Mobile Paradigm Research Articles

Immobile Cabmen and Single-track Railroads: Images of Stasis and Redundancy in August Wilson’s Jitney and Two Trains Running

ABSTRACT August Wilson’s celebrated ten-play cycle in which he focuses on the African American condition during the twentieth century has been hailed for the way the playwright grapples with issues of history and identity. This paper adopts aspects of the New Mobilities Paradigm (NMP) as it carries forward the theme of alienation, confusion and despair in Wilson’s plays. It argues that Jitney and Two Trains Running deploy highly deceptive cause-to-effect linear plot structures in order to present African American characters who are caught-up or trapped in desultory predicaments of confinement in ways that echo tropes of memory, journeying, hope and despair. The two plays present interesting nuances and contradictions of tropes of journeying and entrapment as well as progression and stagnation, which are paradoxically connected to acts of self-assertion. This occurs in ways that are highly reminiscent of the modernist style of absurdism. Our choice of the two plays is informed by the way in which the play titles reference technologized forms of mobility and communication as they also echo African American memory, travel and the journey motif in ways that are reminiscent of the underground railroad and the promise of freedom, even as Wilson decries a palpable lack of movement, growth and social progress that has historically characterized the African American experience during the course of the twentieth century.

Everyday materialities, territorial bordering, and place-identity defined by recent administrative reform: reactions from Estonian dispersed ruralities

Population decline in rural areas has been a concern for many European countries for decades. To deal with shrinking, several measures have been taken in different countries. The study focuses on one of such measures – the administrative reform passed in Estonia in 2017, which merged smaller municipalities into regional municipality centres. This article examines the impact of this reform on rural transformation, concentrating on shifts in everyday mobilities, governance, and territorial identity at the village level. The research data is contextualised with the new mobilities paradigm, examining the relational everyday materialities that include interviews reflecting on changes at the regional, structural, and ideological levels. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews (N=60) with local activists and inhabitants in three study areas in sparsely populated parts of Estonia. The creation of municipality districts with representative bodies within larger municipalities have influenced these rural villages in various ways. In some cases, it has caused shifts in the mechanisms of civil governance that shape community activism. In others, strengthened awareness of representations of the rural appeared, offering a meaningful territorial identity and self-realisation to local people. However, the study also indicates that the distribution of rural municipalities into municipality districts can jeopardise local coherence and socio-cultural sustainability.

Capturing socio-spatial inequality in planetary urbanisation: A multi-dimensional methodological framework

Contemporary planetary urbanisation has resulted in increasingly uneven and ‘hyper-mobile’ socio-spatial development across the globe. Within a ‘new mobilities paradigm’, emerging and highly dynamic social and physical mobilities intersect at multiple scales to amplify the mobilities of particular social actors and spaces, while intensifying the immobility of others. A single method for studying socio-spatial inequalities is insufficient to capture complex mobility interactions across different scales of transformation, yet multi-dimensional methodologies lack sufficient elaboration. Within our original methodological framework, selected methods are integrated and cross-referenced to employ different dimensions of social and physical mobility (commute patterns, spatial accessibility, power relations, everyday practices), at interlinking scales (municipality region, neighbourhood, and architectural). Through a pilot study in Huangyan-Taizhou, China, we demonstrate how methods support one another to reflect how (im)mobilities between and within social groups and spaces interrelate through urbanisation. The findings show that informality generated opportunities and risks for mobility; inequalities have intensified and actors with less resources are excluded from the benefits of transformation. Our methodological approach for socio-spatial inequality presents a framework with potential for adaptation in other global transitional contexts, supporting socio-spatial interventions and policy-making toward more balanced and sustainable mobility interactions with comprehensive empirical evidence. • Planetary urbanisation is charactertised by increasing polarisation. • Multi-dimensional methodologies are crucial in capturing socio-spatial inequalities. • The integrative methodology reflects the interactions between social and physical moblity. • Multiple methods support findings at varying scales and perspectives.

An Overview of the Current State of Mobility as a Service

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the latest paradigm in mobility, especially in urban areas, in which traffic participants usually use an application or a web service to get from their origins to destination by an optimal mode of transportation. In this manner, private car ownership becomes obsolete, and the service is seamless in terms of charging, reservation, route planning and time efficiency. This should be the ideal path for urban transport in the future; however, there are several obstacles preventing full-scale implementation, such as division of stakeholder responsibility, state of data, information and communication technologies, and sustainability of business models. Therefore, this paper states the basic components of MaaS ecosystem, and discusses the current problems and opportunities regarding the stakeholders, technology, and business models. The current state of development in the most prominent areas is also presented. Finally, the paper presents conclusions and recommendations for further MaaS development and implementation.

