Mobility Turn Research Articles

INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL ISSUE: YOUTH TRANSITIONS TO EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT: A MOBILITIES PERSPECTIVE

This special issue focuses on the geographical and spatialized mobilities related to youth transitions to post-secondary education and employment. The “mobility turn” in social sciences in the last decade recognizes that life is increasingly organized and shaped by mobilities (and immobilities) across varying spatial and temporal scales. Yet these mobilities have only recently been examined and theorized as central to understanding the complexity and diversity of young people’s experiences. The collection of articles in this special issue presents a multiplicity of young people’s relationships to mobilities, particularly as they pursue post-secondary education and employment. The papers are concerned with: (a) the motivations for and expectations of imagined mobility (the innumerable reasons why youth choose, or are compelled, to move or stay), whether focused on the outmigration or inmigration of mobile youth; (b) the lived experiences that youth have in their mobility practices (focusing on multistranded relationships between places of origin and destination, or recognizing the temporality of that mobility); and (c) the value that these youth mobility studies have for policy issues and policy recommendations. The papers in this issue are case studies concerned with youth mobility prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. They use qualitative and quantitative methods, representing inter- and cross-disciplinary approaches from anthropology, sociology, education, communication, and rural development studies. They derive from a collaboration through the On the Move Partnership, an 8-year interdisciplinary research initiative with a key focus on young people’s employment- and education-related geographical mobilities in Canada.

Introduction

While questions focused around social, economic, and physical movement have long been central to human lives, state policies, and economic regimes, the ‘mobility turn’ in academic scholarship has often seen a straightforward association of mobility as an upward trajectory mitigating socioeconomic inequality, as well as equating physical movement emerging from migration with mobility. Here, however, we argue that the relationship between migration and mobility is hardly so automatic, and needs to be considered in its complexities and contradictions. Rather than uncritically celebrating mobility, we consider it as a lens through which disruptions, inequalities, differential access, and the role of identities can be understood.

‘Ecological concerns weren’t the main reason why I took the bus, that association only came afterwards’: on shifts in meanings of everyday mobility

ABSTRACT Reducing the modal share of car travel in commuting implies challenging meanings of everyday mobility that tie commuting to driving. Existing research has focussed on describing ways in which everyday mobility is meaningful. However, why shifts in meanings occur remains largely unexplored. This article asks how meanings become ascribed to everyday mobility and identifies dynamics that play a role in shifts in those meanings. We analysed interviews with short distance commuters in two Swiss cities. Combining the analytical foci of the mobilities turn and practice theories, we developed a typology of four registers through which meaning is ascribed to everyday mobility (functional, hedonic, representative, habitual) and identified three sets of dynamics that play into shifts between these registers: i) dynamics related to the spatio-temporal complexity of everyday life, ii) dynamics emerging from different and changing social representations of mobility, and iii) dynamics tied to subjective experiences of everyday mobility. Our findings indicate that shifts in meanings and performances of everyday mobility must be analysed together, and that differences in how commuters ascribe meaning to everyday mobilities can reveal structural dynamics inhibiting the spread of pleasurable low-carbon everyday mobilities.

Mobilities and complexities. Ole B.Jensen, SvenKesselring and MimiSheller (eds). Routledge, London and New York, 2019. ISBN 978‐1‐138‐60143‐7

Using renowned sociologist John Urry's body of work, specifically the 'mobilities turn' as a fertile threshold point, Jensen, Kesselring, and Sheller have brought together a range of social scientists who have worked and collaborated closely with Urry, in creating this edited collection. This book is organised in five thematic sections and the authors in each of these sections speak to each other well in terms of the ways in which they document their personal encounters with the sociologist and reflect on the potentials of Urry's work in a posthuman world. This collection braids in a range of approaches – from personal anecdotes and intimate encounters that transformed into newer perspectives to speculative reflections on interactions with Urry and his work, thus, celebrating a complex array of ideas. Yet, the book remains faithful to the politics that ground Urry's methodological approach. As Thomas Birtchnell notes, in speculating: 'Will there be an Urryism?', in Chapter 3, he concludes that 'Urry's penchant for plurality does not come at the expense of clarity' (p. 16). The same can be said of the experience of reading this edited collection.

