Mobility Practices Research Articles

Participation and contested forms of citizenship in the City of Sanctuary

ABSTRACT The UK-based City of Sanctuary movement claims to create welcoming conditions for those who had to flee their homes. Despite the well-documented efforts to integrate migrants, refugees and asylum seekers at a local level, the movement’s practices have been criticised by scholars as reproducing government-prescribed passivity and exclusion of these groups. Through document analysis and participant observation in a Borough of Sanctuary group in London, we examined the City of Sanctuary’s self-representation and mobilisation practices and how participation of sanctuary seekers is discussed and enacted by those involved. We found that the movement’s institutional collaborations have led to an increased professionalisation of the movement which on the one hand offers greater impact and on the other hand risk excluding the very groups the movement is advocating for. Yet by providing material and institutional spaces to enable participation and citizenship, the movement ensures migrants can assert their rightful presence, achieving greater participation as well as amplifying migrants’ voices within and beyond the movement.

Microprudential Regulations and Bank Lending in Nigeria

Objectives: The current study aimed at investigating the relationship between microprudential regulations and bank lending in Nigeria. Theoretical framework: The theoretical underpinning of the study is drawn on the theory of risk-return tradeoff which maintains that potential return rises with an increase in risk. Method: Financial data of 13 banks over a period of 15 years were sourced from the repository of Central Bank of Nigeria, and were analyzed using the Panel (Least Squares) Multiple regression technique. Results and Discussions: The result of analyses revealed a high R-squared value of 0.75, an indication that microprudential regulation accounted for 75% variation in profitability in the Nigeria banking institution. Also, the F-statistic of 101.31 and a p-value of 0.000, indicated that the Ordinary Least Square regression model is statistically significant at the 1% level. Overall, microprudential regulation impact on lending and profitability in Nigeria. Research Implications: More so, the study’s relevance is evident in its applications to the principles and practice of lending, fund mobilization and other finance related policies and decisions in the banking sector. Originality/ Value: The outcome of the current study is valid and can be used for statistical inference. The conceptual framework of the study is a novel model that demonstrates how the variables in the study are interconnected. Furthermore, the model specification presents a viable template for financial speculations and calculations.

Cultura, comunicação pública e cidadania: práticas de deliberação cidadã no campo das artes/cultura (Brasil-Canadá)

This study describes a stage of research linked to the international cooperation plan that investigates practices of citizen deliberation and public communication in municipal management planning documents and citizen mobilization practices — such as the culture and tourism plans in Brazil (Salvador and Belo Horizonte) and Canada (Montreal) — and online public consultations. It presupposes conflicting public administrations interests as sometimes they aim to implement public policies with a view to citizens, such as those to promote Arts/Culture and, on the other hand, strictly mercantile practices toward tourists and the construction of cities merchandise by place branding.

Home Economics at Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B al-Khayran in West-Central Jordan: Reconstructing Residential Unit Economic and Mobility Behavior through Lithic Analysis

ABSTRACT The shift from foraging to farming economies was deeply intertwined with increasing sedentism and the emergence of house-based corporate units in southwestern Asia, with a number of researchers arguing that in the early Neolithic, households become primary economic units within communities for the first time. In order to understand how this role for households articulated with new subsistence systems, this paper analyzes the knapped stone assemblage from the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B agricultural field house of al-Khayran in the west-central Jordanian Highlands. Results demonstrate that al-Khayran’s residential unit enacted household maintenance activities, intensive cereal production, bidirectional blade reduction, and caching of stone tools in anticipation of repeated temporary occupations at the site. These findings show that the corporate household which occupied al-Khayran enacted novel mobility practices in order to accommodate emergent risks in agricultural economies.

Movement matters: uncovering life-course similarities and differences in residential environment perspectives

Neighbourhoods play a crucial role in residents’ everyday lives. People become attached to neighbourhood attributes throughout their lives and various activities performed within residential environments. Everyday time-space mobility routines actively impact how residents connect with their neighbourhoods. This paper aims to analyse residents’ links with their residential surroundings arising from their everyday spatial behaviours. It examines the topic in two dynamically transforming neighbourhood types in the Prague Metropolitan Area and from the perspectives of two population groups: older children from the suburbs and older adults from the gentrifying inner city. The study adopted qualitative data analysis using semi-structured interviews. Both groups fulfil neighbourhood attachments through various obligatory and optional movement types as well as accompanying social ties that constitute an important part of such moves. The neighbourhood links achieved through movement are shaped by complex mechanisms that occur at various spatial and temporal scales adding to the variety of functional and affective meanings of everyday mobility practices. They emerge along life-course shifts of individuals, changes in the neighbourhoods and activities happening within these spatial contexts. Residents then use numerous adaptive strategies to adjust their movements (and in turn their links with the neighbourhoods) to the combined effects of those conditions.