Konceptualizovanje Homo Sensus Academicus Mobilis - ka promeni paradigme u razumevanju savremene globalne akademske mobilnosti

Academic mobility is a historical practice that has morphed into a Westernized emblem of our times in the mixture of post-modernity and neoliberal capitalism. Higher education institutions, now bastions of internationalization, have seen exponential growth in academic mobility beyond national and regional limits. This paper challenges and examines the prevalent theoretical views on the subject through a semi-structured literature review and a critical comparative theoretical analysis of current paradigms of academic mobility. It argues their reductionist approaches, which largely disregard academic mobility's emotional, cultural, socio-economic, and neoliberal aspects. As a response, this paper proposes Homo Sensus Academicus Mobilis, a novel tripartite conceptual assemblage of Homo Academicus, Academic Capitalism, and Emotions on the Move. This experimental framework situates the participants of academic mobility at its core, mapping main elements that shape their lived experience of academic mobility, from micro to macro level. Homo Sensus Academicus Mobilis's contribution lies in broadening the interdisciplinary vista, embracing a cosmopolitan perspective, and acknowledging emotional work in academic structures and power hierarchies.

Spanish approach for the Smart Digital Ports through highly automated logistics

Ground Vehicles (GVs) automation will change the paradigm of operation and mobility in ports as it is known today. One of the main aspects of the competitiveness of the companies is to obtain new technologies applied to port operations of cargo and discharge. The technological evolution impacts the future positioning of the company, in the economic, environmental, and social spheres. The ESTIBA+ 2022 project will focus on the research and application of the following technologies: perception, connectivity, vehicle automated guidance, and the Internet of Things platform for Smart-Ports. Several port environments have been chosen, which will allow taking into account the most representative conditions both from the technical point of view just as from the value chain and the responsibility aspects. Moreover, the advances in the technologies implemented show promising results.

Turin, Rome and Genoa: comparison of the level of maturity of three large Italian cities towards Mobility as a Service

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the new urban mobility paradigm which, through a digital platform, makes all types of public and private transport services available to users. This contributes to increasing sustainability in cities and the quality of citizens' mobility. However, several factors influence the success of MaaS implementation: openness and data sharing of transport operators; citizens’ familiarity and willingness to pay; policy, regulation and legislation; transport services, and infrastructures. Many of these factors are strictly related to the features of the city where MaaS has to operate, and more specifically to its maturity (including multimodality, integration, flexibility, and user-oriented approach). To this end, target users and their willingness to pay for MaaS operations require a specific assessment. This paper compares three large Italian cities - Turin, Rome and Genoa, very different in terms of size, complexity, local transport policies and potential for MaaS application-, with the final goal of outlining common and specific drivers, barriers and requirements for the successful adoption of MaaS. The research findings can provide useful insights to urban mobility decision-makers to avoid the unsuccessful implementation of MaaS, especially when dealing with cities with conservative mobility policies, such as Rome, or where MaaS is a novelty.

Integrating automated minibuses into mobility systems – Socio-technical transitions analysis and multi-level perspectives

Automated driving, along with other mobility innovations, is expected to entail socio-technical changes in mobility systems. Automated vehicles and, more specifically, automated minibuses integrated into mobility systems are analysed in this study as a breakthrough technology through the perspective of different stakeholder groups and citizens. Our research approach builds upon conceptual mapping and semi-structured interviews with main stakeholder groups (n = 30) and a large-scale survey with citizens of four European cities (n = 1816). This paper brings forward insights into the interaction between technology and society as a dialectical process through the prism of socio-technical transitions and multi-level perspectives. The study addresses the main drivers and barriers to steering the deployment of automated minibuses to meet the mobility needs of citizens and the aims of cities towards sustainable mobility. Further, it points out five main mechanisms to pave the way to a mobility transition with automated minibuses integrated into mobility systems. Our findings support the prospect that automated minibuses integrated into public transport and MaaS systems and coupled with other niche innovations and policy instruments can be part of the solution to pave the way towards a socio-technical transition to a new mobility paradigm.

