Mobility

Mobility

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Introduction

Mobility refers to the capacity of people, images, and objects to move rapidly across local and global geographic space. The intersection of mobility and identity is concerned with how identity is understood through mobility across spaces, how the movement between spaces or lack of movement between spaces results in identity shifts, and how different dimensions and types of mobility construct different notions of identity. Mobility has diverse meanings as well as a range of implications; high levels of spatial mobility are simultaneously a social fact of technologically enhanced society, a necessity of everyday life and a cultural aspiration of many.

Mobility is a relatively scarce social capacity and is defined by its opposite, immobility, for whenever some things or people are mobile, others are moored, their movements restricted or difficult. Mobilities of various types have become more possible, occur on a larger scale, and are more evident in the global era with the assistance of various technological innovations, from digitalization to long-range jet airplanes.

As well as informing new theories and accounts of globalization, the field of mobilities research encompasses the study of movements of people, goods, and vehicles locally and within cities, informing developments in and forging alliances with disciplines such as geography and urban planning.

Some, such as John Urry, argue that this new focus on mobilities provides a challenge to the traditionally static view of the social world and social or cultural identities in the social sciences. Urry suggests the concept of mobilities should form an overarching conceptual framework for a new era of the social sciences that is post globalization studies, and driven by innovative theorizing in new areas such as network studies, digital technologies, and transportation studies that write in mobility as a core dimension of social life.

Mobility

The concept of mobility brings together human characteristics of identity and power with a dynamic understanding of space, place, and change. Different mobilities are shaped by different geographies, by the varying types of spaces people move through (e.g., public or private, urban or rural, real or virtual), and by a range of factors from cultural norms to modern security and immigration controls. Further influences include access to the means of mobility, be they cars, computers, bikes, or pavements, and the varying ability to be mobile, based on age, sex, body type, and other components of identity.

Mobility is constructed in relationship to relative immobility, or what are sometimes termed moorings, locations where mobility appears temporarily abated. Yet as absolute immobility is all but impossible, the mobility concept proposes that everyone and everything is mobile and that it is matters of scale, difference in speed, and variation in direction that create appearances of relative immobilities. Mobility can also be used to assess the impact of modern telecommunication and computer technologies on socio spatial relations, such as changing labour practices through which the mobile office makes almost any location a potential workplace, and, in a more metaphorical context, to explore the ...