Effect of Electromagnetic-Radiofrequency Devices on Male Infertility at Urban Private Infertility Clinics in East Java

Background: As technology becomes increasingly integrated into urban lifestyles, the use of mobile phones, laptops/computers, and WiFi has surged, reshaping habits and routines. However, this reliance on devices raises concerns about potential health impacts, including male infertility rates. This study explores how lifestyle factors, particularly mobile phone usage and exposure to electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and radio frequencies (RF), influence male infertility. Methods: Conducted in Surabaya, Indonesia, this study analyzed sperm analysis data from 260 husbands attending private infertility clinics. Data spanning 2018 to 2023 were collected, with interviews conducted to assess EMR-RF exposure. Statistical analysis using the Mann-Whitney test evaluated differences in sperm analysis results between groups exposed to EMR-RF and controls. Results: A notable prevalence of EMR-RF exposure was observed among men aged 31-40, particularly those working indoors. Significant associations were found between EMR-RF exposure and sperm analysis results, with key factors such as mobile phone usage duration, storage practices, and WiFi exposure showing statistically significant correlations (p < 0.05). Conclusion: This study highlights the impact of EMR-RF exposure on male fertility, particularly concerning mobile phone use and WiFi exposure. These findings underscore the importance of further research and potential interventions to mitigate the health risks associated with EMR-RF exposure in urban populations.

Caught between autonomy and control: How Liberian teenagers perceive and navigate parental mediation of their mobile phone use

ABSTRACT Mobile phones play a central role in the lives of teenagers living in West Africa, but to date we have limited knowledge of how these teenagers perceive and navigate parental mediation of their phone use. This is unfortunate because such knowledge could inform about the interplay between culture, parenting, and children’s media use across cultures. To broaden our understanding of parental mediation in West Africa, this study interviewed 37 Liberian teenagers about the parental mediation strategies of their parents and investigated how these teenagers respond to parental mediation. The findings reveal two main mediation strategies: restrictive mediation and monitoring. Although these strategies are also used in the Global North, Liberian parents’ authoritarian application of these strategies as reported by our participants is different. Our findings further reveal a boomerang effect, because teenagers enact novel, mobile phone practices to circumvent parental mediation. These practices and the theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

Active, passive and hybrid multilocal living practices - towards a classification

AbstractThe accelerated pace of life, increased mobility and the individualisation of society have yielded a variety of postmodern living and housing environments. The proliferation of multilocal living practices can be understood as part of this change. Research on multilocality often focuses exclusively on those who reside in several places. The sedentary members of the same household, who remain at the primary residence and whose lives are significantly influenced by the rhythmic absence of the mobile members, are largely overlooked. Furthermore, the quantitative estimates of the extent of multilocal practices, based on official data, are currently insufficient. The aim of this study is to classify multi-local lifestyles to capture the diversity and complexity of these living practices, thereby expanding scholarly understanding of multilocality in its numerical entirety. To achieve this, a representative survey using a largely standardized questionnaire was conducted in two major city regions in Germany in the spring of 2023. The data from the study identified specific types of multilocality: active, passive, and hybrid multilocals, each exhibiting distinct characteristics. The integration of these multilocality types into the structure of multilocal households enables a classification that provides a framework for understanding how such households are organized and how they manage their mobility and residential practices. It is argued that all members of a multilocal household are significantly influenced by practises of multilocality, leading to a constant negotiation of their everyday lives.

‘You Know What the Truth Is? There are No Touareg Evacuées Here’: On Crisis and Categories of Migration

This paper analyses the practices of (im)mobilities and the accompanying emotions to question the exceptionalisation of crisis and migratory categorisations. Focusing on Kel Tamasheq (aka Tuareg) mobile livelihoods and their fluid interconnections with kinship networks and emotions across time, it argues that the multidimensionality of causes behind a migratory project, and the importance of historically contextualising the relation between a crisis, here the ‘Malian crisis’, and regional patterns of (im)mobilities, reveal the arbitrariness of making crisis exceptional and migratory categories uniquely discreet. This paper is based on a 10-month ethnography among Kel Tamasheq in Bamako.