Thinking through people: The potential of volunteered geographic information for mobility and urban studies

Despite the ‘mobility turn’ in urban studies, there is surprisingly little research into the role people’s everyday movements play in driving urbanisation processes. As this paper discusses, one reason this has not occurred is because understanding this relationship requires both quantitative and qualitative knowledge, including geospatial locations and patterns as well as why people choose to move the way they do. Few studies employ mixed methods to this end; instead, many quantitative approaches focus on the use of big data and many qualitative approaches remain focused on sites themselves rather than the movements between them. This methodological gap can preclude operationalising findings and proves particularly detrimental when research is conducted into areas with high levels of poverty and inequality. In response, this paper presents a mixed-methods approach to studying urbanisation, using volunteered geographic information (VGI) to map regional-scale movements in the Gauteng City-Region (GCR). Exploiting the potential of smartphone technology, this methodology operates at the interstice of quantitative and qualitative research, describing both macro-scale mobility patterns and the micro-scale decisions behind them. Using the case study of the GCR, it highlights movement as a strategy for those living in poverty, who can utilise the entire region as a resource to subvert entrenched inequality. ‘Thinking through people’ suggests that a new ontology of categories describing urbanisation processes in terms of movement could connect empirical research into poverty and inequality to theory, and be used to create an epistemology of the urban from below. Thus, this paper contributes to advances in urban studies methods as well as to debates on urbanisation, relational poverty and socio-spatial inequality.

Spatial mobility in later twentieth-century Britain

ABSTRACT What difference did increasing spatial mobility make to British society between the 1950s and the 1980s? This article represents an historical response to the challenge of the ‘mobilities turn’ in the social sciences. It brings together the study of migration, personal mobility and transport to reflect on the ‘high-speed mobile society’ emerging in parts of Britain by the 1960s. The article analyses the very different forms of mobility evident in the period: flows of international and internal migration, patterns of residential mobility and commuting, the relationship between spatial and social mobility. It charts the changes to urban form stemming from mass automobility and the emergence by the 1970s of immobility as a focus of policy concern, located above all in the ‘inner city’. Integrating an awareness of movement (and, as its obverse, fixity) into contemporary British history, the article suggests, has the potential to throw new light on the categories of class, race and gender and debates about ‘affluence’, individualism and inequality which have characterised recent historiography.

Valuing mobility in a post COVID-19 world

ABSTRACT How do we, might we, value mobility post COVID-19? This is the central question addressed in this paper. The mobilities turn, or ‘new mobilities paradigm’ had many starting points, but one of them was a general revaluing of mobility. Examples ranged from the opening up of the supposed ‘dead time’ of the journey to work to the general critique of a sedentarist metaphysics across social, cultural and political thought. With this in mind, the onset of COVID-19 along with the closing down of national borders, virtual elimination of air passenger travel, and variety of lockdowns and quarantine policies at more local scales, raises several questions about the valuing of mobility in the 21st Century. While conservative and nationalist commentators seek to hunker down in various forms of national localism more critical commentators are identifying the landscape of connected capitalism as a root cause of the current crisis. The paper explores the changed landscape of local, national and global mobilities in order to ask how we might continue to value mobilities into the future.

Поворот мобильности в современном обществе как образовательный вызов

The article discusses the main idea of the study, that is discovering a number of problems generated by social dynamics and mobility. By using the methodological potential of sociology, the essence and logic of the mobility turn as a metaphor for the development of modern society is demonstrated. The radical changes in sociocultural dynamics that are also achieved by modern social sciences (sociology of mobility and other postmodern concepts) are shown. By using the methodological approaches of the sociology of education, the «order of the day» mobility problems in higher education are formulated. It is stressed that the educational sphere also becomes mobile, transforming the nature of human life, as well as updating some special phenomenon, such as academic mobility. The horizon of future research in connection with the complex nature of the problem under study is demonstrated by formulating the “order of the day” of mobility challenges for modern higher education.

The Significance of Mobility in Alfred Schutz’s Theory of Action

Mobility has become a central topic of contemporary social research with the mobility turn initiated in the 2000s. In order to grasp the complexity of the global order, its authors have attempted to decenter the importance of human subjectivity and to envisage a “sociology beyond societies”. The present paper considers this interpretive context to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Alfred Schutz’s theory of action, and to propose a notion of mobility intrinsically linked to the performance of subjectivity. By revisiting the distinction between action as a thing produced and as an ongoing process, the notion of mobility is detailed in relation to movement in space and to the subjective flow of time. The specific type of action Schutz calls “locomotion” in his later work enables us to understand how action involves bodily operations in configuring a common space of sociality and communication. I conclude by going beyond the explanation of action in terms of its starting point and end point, and by assessing how action unfolds through the experiential life of the subject, with its new meanings and unexpected changes.

Documentary subversions and migrant agency: Towards an alternative audio-visual portrait of immigrant communities in the United States

The movement of people across different countries has been a constant in the history of human civilization. This has been attested to by the so-called ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences. One of the most important recent instances of such a movement has been the mass migration of diverse communities to the United States. This migratory transit has been portrayed in numerous ways in different media. Among these, documentary films have played a crucial role in their approach to these migrant flows. In both, traditional forms and new web platforms, we find multiple examples of non-fiction that focus on portraying these communities. This article focuses on one of these platforms: Immigrant Nation Media. By highlighting the resistance practices the platform offers, this analysis focuses on its collaborative and educational dimensions, as well as its dedication to migrant empowerment.

