Mobilities最新文献

Young people in cities in the Horn of Africa engage with diasporic mobility through social media on a daily basis. Apparent opportunities on these platforms both reflect and shape ideas about life in the diaspora, potential migration, and social mobility. These connections also bring risks of scamming, extortion and misinformation that contribute to the involuntary immobility of those who wish to move for economic or educational opportunities. Drawing from ‘screen-shot elicitation’ group interviews with young men in Hargeisa (Somaliland) and digital ethnographic investigation of social media content gathered before, during and after these sessions, this article argues that transnational flows of mobility-related information need to be studied from the perspective of people within contexts commonly understood as ‘sources’ of south-north migration, but beyond policy-orientated questions about the impact of ICTs on rates of migration. Emphasising the highly ambivalent role played by social media in shaping aspirations and experiences of youth (im)mobility, this approach brings into view a wider range of socially significant online practices. These include the transnational assemblage of elaborate digital scamming techniques, as well as multiple other types of mobility-focused user-generated content that circulate in transnational Somali social (media) networks.

This paper examines new forms of study-abroad expertise on social media and their role in mediating Indian student mobility to Germany. Firstly, it explores how mutual-support Facebook and WhatsApp groups—used by prospective international students in India to support each other through the process of applying to German universities—have contributed to the emergence of new forms of education consultancy, offered by Indian students or graduates of German universities, whom I call ‘Student Guides’. In addition, it shows how some Indians studying in Germany have started ‘Study in Germany’ YouTube channels, aimed at aspirant student migrants, and have become important ‘study-abroad influencers’. The paper analyses how these new forms of study-abroad expertise offer prospective international students social and cultural capital important for successful student migration, apart from shaping their imaginative geographies of Germany, and embedding them in cultures of mobility. Furthermore, the paper highlights how these new forms of study-abroad expertise intersect with, and critique, a more ‘traditional’ study-abroad expert: the professional education consultant. The paper draws on a digital ethnography of ‘Study in Germany’ Facebook and WhatsApp groups and YouTube channels, as well as interviews with the YouTubers, Student Guides, and Indian students in Germany.

Mobility experiences are becoming intrinsically linked with digital and data experiences. Being mobile increasingly involves the production, storage, processing and sharing of data (consciously or not), from car sensor data for diagnostics and insurance apps for driving, to ticketing apps for public transport, urban micromobility share schemes, Google maps, fitness and wellbeing apps, Internet of Things sensors, AI in migration “management“, or air pollution data. The ‘datafication’ of mobility raises new questions with regards to justice. What kinds of inequalities emerge at the intersection of mobilities and datafication? Whose mobility gets included and excluded through data collection and sharing, why and how? How are mobilities enabled and restricted through data? How are access and ownership to mobility and data changing? What about the mobility of data in relation to justice? This article links scholarship on mobility justice and data justice to develop a mobility data justice framework. It closes with a discussion of critical issues for mobility data justice and develops an agenda for future research in this area. The lens of social justice helps to understand the multiple ways power and (in) equalities are transformed or amplified at the intersection of mobility and data.

Electric car sharing is highlighted as a needed solution for reducing air pollution and the emission of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, its dissemination in many places is too slow and the market is still not profitable. This calls for research about whether electric car sharing corresponds to users’ conditions and concerns. This article applies the domestication theory examining insights gained from in-depth interviews with participants joining a car-sharing trial in a low-income, suburban area with rental apartments. The aim is to understand the initial adoption of electric car sharing, focusing on the challenges facing users. The findings reveal three interrelated processes and various challenges to be considered: making the technology understandable and useful, integrating car sharing in everyday practices, and negotiations and communications about the proper way to share a car. Besides the environmental advantages of sharing, the social benefits and how it might enrich everyday life should be stressed.

This paper sets out to investigate the forced and voluntary (im)mobility of Syrians who recently moved to Europe and are in the transition from asylum to settlement. We conceptualise ‘settlement’ for this group as a dynamic process and trace different forms of mobility in this phase, which is more commonly defined as static and associated with ‘having arrived’. We take a broad perspective on mobility, including social, mental and physical aspects of moving and being stuck and include refugees’ own experiences and everyday coping strategies in order to understand how the interaction with mobility regimes takes place and is experienced after settlement. We do this by analysing qualitative interviews conducted in two similar but nevertheless different reception and settlement contexts. The Netherlands and Norway are both highly regulated welfare states providing support to newcomers although, importantly, also restricting their agency and mobility, resulting in spatial and social exclusion. By zooming in on research participants’ acts of everyday coping mechanisms and different domains of integration in the two contexts, we identify similarities and differences in strategies for challenging official and everyday definitions of where and what to be after fleeing to Europe.

Academics have long regarded air travel as vital to pursuing a successful career. Meanwhile, many academics are at the frontline of climate change science and advocate the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The conflict between combating global warming and high aeromobility practices traps academics in a loop of hypocrisy. However, COVID-19 presents an opportunity for academics to advance their research and careers with reduced aeromobility. This research investigates how academics have adapted to virtual working experiences during COVID-19 and the implications for establishing changes in aeromobility practices. Informed by the theory of practice change, this paper reports the findings of a comprehensive survey and interview programme in New Zealand. It provides insights into the prospects for reduced aeromobility and the institutional policy frameworks required to embed a new normal, considering the unique circumstances faced by academics working at geographically remote institutions. The findings reveal that instead of being trapped in a loop of hypocrisy, New Zealand academics face a moral quandary in being concerned about climate change and wishing to reduce aeromobility practices, while wanting to avoid compromising career success. Recommendations for academics to face this moral quandary and their institutions to support practice change are proposed.

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.

The Covid-19 pandemic has spotlighted the relationship between mobilities and gender-based violence (GBV). The national lockdowns across the world have im/mobilised people, creating extraordinary social proximities that have been associated with a ‘shadow pandemic’ of violence. Before the pandemic, GBV was often im/mobilised in academic and policy thinking in that it was located in unconnected static sites. This article is based on a transdisciplinary project that seeks to produce understandings of GBV in the Covid-19 pandemic, using the heuristic lens of im/mobilities. The project aims to do so through the creation and analysis of personal stories detailing experiences of GBV across the UK. These stories are in the form of existing first-hand accounts on campaign websites, magazines and newspapers. Through them this article investigates how im/mobilities precipitate gendered violence, both felt and experienced, and examines how embodied experiences become situated in mobile spaces—inside, outside and online—in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, it evolves the concept of im/mobilities.

The recent political and economic crisis in Venezuela has given rise to an increase in Venezuelan migrants and refugees to Brazil. Situated in the northern state of Roraima, bordering Venezuela, this research explores the military-humanitarian response coordinated by the Brazilian government. Investigating the underpinning logic of such a humanitarian approach highlights the ways in which vulnerable mobile groups are offered support, while at the same time, are tightly governed for the protection of state security. I argue that Brazil’s military-humanitarian approach to mobility governance reflects a logic of debility that works to control migrants. This logic emerges through subtle forms of violence and consequently reinforces migrant vulnerabilities, keeping them in a cyclical loop of exclusion. This paper addresses the militarisation of the response across the urban streetscape of the city of Boa Vista, including humanitarian spaces of care, to investigate processes of securitisation and hygienisation. By doing so, this paper contributes to timely discussions on military-humanitarianism and draws attention to South-South mobilities and the salient geographies of Brazil and Latin America more broadly.