Mother of All Labour: Vulnerability and Immunity in Times of Ebola

Wonkifong Ebola treatment unit was unique at the time of the outbreak that hit the Guinea in 2014. Contrary to other infrastructures run by Western workers, Wonkifong mainly employed personnel from Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cuba. Even so, the unit constituted a racialised landscape where proximity to white agencies granted privileges to certain groups of racialised people while excluding others. In a humanitarian infrastructure aimed at empowering knowledge of epidemics in the Global South, Black children were quarantined without their parents and left mostly unattended. After many months, former patients were hired as nannies to remedy the infrastructure’s blind spot. These women were employed to care for the children thanks to their immunity to the virus. Building on the concept of a ‘politics of life’ and exploring how these women were exploited as ‘medical superbodies’, my article sheds light on how the humanitarian infrastructure produced a gendered labour that mirrors other economies exploiting female Black bodies such as the colony or the plantation. Relying on an ethnography of practices of care and mobility within the unit, this piece underlines how the postcolonial segregation at play during the outbreak operated not strictly in terms of skin colour, but in terms of gender and closeness to white power.

Land Use, Travel Patterns and Gender in Barcelona: A Sequence Analysis Approach

Transport systems are essential for the path toward sustainable urbanisation and the transition to more sustainable living. Recently, European cities have undergone substantial changes, and suburbanisation is posing new challenges. Suburban areas are often more affordable in terms of housing, but these neighbourhoods tend to be car-oriented. This leads to higher commuter costs, immobility, transport and time poverty, pollution, higher accident rates and a lack of social interactions. To offer sustainable mobility options to citizens, we must comprehensively understand, together with their individual characteristics, their specific mobility practices and the built environment where they live. This study is centred on the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, which has a public transport network that covers its entire area. The aim of this study is to examine the relationships between travel behaviour, transport mode use, individual characteristics and built environment characteristics in the place of residence using detailed information sources. Herein, we used data from the 2018 to 2021 annual travel survey conducted in the Barcelona region, together with land use and sociodemographic information. Our findings suggest that transport policies have encouraged sustainable mobility practices, particularly in the centre of Barcelona. Despite the positive results, considerable disparities exist between the inner and outer city, with a notable decline in sustainable mobility practices in the latter, due to the uneven distribution of basic services and uneven provision of public transport, together with lower density areas. Our results demonstrate that this uneven distribution reduces the available sequence profiles of inhabitants. In conclusion, the promotion of sustainable mobility policies necessitates further advances in transport, city and land-use planning that consider equity, gender, the socioeconomic profiles of citizens and mixed urban planning.

The Socialising Role of Cross-border Mobility and its Effects on the Representation of the Border: The Case of Hiking Around Mont Blanc

ABSTRACT In this article, we look at the hikers who have completed the Tour du Mont Blanc, questioning their socialisation not only in the practice of hiking but also in the practice of cross-border mobility. We also analyse the effects of this cross-border mobility in terms of their representation of the border, as well as their opinion of the European Union. Our methodology was based on 15 semi-structured interviews. Results show that the socialisation of cross-border mobility among hikers depends on their social background. Those from the most privileged backgrounds travel the most, particularly outside Europe. These experiences of cross-border mobility have an impact on the formation of opinions and attitudes towards the EU and representations of the border. However, on the Tour du Mont Blanc, the lack of border signs and the absence of checks makes the border easy to cross. It is therefore not considered to be a barrier.

Selective neglect of viral risk: Tokyo’s commuter trains during the COVID-19 pandemic

This article asks why Tokyo’s crowded trains were largely absent from official discourses of viral risk in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. While public transport environments were often framed as spaces of contagion in other countries, Japanese public health discourses instead tended to emphasize the viral safety of urban railway transport. Drawing on an analysis of media and expert discourse, auto-ethnographic fieldwork, and repeat interviews with commuters, this article examines the processes through which Tokyo’s urban railway network was extracted from discourses of viral risk. It identifies four factors that contributed to this: (1) dominant definitions of risk spaces in public health messaging, (2) trains’ integral role in the operation of socio-economic life, (3) elusiveness of public transport in the epidemiological data, and (4) a focus on “unruly” passenger conduct. This analysis of the selective treatment of viral risks is tied to a critical engagement with theoretical distinctions between “essential” and “existential” mobilities developed in prior anthropological scholarship on the pandemic. Exploring the discursive framing of pandemic mobility practices on one of the world’s most extensive urban railway networks, the article thus contributes to the anthropological study of mobilities and transport in Japan and beyond.

