobile individuals and the limited attention paid to the agency of nonmobile people (Henderson, 2020; Hjälm, 2014; Stockdale & Haartsen, 2018). This leads to what has been referred to as a ‘mobility bias’ (Schewel, 2020). King & Raghuram, 2013). It covers a variety of experiences such as Erasmus exchanges, linguistic stays, volunteering and backpacking. Temporary mobility, compared with other forms of mobility, such as migration, is easier to do, is characterised by a limited time frame and is ‘reversible’, as a return is planned (Ravalet, 2012)
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