Moved by fire: Green criminology in flux

The destructive bushfires in Australia 2019–2020 resonate with similar trends around the world as bushfire seasons are becoming longer and more pervasive. Yet, criminological analyses of bushfires are limited and tend to focus on the individual criminal subject and the act of arson, the crime of intentional fire starting. Encouragingly, green criminology, the criminological perspective dealing with environmental crimes and harms, is expanding the categories of offenders and victims of harm by, for example, highlighting non-human victims and harms perpetrated by the capitalist system. Nonetheless, even this perspective is inadequate to deal with the complex and ultimately mobile events of fire and their far-reaching consequences. This article brings green criminology in flux by drawing from the ‘new mobilities paradigm’, emphasising motion, temporality and the mobility of contemporary life. The new mobilities paradigm, or the ‘mobility turn’, has a lot to offer green criminology as is demonstrated here by way of scrutinising the mobility of fire. A mobile green criminology will help trace fire beyond static categories of offenders and victims and open up for more flexible and mobile categories of environmental harms as constructed, complex and unstable processes. Finally, a mobile analysis allows for a more complex and meaningful reading of criminological space, demonstrated by the relationship between social, aesthetic and cultural values of land, politics, power and fire-related behaviours, such as fire suppression or Aboriginal peoples’ cultural burning practices. It is argued here that in order to understand the complex nature of fire, green criminology must attune to the intersections between fire, space, mobility and meaning.

The turn towards policy mobilities and the theoretical-methodological implications for policy sociology

ABSTRACT This paper reflects critically upon how the ‘mobilities turn’ in the social sciences, and its subsequent contribution towards ‘policy mobilities’, offers theoretical and methodological resources that can be usefully harnessed in education policy sociology. Just as there are new ways in which policy is being made and moved, there are equally new ways to be a researcher of education policy who seeks to understand these processes. My purpose here is to help crystallise and make explicit these new mobilities-informed approaches, not only for the purpose of considering how mobility can help reconsider how to think and practise policy sociology, but also to better reflect and accommodate the empirical changes inherent in contemporary policymaking and enactment. I first survey the literature around the mobilities turn and emphasise its implications for social science research, before turning to how policy mobilities theories and methodologies can be employed within policy sociology. Finally, I close the paper by reflecting on the implications of conducting policy sociology with a policy mobility lens and outline the issues that come from foregrounding movement in the research of education policy.

Mobilities and Ecologies: Reflections on Paradigms for Mobile Learning

Mediated lifeworlds and a diversity of physical, geographical, technological, cultural, and social mobilities involve new challenges for education and learning in a digital age. In recent years, a variety of corresponding conceptualizations and methods has been developed in educational research and practice. One the one hand, we find technologically or culturally abridged concepts and reductionist approaches, more or less dealing with one category or dimension of the topic. On the other hand, there are ambitious approaches dealing with the enormous complexities of the issues concerned. The latter frequently refer to ecological or mobilities frameworks. Moreover, among the many ‹turns› that have been claimed after the linguistic turn, especially the ecological turn and the mobilities turn play an important role in the context of theorizing mobile learning and education. For one thing, a new mobilities paradigm has been proposed, then again various ecological approaches have been promoted, among them media ecology, information ecology, knowledge ecology, socio-cultural ecology, communicative ecology, political ecology, and ecologies of affect. In addition, there are different understandings of ecology, for example, as environment, social movement, moral norm, or network theory. The paper reflects on potentials and limitations of mobilities and ecologies as theoretical frameworks in the context of mobile learning.

New mobilities and psychology: Why are we still not on the move?

The new mobilities paradigm has been influential within the social sciences for the past two decades. And yet, psychology is undoubtably slow to incorporate mobility as a key lens through which to consider its subject area. In this editorial, I will make the case that we would benefit greatly from focusing more on personal, collective and psychological mobilities and the kinds of conceptual, methodological and practical challenges they raise. To illustrate this, I briefly discuss the notions of self and identity, learning, and imagination and creativity. Final conclusions are offered regarding a late but welcomed ‘mobilities turn’ in psychological science.

Technological change and sociocultural models in China: A case study of train commuters in Beijing

ABSTRACT China’s mobility turn has created the world’s largest public rail system, contributing extensively to citizens’ economic, social, and spatial mobility. Concurrently, this technological transformation has introduced many opportunities for individuation, which could potentially challenge the social, collectivistic, and Confucian foundations of China’s sociocultural and political ideology. While the notion that ‘mobility produces culture’ is readily accepted, research on train mobility in China is rare. In this study, we use Albert Bandura’s Model of Triadic Reciprocal Causation to conceptualize mobility as agency. We employ Hermeneutic Content Analysis, a mixed methods framework, to study how this rapidly evolving mobility environment connects to the lives of 31 regular train users living in Beijing. Studying agency in China enables us to systematize the sociocultural models within which mobility practices are embedded and how they manifest. We find that our interviewees embed agentive practices in a cultural model that is intertwined with collectivistic aspirations of the country. Technological developments are thus integrated into existing sociocultural models and political expectations, contradicting existing debates on the fracturing impact of disruptive technologies.