Ultrasound is an accurate imaging modality for diagnosing hip luxation in dogs presenting with hind limb lameness.

To determine the accuracy of ultrasound for diagnosing hip luxation in dogs presenting for hind limb lameness. 24 client-owned dogs presenting with pelvic limb lameness and concern for hip luxation were enrolled in this prospective diagnostic accuracy study from April 1, 2021, to July 1, 2022. An experienced ultrasonographer and a novice ultrasonographer, both masked to the diagnoses, performed hip ultrasonography using a point-of-care ultrasound machine. The experienced evaluator also performed a more comprehensive ultrasonography with a high-end ultrasound machine to characterize concurrent pelvis and hip disease. Pelvic radiographs served as the criterion standard for the diagnosis of hip luxation. Ultrasonographic diagnosis of hip luxation demonstrated high accuracy, ranging from 84.2% to 100% for detecting the presence of luxation and 80.6% to 98.1% for diagnosing the direction of luxation for the novice and experienced evaluators, respectively, with substantial interevaluator agreement (κ = 0.722). Compared to radiographs, ultrasound accurately diagnosed the presence of osteoarthrosis with almost perfect agreement (κ = 0.913) and the presence of fractures of the femoral head/neck and the nonaxial portions of the pelvis with substantial intermodality agreement (κ = 0.775). In 36% of patients, ultrasound identified injury to soft tissue structures that contribute to hip stability, including the gluteal muscles, gemelli, and joint capsule. Ultrasound can be utilized to accurately diagnose the presence of hip luxation and document concurrent hip and pelvic disease. Applications include the use of ultrasonography as part of a routine point-of-care protocol to catalogue injuries in patients with acute trauma and in mobile practice or remote settings where radiography is not readily available.

Networked mobility and temporal spaces: Cycling as jugaad in post-pandemic Kolkata

The wider shifts in the conditions of mobility wrought by the pandemic, on the one hand, invoke anxieties around the ideas of health and wellness; and on the other hand, occasion the use a variety of health apps meant to carve out niche ‘safe spaces’. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with leisure cyclists in Kolkata, in this article, we demonstrate how app-enhanced cycling practices, primarily intended as a wellness activity during the pandemic, manifest certain ‘temporal spaces’ – quasi-virtual spaces, as extension of the online/digital-offline/material continuum, connected to locally contingent data environments – through tactical use of jugaad. In this scheme, individual practices of mobility eventually yield solidarities – digitally-mediated ‘networked publics’ – wherein human agencies, technological materialities and socio-political relationalities imbricate toward reconfiguring urban geographies. This phenomenon of informal place-making leverages the affordances of the very digital apparatus that, during the pandemic, has often underpinned the statist techniques of surveillance on mobilities.

Accessibility, (dis)advantage and everyday mobility practices and experiences: the cases of Maputo and Freetown

ABSTRACT This paper deconstructs everyday mobility practices from a perspective of accessibility and social and transport (dis)advantage in two capital port cities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) – Freetown, Sierra Leone and Maputo, Mozambique. The paper proposes a novel framework that interprets social and transport (dis)advantage conditions as critical drivers of mobility behaviours and the resulting (in)accessibility that circumscribes individuals’ experience. Building on its framework, the paper raises unique empirical qualitative evidence from eight neighbourhoods about mobility practices across populations facing different degrees of social and transport (dis)advantage. The study’s design is grounded in the in-depth understanding of accessibility using qualitative methods as a counterpoint to predominant quantitative and spatial approaches, filling critical data gaps in cities in SSA. The findings reveal a deep-seated aspiration for car ownership, tempered by the urgency of other immediate material needs, as well as the dynamic nature of travel behaviour due to changing conditions during the day and throughout the year. The findings also indicate informality plays a significant role in enabling access to critical opportunities and the need to strengthen trust in popular transport systems.

