Moving behind the scenes of public space: the differentiation of market traders’ routinized mobilities

Abstract

ABSTRACT The politics of public space, such as food and retail markets, has predominantly been studied from place-based perspectives. Most studies focus on the intercultural interactions and social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion as they develop in these places. Less research attention has been devoted, however, to how questions of accessibility and emplacement are intrinsically related to everyday mobilities that surround and come together in public space. By interviewing and physically following market traders who work on the central outdoor market of a town in the Netherlands, this article approaches traders’ mobilities to and away from markets as social practices that involve careful navigation. Three contrasting narratives of mobility-as-navigation are outlined, relating to the stories of the ‘established’, ‘searching’ and ‘roaming’ trader. The findings demonstrate that differences in navigation can be explained by the interdependencies between both individual and material/structural factors. The focus on mobility-as-navigation reveals not only the complex and sometimes contested ways in which people differently move to and away from public space, but it also shows how it leads to differentiated presence on, and access to, these places.