Rural Mobility Research Articles

5G for Remote Areas: Challenges, Opportunities and Business Modeling for Brazil

Globalization, digitalization, and urbanization are progressing at a fast pace in cities and regions across the world. New technologies and innovations typically reach urban regions first, where Return on Investment (ROI) tends to be higher than in remote or rural areas, which are characterized by low population densities, low potential revenues, and large distances to urban clusters and societal service. This process has consistently increased the digital urban-rural gap. As an example, the Fifth Generation of Mobile Network (5G) has recently started to be rolled out, starting in the cities. Many challenges remain to bring broadband connectivity to the rural and remote regions. Particularly in Brazil, there is still a big digital gap between urban and rural areas. Urban areas have an internet penetration of around 65% while the rural figure is at just 34%. There are also important differences concerning the geographical location in the country. The North and Northeast regions of Brazil have lower internet penetration than the South, Southeast, and Center. In this paper, we present opportunities for connecting the unconnected in Brazil by defining a new alternative and scalable business model to deploy networks in ultra-low density areas. We present an analysis of show stoppers, rural opportunity sizing, business case, including deployment model for a 5G network, costs incurred, and generated revenues. A central element to bring scalability and sustainability into the business model for rural connectivity is the association between a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) and Rural Mobile Infrastructure Operator (RMIO), in which RMIOs run their network on a slice of a network that is connected to incumbent operators. Profit and Loss (P&L) analysis shows that a fair split of the value generated between the MNO and RMIO can be achieved.

O processo de fechamento das escolas rurais nos municípios de Arraias e Combinado - TO

As políticas de Educação do Campo têm se consolidado nos movimentos sociais por um projeto político e pedagógico de emancipação dos povos do campo. O recorte desta pesquisa delimita-se entre o período de 1998 a 2015, cujo objetivo é investigar os marcos normativos da educação do campo que asseguram o direito à educação pública de qualidade aos povos camponeses e compreender as políticas de fechamento das escolas rurais localizadas em Arraias e Combinado no estado do Tocantins. Em termos metodológicos, utilizamos como fonte de pesquisa a revisão bibliográfica e documental na organização e sistematização de fontes primárias. A partir disso a pesquisa revela que o fechamento das escolas rurais nos devidos municípios evidencia a negação do direito à educação no ambiente em que vivem. Sendo assim, os direitos educacionais conquistados foram violados pelo poder público no processo de mobilização e organização das comunidades rurais.

Technical-Economic Analysis of Photovoltaic Systems Applied to Heterogeneous Mobile Networks in Rural Areas

The use of renewable sources as an energy matrix has become crucial for the development of rural mobile networks both to meet increasing energy consumption in mobile network segments and to improve the efficiency of the grid. Thus, this work aims to analyze the economic viability of the photovoltaic system as an energy source for 5G mobile networks in rural environments by means of energy consumption models for mobile networks and cost for installation and operation of photovoltaic systems. Results indicate that although the analysis is characterized for a rural scenario with low population density, where economic viability is low due to geographic location and access difficulties, the photovoltaic system has great feasibility of implantation and operation. Thus, according to the results, the implementation of this renewable energy source is financially favorable in locations with a higher insolation rate above 4.0 kWh/m2.day. In addition, the reduction in the emission of CO2 in the atmosphere from the use of the photovoltaic system demonstrated the environmental importance of this energy source.

Translocal Lives: Gender and Rural Mobilities in South Africa, 1970–2020

ABSTRACT Rural spaces in South Africa remain crucially important to the material, emotional, and cultural wellbeing of many South Africans, and many ‘rural’ lives have long been highly mobile and dynamic. Women in rural areas, in particular, provide diverse maintenance work that sustains translocal households – entities that sprawl across rural, peri-urban, and urban space. This article situates South African mobilities, especially those of women, in the historical context of the past fifty years, exploring the changing nature of connections between rural and urban lives of Black South Africans through the lens of a village in a former ‘homeland’ in northeastern Limpopo Province. Whereas analyses tend to focus on migrants, often viewing rural people as immobile or out of step with modernity, the focus here is on those who remain principally rural yet maintain mobilities of diverse kinds. Rooted in the qualitative methods of oral history, social history, and gender history, the article provides a fine-grained analysis of rural households, the lives of those who remain in or return to rural areas, and rural contributions within translocal households and economies.

