Daily Mobility in the Black-White Segregated City: Linking Material Realities and Repertoires of Meaning

Abstract

As the overt institutional maintenance of black-white residential segregation declines, we can investigate its persistence by analyzing the racial projects of everyday life. Daily mobility—movement from place to place for the sake of routine activities—represents one such project. Daily mobility patterns reflect the material realities of uneven resource distribution across neighborhoods and unequal means of access across residents. Yet, daily mobility patterns additionally reflect residents’ subjective interpretations and agentic navigations of space. Various repertoires of meaning that evoke racial dynamics can maintain or challenge the ideational foundations of the racial order. In turn, they can deter or encourage the crossing of segregation boundaries. The daily mobility framework acknowledges that experiences of segregation can vary considerably, as they are shaped by both spatial-opportunity distance and social-psychological distance. As a means of illustration, this project presents divergent daily mobility accounts drawn from interviews with 12 residents of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.