Why do sustainable shared mobility practices not proliferate more widely? Insights from digital mobility diaries

Sharing instead of owning consumer goods should significantly reduce their production and the associated environmental damages. However, this ecological promise has yet to be fulfilled, even in mobility, where sharing practices have become mainstream. This is because the most widespread mobility-sharing practice (free-floating carsharing) has the lowest ecological benefit. This study asks why the adoption of more ecologically beneficial shared mobility practices remains lower, addressing this question through digital ethnography. Using digital mobility diaries for three weeks, 21 respondents documented their mobility practices (including various shared mobility practices and private car travel) by uploading pictures, videos and text notes on a dedicated smartphone application. The data show that free-floating carsharing has proliferated because it can leverage the ‘system of automobility’ as its users are relatively monomodal. Other shared mobility services function well; however, we found that they have not proliferated as widely because the overall multimodal mobility mix (e.g. walking, cycling, public transport, on-demand sharing) associated with this form of shared mobility is highly demanding. Better conditions for multimodal mobility, created through appropriate infrastructure, are crucial for sustainable shared mobility practices to spread. However, space limitations mean this will likely come at the expense of car-centred infrastructure and necessitate its exnovation.

Troubling go-alongs through the lens of care

Go alongs are a popular research method for studying everyday mobility practices, providing insight into embodied experiences of engaging with lived environments. Generally considered positive and productive, there is increasingly discussion of go-along interviews as emotionally, cognitively and physically demanding. We consider care an essential component of go-along interviews. However, this has been overlooked in scholarship; particularly the relationality of care, including care of the researcher. We provide four vignettes discussing our experiences of conducting 118 go-along interviews with residents living in or near London Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Reflecting on care-full encounters, we highlight the role of reciprocity, solidarity, and mutual understanding, strengthened by the recognition of shared experiences. Reflecting on care-less encounters, we highlight how, by disrupting traditional research hierarchies, go-along interviews can expose marginalised and stigmatised researchers to abuse. Overall, our vignettes demonstrate that care is a relationally produced, shared accomplishment involving both the researcher and the participant.

Ontological agility and infrastructure: Palestinian liberation's praxis in the corridor between Ramallah and East Jerusalem

ABSTRACT This ethnographic study examines how Palestinians navigate bureaucracies along the corridor between Ramallah and East Jerusalem, a fragmented border zone between the Palestinian Authority and Israeli Authorities. The central research questions are as follows. First, how do Palestinian users cultivate mobility, subsistence, and relatedness practices within and against the bureaucratic infrastructures and regimes of enclosure imposed since the Oslo Accords? Second, how might these grounded modes of agency unsettle the prevailing theoretical paradigms related to resistance, futurity, and liberating praxis? Interviews with 25 Palestinian commuters reveal their use of “ontological agility,” “performative ambiguity,” and subvert the built environments to traverse jurisdictions, access rights, and enable survival. However, these tactics remain ambivalent and potentially reinforce oppressive structures. The corridor represents a space where Palestinian experiences are caught between sovereignty, fracturing stable meanings and generating new cultural expressions beyond traditional decolonization. By embracing these lived ambiguities, the study demonstrates how everyday Palestinian practices constitute a form of spatial and political liberating praxis that cannot be fully captured by rational actor models or rights-based approaches to political struggle. Instead, these practices reveal the potential for a more nuanced, contextual form of agency that operates within and against settler colonial logics.

Written Mobility Communication in Acute Care Medical Wards: An Observational Study of Physical Therapists' and Nurses' Documentation Practice.

Low inpatient mobility is associated with poor hospital outcomes. Poor communication between clinicians has been identified as a barrier to improving mobility. Understanding how mobility is communicated within the multi-disciplinary team may help inform strategies to improve inpatient mobility. The aim of this study was to describe written mobility communication by physical therapists and nurses in acute care medical wards. This cross-sectional observational study was conducted across 4 hospitals in an Australian health service. A survey of physical therapists and nurses identified preferred sources and content of written mobility communication. An audit described and compared written mobility communication in the most strongly preferred documentation sources. Findings were described and compared graphically between discipline and site. Questionnaires were completed by 85 physical therapists and 150 nurses. Twenty-two sources of documentation about mobility were identified. Preferences for sources and content varied between disciplines. Physical therapists nominated several preferred information sources and sought and documented broader mobility content. Nurses often sought nursing documents which focused on current mobility assistance and aids, with limited communication of mobility level or mobility goals. Audits of 104 patient records found that content varied between sources and sites, and content was variably missing or inconsistent between sources. Written mobility communication focused on mobility assistance and aids, rather than mobility levels or mobility goals, with poor completion and inconsistency within documentation. More complete and consistent documentation might improve progressive mobilization of hospital inpatients. Physical therapists and nurses seek and document different content in a wide range of locations, leading to incomplete and inconsistent written documentation.Understanding and resolving these practice differences offers potential to improve mobility communication and practice.