On the role of frameworks and smart mobility in addressing the rural mobility problem

Mobility is fundamentally important in enabling people to access services, which can deliver substantial benefits to people's quality of life. This is particularly important in rural areas where the range and extent of public transport services are, in general, significantly lower than in urban areas, and, indeed, below the level required to provide a level of service that is sufficiently high to enable people in rural areas without private cars to access these services. This paper looks at the role of governments in institutional, organisational, regulatory and financial frameworks in supporting rural transport services at a level that enables this access. A cluster analysis is performed to identify distinct classes of framework types across Europe. In addition, the paper gives examples of good practice and innovation in rural transport from across Europe incorporating a variety of themes: the use of Information and Communications Technology, intermodal service coordination, demand-responsive transport, shared mobility and good governance. Key success factors for introducing, sustaining and transferring these forms of good practice are then discussed.

Unequal futures of rural mobility: Challenges for a “Smart Countryside”

Current transport strategy in the UK is strongly urban-focused, with assumptions that technological advances in mobility will simply trickle down into rural areas. This article challenges such a view and instead draws on rural development thinking aligned to a “Smart Countryside” which emphasises the need for place-based approaches. Survey and interview methods are employed to develop a framework of rural needs associated with older people, younger people and businesses. This framework is employed to assess a range of mobility innovations that could most effectively address these needs in different rural contexts. In presenting visions of future rural mobility, the article also identifies key infrastructure as well as institutional and financial changes that are required to facilitate the roll-out of new technologies across rural areas.

Rethinking the political economy of rural struggles in Turkey: Space, structures, and altered agencies

AbstractBy focusing on recent water struggles in rural Turkey against run‐of‐the‐river hydropower plants (SHPs), the research delves into the societal and economic factors that enable or inhibit the emergence of strong mobilizations through a comparison of four localities of the Eastern Black Sea region. The main aim of the cross comparison is to determine whether there is a relationship between the forms of rural livelihood (and class position) and political mobilization against SHP construction. The article offers a multilayered relational framework to analyse rural mobilizations. Through a comparative spatial analysis of material and immaterial territories, I argue that the spatio‐economic transformation of the localities that unevenly transform rural settings in terms of production and consumption activities have an impact on the patterns, discourses, and agency in contemporary “rural” mobilizations. This is especially observable with regard to upward mobility and the middle‐classization processes embedded in crop system and household accumulation opportunities. The children of upwardly mobile farmers who became city‐based middle‐class actors tend to present an estheticized and carnivalesque framing in their resistance strategies through the re‐invention of traditions and culture, whereas the lower‐class peasants voice their grievances based strictly on material concerns.

Centring settler colonialism in rural Australian multicultures: race, place and local identities

ABSTRACT In the current age of rural mobilities and economic restructuring, the ethnic and racial compositions of rural towns across Anglosphere nations of the Global North have significantly transformed. As a result of these changes, the conditions which support rural multicultures are increasingly relevant to scholarship and policy-making. ‘Everyday multiculturalism’ and ‘convivialities’ have become key approaches within such research in rural environments. These perspectives offer important insights into understanding complex social relationships, reciprocities and circumstances of belonging in rural places. However, as UK-based critiques argue, a focus on ‘everyday multiculturalism’ and ‘convivialities’ may also risk obscuring how colonial legacies have shaped and informed racialised and classed hierarchies of belonging in distinct contexts. In this paper we turn these critiques to settler colonial Australia and its increasingly diverse rural towns. We bring together emerging literature in the study of rural migration with scholarship from Indigenous studies and anthropology on Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal rural social relations. Working at the intersection of these bodies of works, we argue that the histories and structures of settler colonialism be centred in research on rural multicultures, as these legacies and ongoing conditions shape social relationships in contemporary rural Australia.

Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies

Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies

Characteristics of first-time family planning users and methods used at mobile clinics in rural Malawi

Setting: Malawi committed to increase modern contraceptive prevalence rate to 60% for all women by 2020, but current use ranges from 37% to 59% among women of different ages and marital status.Objectives: To describe characteristics of first-time family planning (FP) users and associations between characteristics and methods used among women of childbearing age accessing injectables, oral contraceptives and implants in rural mobile clinics in Mulanje, Malawi, in 2017–2018.Design: This was a cross-sectional retrospective study.Results: Among 2120 first-time FP users, 65% were <25 years. Half (50%) had 2–4 live children and only 1% were nulliparous. HIV infection rate among all users was 4%. Of the three methods, injectables were used most (75%), with a significantly higher use in HIV-positive clients (91%). Nearly 25% of first-time users used implants and the proportion increased from 21% in 2017 to 34% in 2018.Conclusion: This study demonstrated that FP can be provided to young women in remote areas if the availability of well-trained providers is ensured. It highlighted the need to target younger and nulliparous women with a broad mix of contraceptives to improve access to, and uptake of, FP services to reach national commitments.

