Towards a relational spatial mobility justice of disability as territory

The paper's aim is to augment understandings of mobility justice with reference to the sensations of the repetitive routines and rhythms that comprise everyday journeys, subjectivities, and places of powered assisted mobility device users. We build on arguments of mobility justice as access by extending understandings of the sensuous dimensions of repetitive everyday journeys that sustain a sense of self in the world. To do so, we draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of refrains of rhythms to advance relational spatial thinking about how mobility injustices arise and become ordered. Our empirical analysis offers two ‘portraits’ from a qualitative assisted motorised mobility project in the car-dominated city of Sydney, Australia. Through an interpretation of the rhythmic qualities of embodied choreographies of everyday routines, the paper draws on the experiences of two women with disability to map processes of ableist exclusion from public space, and strategies which support inclusion. Implications for mobility justice are drawn from the affective intensities of synchronisation and asynchronisation of moving-together, in proximity with able-bodied pedestrians and drivers.