Assessing the Feasibility of MaaS: A Contribution from Three Italian Case Studies

Making all types of public and private transport services available to users through a single and integrated digital platform is the new urban mobility paradigm called Mobility as a Service (MaaS). This scheme allows both a more sustainable urban transportation system and a more efficient transport service for users. For MaaS to be successful, its implementation should adapt to the specific features of the location covered by the service. The city maturity level has to be considered in terms of multimodality, infrastructures, regulations, user goals, and user willingness to use and pay for MaaS services. This paper discusses and analyses the results of a survey on MaaS conducted in three Italian metropolitan areas: Turin, Rome, and Genoa, which have very different and specific characteristics. The comparative analysis enables the definition of drivers, obstacles, and requisites for MaaS implementation to be successful. When it comes to cities with conservative mobility policies or cities that are new to MaaS experiences, resistance to adoption of the service might occur. The results of the research discussed in this paper can be a useful resource to enable decision makers to develop more effective and efficient transportation policies.

Editorial

The editorial recounts the genesis of this collection of essays, which originated at the conference Song, Stage, and Screen XVI; the conference was held in 2021 in video format rather than in Salzburg and Linz due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain a few keywords related to mobility studies and the mobility paradigm.

‘When you change the view from where you stood, the things you view will change for good’: An introduction to the mobilities paradigm in musical theatre

Musical theatre is frequently framed as connected to place and space, as terms like ‘the Broadway musical’ or ‘the Viennese operetta’ imply. National categorization, used prominently in titles of key monographs and handbooks, has turned out to be a moulding structure for the genre’s historiography. The term ‘American popular song form’ insinuates that musical form and style may reasonably be categorized by national adjectives. This is also true for the national attribution of earlier genres, such as the supposedly British ballad opera, French opéra comique and German singspiel. Signature pieces of the genre, e.g., the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, have been read as documents of national re-affirmation. Nevertheless, a major portion of the repertoire can just as well be reinterpreted as a statement for mobility, thus bringing into question the tropes of regional rootedness and national at-homeness. Starting with methodological assumptions given in Stephen Greenblatt’s cultural mobility manifesto (), this article will examine the unquestioned frames of fixity in musical theatre scholarship and sound out alternatives that allow readings of the genre as mobile.

An agenda for creative practice in the new mobilities paradigm

Creative practices have made a standing contribution to mobilities research. We write this article as a collective of 25 scholars and practitioners to make a provocation: to further position creative mobilities research as a fundamental contribution and component in this field. The article explores how creative forms of research—whether in the form of artworks, exhibitions, performances, collaborations, and more—has been a foundational part of shaping the new mobilities paradigm, and continues to influence its methodological, epistemological, and ontological concerns. We tour through the interwoven history of art and mobilities research, outlining five central contributions that creativity brings. Through short vignettes of each author’s creative practice, we discuss how creativity has been key to the evolution and emergence of how mobilities research has expanded to global audiences of scholars, practitioners, and communities. The article concludes by highlighting the potency of the arts for lively and transdisciplinary pathways for future mobilities research in the uncertainties that lay ahead.

Factors Motivating Chinese Malaysian University Students’ Educational Mobility to Taiwan

Abstract Based on a project on Chinese Malaysians’ educational mobility across the Chinese-speaking world, this paper highlights their reasons for attending university in Taiwan while examining their subjective formations as ethnic Chinese vis-à-vis transnational processes. Resulting from ethnographic and interview-based research conducted in 2019–2021, the findings demonstrate that the students’ choices for higher education are, to a great extent, culturally driven and historically contingent. Thus they provide an alternative view to the dominant paradigm of international student mobility that emphasises economic and future career incentives. By focusing on three factors—state racism, historical connections, and Sinophone cultural consumption—that motivated them to leave Malaysia and go to Taiwan, this paper moreover draws attention to the transnational infrastructures (e.g. policy, media, interpersonal networks) that have continually reproduced and transformed a long-existing migration pattern.

The Paradox of a Mobile Society: Situating Cultural Studies in the Global South Context

This provocation presents a critical reflection on the role of cultural studies in examining the consequences of an increasingly global and digital society. More specifically, I extend and situate the inquiry within the new mobilities paradigm, underlining how everyday personal, familial and social interactions have been shaped by the widespread uptake of digital technologies among migrants and their distant networks. Here I centre the transnational and networked home as a critical site of performing, embodying and negotiating linkages beyond borders. Importantly, reflecting on situating cultural studies within the context of the global South, I underscore the paradox of everyday, intimate and transnational practices as symptomatic of the operations of a neo-colonial and global economy. In doing so, this approach sheds light on advancing cultural studies as an intellectual and political inquiry on rethinking mobility justice in a globalising and networked society.