Trabalhadores rurais e o “credo vermelho”: experiências protestantes na Liga Camponesa em Goiana, Pernambuco

Entre os anos finais da década de 1950 e início dos anos 1960, os trabalhadores rurais foram protagonistas de um tempo de grande convulsão social. Atuando nas Ligas Camponesas ou nos sindicatos rurais, os trabalhadores mobilizaram lutas que tinham como finalidade a conquista de direitos, alcançando melhores condições de vida e trabalho. Essas experiências foram registradas cuidadosamente pelas autoridades policiais do Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS), que enxergavam nas mobilizações o desenvolvimento da ameaça comunista em Pernambuco. Dos registros policiais foi possível identificar a mobilização dos trabalhadores em Goiana, município da Zona da Mata Norte de Pernambuco. A partir da denúncia de incêndios nos canaviais das usinas pertencentes à Companhia Açucareira de Goiana, os investigadores policiais descreviam em seus relatórios a presença de “elementos perigosos” que contribuía para a “desestabilização da ordem” naquele município. Ao mesmo tempo, a análise dos registros policiais trouxe à luz a participação de protestantes nessas mobilizações sociais que, segundo a interpretação dos investigadores, promoviam uma nova modalidade de “infiltração comunista no campo”. Portanto, nosso objetivo repousa sobre a investigação da participação protestante nas mobilizações rurais em Goiana, enfatizando o papel dessas lideranças e sua aproximação com o debate sobre o Evangelho Social.

Changes in Rural Poverty Among Occupational Groups in Odisha: An Analysis of Post-Reform Period

This article is an attempt to study the changes in rural poverty and its link with growth of farm sector output for Odisha in the post-reform period. The rural household-type (occupational groups) classification of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) from the unit-level data of Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) has been used for the class analysis of rural poverty. The Odisha economy has recorded high growth in net state domestic product (NSDP) in the post-reform period. During the decade of the 1990s, the state witnessed a negative growth in farm output, lower reduction in rural poverty and distress occupational mobility from farm to non-farm sector. However, in the next decade, the farm sector registered high growth, higher rural poverty reduction and occupational mobility within the farm sector. There has also been higher growth in monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) and faster reduction in rural poverty among all the rural occupational groups in the decade of the 2000s. Thus, it is the growth of the farm sector, which remains the major driver of rural poverty reduction in Odisha.

Youth, mobilities and multicultures in the rural Anglosphere: positioning a research agenda

ABSTRACT Rural mobilities have transformed the social composition of rural places across the Global North. Young people are central to these changes and their role in rural livelihoods is crucial to rural futures. Yet little is known about how youth are negotiating today’s rural multicultures in an era of accelerated mobilities and on the back of decades of neoliberal restructuring. This article reviews scholarship on young people’s social relationships across ethnic and racial differences in rural Australia, the US, Canada and England, and excavates three trends within this literature. These are analyses of white and rural identity construction, policy and programme responses to rural youth “mixing”, and strategies by racialized youth to manage racisms. The paper signposts areas for prospective research at the intersection of rural studies, youth multicultures and race, and shows how this may contribute to understandings of identity and social relations for young people in the geopolitical present.

Energy self-sufficient households with photovoltaics and electric vehicles are feasible in temperate climate.

