Keywords of mobility: Critical engagements

The 21st century seems to be on the move, perhaps even more so than the last. With cheap travel, and more than two billion cars projected worldwide for 2030. And yet, all this mobility is happening incredibly unevenly, at different paces and intensities, with varying impacts and consequences to the extent that life on the move might be actually quite difficult to sustain environmentally, socially and ethically. As a result 'mobility' has become a keyword of the social sciences; delineating a new domain of concepts, approaches, methodologies and techniques which seek to understand the character and quality of these trends. This Handbook explores and critically evaluates the debates, approaches, controversies and methodologies, inherent to this rapidly expanding discipline. It brings together leading specialists from range of backgrounds and geographical regions to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of this field, conveying cutting edge research in an accessib...

The movement of people and the associated flows of tangible and intangible resources have attracted increasing attention from policy-makers and practitioners, as well as researchers, seeking to understand the processes involved and the potential of such movements for enhancing debates around mobility which includes not just migration, but other forms of movement such as commuting and journeys to school. This paper considers key dimensions of the perceived relationships between mobility and development, highlighting how mobility can be both a route to challenge social exclusion and poverty as well as a mechanism for reinforcing such disadvantage. The paper also provides an overview of the key themes addressed in the eight papers making up this special issue on mobility and migration.

A polysemic term, the concept of mobility  as this paper attempts to explain  is still commonly confounded with other concepts and ideas, such as circulation, accessibility, traffic, transit and transportation. However, its use in the sciences in general is more recent than these other terms, and its appearance did not replace any of them. The concept of mobility arose in order to throw fresh light on new social transformations that have become more important as the social divisions of labor have deepened during the past few centuries. This concept of mobility has acquired different shapes and can be deployed for assorted purposes and explanations. Daily mobility entails residential mobility and mobility of labor, and more recently, symbolic mobility. Other forms of mobility include: commuting, tourism and recreation, extending as far as nomadism and even immobility. All types of mobility are related systemically to the social and territorial division of labor and to modes of production. These modes of production shape the social and territorial space at many different scales, requiring modern human beings to plunge deeper into the life of relationships, including with objects, which become more numerous and portable. In the course of history, the appearance and predominance of movement become one of the most important key elements to define individuals and societies. This article reveals theoretical and practical examples of the intense and intimate relationships between the various forms of mobility, thus proposing new approaches of this concept. Focusing on new approaches to the daily mobility concept, the main objective is to overcome dichotomies between sectors and areas of science. Believing that together with people in each location, with social participation, we can improve the knowledge of reality and also improve public policies and contribute with them to reach their target.

The paper describes the latest upsurge in the interest in the different forms of mobility in the contemporary world. In the social science this process is often called the mobility turn. In the text it is argued that theoretical underpinnings of the mobility turn are rooted mainly in the different variants of theories of globalization. The text indicates: (1) mobility as one of the key elements in the varying concepts of globalization (2) the ways in which mobility was analyzed in the globalization literature (3) main sources of the mobility turn (4) crucial arguments in favor of introducing “mobilities” as a separate field of research and (5) the most important critical remarks concerning the mobility turn.

The Mobilities Paradigm. Discourses and Ideologies, 2016

Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences, 2016

Global Change and Human Mobility is the title of this volume, published in the series of Springer essays dealing with all the aspects considered in the Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences. The title of the book appeals to scholars interested in the issue of change and mobility across the world, both empirically and theoretically, offering a selection of studies developed by members of the International Geographical Union Commission (see www.globility.org) on this subject, from both thematic and geographical perspectives. Owing to its ability to link locations and societies, human mobility has received increasing academic attention over the last few years in the context of the globalization process. As a manifestation of some of the world's key political, economic, societal, and cultural issues, human mobility has acquired great importance in the social sciences and particularly in geography. The chapters of this book demonstrate the strength of this topic in looking at a changing world from the focus of a new disciplinary approach. From these contributions, it can be seen that human mobility transforms the perspective of migrations conceived as processes between points of origin and destination, analyzing the fluidity of the relations between spaces. Therefore, new tendencies of human mobility and new interpretations of old processes overlap in this book's chapters. Chapter 1 is dedicated to a theoretical reflection about the state of the art in the subject of human mobility and is written by Professor Armando Montanari and Dr. Barbara Staniscia from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Professor Montanari established the Commission on Global Change and Human Mobility within the International Geographical Union in the year 2000, while Dr. Staniscia is the current Scientific Secretary of the Commission. Chapter 2 offers a perspective of the reaction of migration systems in the current context of global financial and economic crisis. Professors Daniel G€ oler from the University of Bamberg in Germany and Zaiga Krišjāne from the University of Latvia develop a broad reflection on the "regional element" of transnationalism, opening that concept with a new transregional perspective drawn from the v

Modern everyday lives, economies and cultural practices are strongly shaped, structured but also limited by complex regimes of mobility and flow. On different scales -from the body to the global -multiple regulatory regimes are governing the ways how individuals, collectives and nation states are managing social relations over distance. Complex power settings of principles, norms and rules structure the ways how individuals stay in contact with other people, places, organizations, institutions and so forth 1 . These "mobilities regimes" [Witzgall, Vogl, Kesselring 2013] are highly ambivalent phenomena: on the one side they decrease social inequalities by making mobility accessible and available for more and more people. But on the other side those who are set immobile or who don't have access to relevant technologies and infrastructures -or even don't have the necessary skills to manage complex mobilitiesare often socially excluded. In this sense mobility regimes can also work as facilitators of disintegration and incoherence. They can foster mobility and strengthen equality through better chances for social participation. But mobilities regimes can also intenx 1 This understanding of regimes is based on the definition provided by Nohlen, Schultze, Schüttemeyer and takes into account the changing socio-political conditions which are shaping mobility policies in nation states, cities and regions which can be described in terms of networks and governance processes . Further ahead a working definition based on Nohlen et al. is presented but it also needs to be considered that regime theory is a fairly young disciple and a seminal definition of regimes is still missing . Therefore the definition of mobilities regimes that will be presented later has to be considered as work in progress.

Mobility in culture: Conceptual frameworks and approaches , 2022

This chapter describes how the interdisciplinary field of mobility studies has opened new scholarly perspectives, including when it comes to cultural mobilities.