The Many Forms of Multiple Migrations: Evidence from a Sequence Analysis in Switzerland, 1998 to 2008

This article provides estimates of different kinds of contemporary migration trajectories, highlighting multiple or repeated migrations. Using sequence analysis on linked longitudinal register data, we identify different migration trajectories for three cohorts (1998, 2003, and 2008) of 315,000 immigrants in Switzerland. Multinomial regression analysis reveals the demographic characteristics associated with specific migration trajectories. We demonstrate high heterogeneity in migration practices, showing that direct and definitive settlement in the destination country remains a common trajectory and that highly mobile immigrants are less common. We conclude that accounts of a fundamental “mobility turn” have been overstated.

Including people with intellectual disabilities in the mobilities turn: mobile interviews in Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT Geographic research about disability and mobility often foregrounds the built environment as a site of in/exclusion. People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) have been mostly absent from this scholarship. To respond to this gap, we draw from an in-depth set of ‘mobile interviews’ with people with IDs in Toronto, Canada. Using a thematic approach, this paper suggests that more-than-material relations matter to the everyday mobilities and immobilities of people with IDs in urban settings. We aim to centre the participants’ experiences and call for greater inclusion of people with IDs in critical-geographic studies of the disability-mobility nexus. We highlight participants’ regular, planned, and spontaneous mobilities; their attitudes towards their own movement, stillness, and ‘stuck-ness’; and their experiences of staring in public spaces. The contingencies of belonging/exclusion, choice/regimen, and fitting/mis-fitting – as well as the more-than-material, varied, and contextual nature of those tensions – are present in many of the participants’ (im)mobilities in and through the city.

Thinking through Urban Place, Space and Locality in Youth Research

The interdisciplinary “spatial turn” (and “mobilities turn”) within sociology and the social sciences and humanities has given rise to renewed interest in the conceptual frameworks and theorisation of place, space and locality (localities). In contemporary child (childhood) and youth research, immediate place, space and localities are powerful frameworks for understanding and examining young people’s everyday lives, realities, biographies as well as meaning making, construction of their identities and sense of belonging or exclusion. The emplaced hierarchies, inequalities, power relations and differentiations—in combination with innate, biographical, proximal and distal influences—will shape and direct young people’s interactions, activities and networks within and across different places, spaces and localities. There remains a lacuna regarding such research in developing countries, including South Africa post-1994. This paper examines how and why the concepts of space, place, and locality are of significance and contribute to an understanding of urban young people’s diverse everyday lives, challenges, needs and experiences. This paper focuses, firstly, on a discussion of the contested, conflicting and varying constructions of the concepts place, space and locality. Secondly, there is a discussion on some of the themes, debates and discourses shaping knowledge production in this area.

Working on Water: Introduction

AbstractThis special issue focuses on the work lives of individuals with jobs that take place on and around boats. This introduction to the special issue “Working on Water” provides an overview of the long history of anthropological research on forms of human work that take place in and around salt and fresh bodies of water, such as food harvesting, watercraft construction, and transportation. It also discusses links between the multidisciplinary “mobilities turn” and research on aquamobilities. The last section introduces the ethnographic papers included in this issue of the journal, which focus on various sectors, including seafood harvesting, coastal tourism, passenger and vehicle ferries, and cargo transportation.

Keep it rolling: examining the San José Bike Party with methods on the move

ABSTRACT This paper is an exploration of the possibilities for employing multiple ‘moving’ qualitative research methodologies in order to engage and capture embodied emotions and practices of participating in the San José Bike Party (SJBP). SJBP originated in 2004–2005 as an organised community group ride through the urban streets of San José, California. The ride has grown to include 2000–4000 riders of diverse riding levels and social backgrounds. Through social media, leaders of the group map out the route, lay out the rules of the road, and provide instructions for riders. In an effort to capture and examine the meaning of SJBP to participants, we have taken a multi-dimensional approach that incorporates ethnographic and phenomenological elements through the use of both traditional and nontraditional (mobile) data collection methods: conducting, for example, one-on-one interviews, focus group interviews, as well as ‘on the move’ interviews with GoPro cameras during the ride itself. Leaning on work that calls for more sociological engagement in the ‘mobilities turn’, we present some of our reflections on the use of multiple and moving/mobile methodologies towards a hybridised post qualitative research practice.