The paradigm of mobility as an alternative for understanding the daily life of the contemporary world

The paradigm of mobility as an alternative for understanding the daily life of the contemporary world

Megaregion development, multilocal dwelling and well-being in China

ABSTRACT The development of megaregions significantly reconfigures the lives of their residents, giving rise to mobile work and multilocal dwellings. Employing qualitative methods, this study examines how mobility and residential multilocality influence mobile workers’ well-being in China’s Greater Bay Area. Using the new mobilities paradigm, different well-being resources are found to mobilize in the workplace, at home and in transit spaces to manage personal well-being, with mobility and relationality as central mechanisms. This study aids in understanding the well-being creation and mobilization mechanisms in space-networks and invites reflections on regions caught between territory and network and megaregions as actual or imagined.

Verifiable, Secure Mobile Agent Migration in Healthcare Systems Using a Polynomial-Based Threshold Secret Sharing Scheme with a Blowfish Algorithm.

A mobile agent is a software application that moves naturally among hosts in a uniform and non-uniform environment; it starts with one host and then moves onto the next in order to divide data between clients. The mobile paradigm is utilized in a wide assortment of medical care applications such as the medical information of a patient, the recovery of clinical information, the incorporation of information pertaining to their wellbeing, dynamic help, telemedicine, obtaining clinical data, patient administration, and so on. The accompanying security issues have grown in tandem with the complexity and improvements in mobile agent technologies. As mobile agents work in an insecure environment, their security is a top priority when communicating and exchanging data and information. Data integrity, data confidentiality and authentication, on-repudiation, denial of service, and access control, are all key security concerns with mobile agent migration. This paper proposes a Verifiable, Secure Mobile Agent Migration model, based on two polynomials (t, n), and an edge secret imparting plan with Blowfish encryption, to enable secure information transmission in clinical medical care.

Beyond fear and abandonment: Public transport resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged urban public transport systems to maintain accessibility and service for daily users while adapting to local health and safety regulations. Developing sustainable and resilient urban policies under such crisis conditions requires understanding the different feelings, experiences and expectations of passengers and how these relate to socio-economic inequalities. Drawing on a mixed-method study in Berlin (Germany), Brussels (Belgium), Stockholm (Sweden) and Tallinn (Estonia), we show how the pandemic outbreak has changed both who uses public transport and how users experience their journeys. Challenging the narratives that portray public transport as a place of fear, we find that remaining passengers assess the risk of contagion lower than those who avoided it completely. We argue that promoting resilient public transport requires policies that address the needs of passengers relying on public transport services. Therefore, we question the current policies under the sustainable mobility paradigm for not taking sufficient account of the feelings, experiences and emotions and particularly of transport-dependent users.

Workers’ motile subjectivities and the socio-spatial formations of Chinese state-owned enterprises

This paper explores the interplay between labor agency and the socio-spatial structure of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the context of globalization. Drawing on Coe & Jordhus-Lier’s theorization of constrained labor agency with insights from new mobilities paradigm, we develop the concept of motile subjectivity to explain the multiplicity of constrained agency and workers’ different employment practices intervened in SOE socio-spatial formations. Based on field research conducted in SOEs in the Northeastern provinces of China, our analysis unfolds that workers’ motile subjectivities mainly drive three threads of employment practices, namely demission, positional promotion, and part-time work, which involve workers’ variegated mobile and immobile experiences. These (im)mobilities affect workers’ ongoing social and spatial practices and further conjoin with the reproduction of SOE socio-spaces with both manifestations of stable danwei and multi-scalar modern enterprises. Our study contributes to labor geography scholarship by theorizing the actualization of workers’ motile subjectivities in SOE socio-spatial formations. It also provides insights for future SOE studies to seriously consider workers’ motile subjectivities.

Sustainable management of lithium and green hydrogen and long-run perspectives of electromobility

The present paper assesses the prospective role of lithium in the long-run development of electromobility. Based on the existing data, the study shows that the geographical concentration of global lithium riches and rather an oligopolistic market structure of the worldwide primary supply makes the global lithium supply vulnerable to unexpected shocks. Furthermore, the work finds that the current transition to lithium-based electromobility does not exhibit traits of strong or long-term sustainability. This is attributed to the limits of lithium endowments, the negligible recycling capabilities of lithium-ion batteries, and environmental degradation induced by the transition to lithium-ion battery-based electromobility. We conclude that lithium-ion battery-based electromobility is a meaningful bridging technology until the time when lithium-ion batteries could be reliably replaced by the strong sustainability paradigm of road mobility, epitomized by the green hydrogen fuel cells-based electromobility.