The idea that households produce and consume their own energy, that is, energy self-sufficiency at a very local level, captures the popular imagination and commands political support across parts of Europe. This paper investigates the technical and economic feasibility of household energy self-sufficiency in Switzerland, which can be seen as representative for other regions with a temperate climate, by 2050. We compare sixteen cases that vary across four dimensions: household type, building type, electricity demand reduction, and passenger vehicle use patterns. We assume that photovoltaic (PV) electricity supplies all energy, which implies a complete shift away from fossil fuel based heating and internal combustion engine vehicles. Two energy storage technologies are considered: short-term storage in lithium-ion batteries and long-term storage with hydrogen, requiring an electrolyzer, storage tank, and a fuel cell for electricity conversion. We examine technological feasibility and total system costs for self-sufficient households compared to base cases that rely on fossil fuels and the existing power grid. PV efficiency and available rooftop/facade area are most critical with respect to the overall energy balance. Single-family dwellings with profound electricity demand reduction and urban mobility patterns achieve self-sufficiency most easily. Multi-family buildings with conventional electricity demand and rural mobility patterns can only be self-sufficient if PV efficiency increases, and all of the roof plus most of the facade can be covered with PV. All self-sufficient cases are technically feasible but more expensive than fully electrified grid-connected cases. Self-sufficiency may even become cost-competitive in some cases depending on storage and fossil fuel prices. Thus, if political measures improve their financial attractiveness or individuals decide to shoulder the necessary investments, self-sufficient buildings may start to become increasingly prevalent.

Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies by Sayaka Chatani

Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies by Sayaka Chatani

Is Agrarian Populism Progressive? Russia Then, India Now

Examined here is the claim that agrarian populism can be – and is currently – progressive, a view evaluated in relation to recent pro-peasant/farmer-first accounts of rural mobilization in Russia at the start of the 20th century and India at its end. Against this it is argued that agrarian populism cannot be regarded as progressive, for two reasons in particular. First, it overlooks or downplays the fact that capitalism requires of peasant households only their labour-power, as components of an increasingly global industrial reserve army. Opposed merely to certain forms of capitalism (foreign, large-scale) and not to accumulation per se, populists were and are unable to address this contradiction. And second, agrarian populism unleashes – or, once unleashed, endorses – discourses about the innateness of national/ethnic/religious difference associated historically and currently with the political right.

From infrastructure to digital networks: accessibility and connectivity in transport geography research at Aberdeen

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the contribution made to transport geography research at the University of Aberdeen over the last century. In section one, the earliest work in transport geography emphasised the physical connectivity provided by transport through infrastructure networks. Section 2 discusses the contribution made at Aberdeen to debates around accessibility and connectivity. This work had a strong rural dimension and evidenced a growing recognition of the importance of technology in transport. It provided the springboard for research on digital connectivity with important contributions to the wider domain of transport studies in the fields of flexible transport, rural connectivity, transport and energy and social media and big data as reported in Section 3. Section 4 brings the story of transport research at Aberdeen up to the present. It frames research under the banner of intelligent mobility (IM), which links technology and mobility to the wider societal objective of enabling the smarter, greener and more efficient movement of people and goods. Contributions are reported to the fields of shared mobility, smart rural mobility, transport security and privacy and accessibility. Finally, a return to the theme of infrastructure networks and connectivity is highlighted in work on global production networks in aviation.

Rural Mobilities: Migrant Workers in Manitoba

AbstractDrawing on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Manitoba, this essay challenges notions of rural mobilities as either outward or novel. Looking back to Canadian histories of colonization, the essay calls for a view of rural mobilities as a continuous and consistent modality of capital accumulation and state formation.

Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies. By Sayaka Chatani

Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies. By Sayaka Chatani

Measurement of Rural Residents’ Mobility in Western China: A Case Study of Qingyang, Gansu Province

Mobility is a popular topic in the fields of humanities and social sciences. China’s rapid urbanization has resulted in the acceleration of urban–rural mobility. Moreover, the implementation of the New Urbanization and Rural Revitalization Strategy has demonstrated the prospects of urban–rural integration and development. However, research on rural mobility is mainly focused in the fields of economics and sociology, with insufficient attention paid to spatial mobility. The main purpose of this study is to introduce a new theoretical explanation of the four dimensions of rural mobility based on a complete understanding of the current socio-economic background, namely, network mobility, green mobility, people-oriented mobility, and smart mobility. On this basis, a rural mobility evaluation index system is proposed by attempting to build a synthetic rural mobility index from the four aforementioned dimensions. Qingyang, a typical city in Western China located in the Loess Hilly Region, is taken as an example. Accordingly, the comprehensive rural and four-dimensional mobilities are analyzed and evaluated, and the effectiveness of the index system is verified. Results show that Qingyang’s rural mobility is at a low level, but differences in the types of rural residents, districts and counties, and dimensions of mobility are observed. At the end of this paper, the inclusion of mobility promotion in the policy system of rural revitalization is emphasized.