Make way for the wealthy? Autonomous vehicles,markets in mobility,and social justice

ABSTRACT

The development of a ‘mobility as a service’ model for accessing urban transport via autonomous vehicles may be expected to have far-reaching implications for the economics of road transport. In particular, it would offer a new opportunity to price access to the roads in accordance with the principles of the free market. Once people are paying for mobility on the roads on a ‘per trip’ basis, it will be possible to offer different levels of access – and service – at different prices. According to hegemonic ideas in the transport planning and economics literature the introduction of such a ‘market in mobility’ would be an economically efficient way of allocating access to the scarce good of space on the roads. In this paper we draw attention to a number of ethical and political challenges to the appropriateness of the use of such a pricing mechanism in the context of urban mobility.     

Of (not) being neighbors: cities,citizens and climate change in an age of migrations

ABSTRACT

Borders are back with a vengeance. From the Americas to the Mediterranean, borders cut through the increasingly integrated world in a way that exposes the inside-outside logic of contemporary capitalism. All this happens on a backdrop where cities are becoming the key sites of contestation since borders and levees do not suffice to keep them intact. Cities are also increasingly becoming the focus of international efforts to deal with climate change and migration, where nation-states are falling short. By synthesizing the possibilities of urban belonging and right-to-the-world, we argue that new urban imaginaries are at the frontline of the mobilities debate today. Consequently, we argue for a cross-pollination of mobility justice and climate justice as urban citizenship. The main thrust of our argument is that there are viable alternatives to the isolationist fortress nation model, which can bring a new dimension to debates concerning climate change and migration. Fearless cities are but one example of these emerging alternatives. By focusing on the opportunities for a radical response to climate change and migration, we suggest that cities can respond to the burning mobility challenges of our times with a just, grounded and egalitarian urban citizenship framed as mobile commons.     

Urban greening and mobility justice in Dhaka’s informal settlements

ABSTRACT

Urban greening in Dhaka, Bangladesh is fraught with injustice for slum dwellers. Access to the commons for the enactment of gardening, farming and foraging by the urban poor, many recent internal migrants from rural areas, is contested by wealthier citizens, developers and political elites. Through qualitative research with households within the informal settlement of Korail in Dhaka’s urban core, and a range of stakeholders in governmental and non-governmental organizations, this study critiques competing policy visions that involve urban greening and urban green infrastructure. Repurposing the conceptual lense of ‘mobility justice’ to analyse environmental and ecological issues in the global South, the findings highlight the importance of mobility concerns to just futures for urban planning.     

Forum 4: the environmental privilege of borders in the anthropocene

ABSTRACT

Mobility can indicate a powerful or privileged relationship with one’s environment. The ability to exercise mobility or not (of oneself or others) is an exertion of power that demarcates where particular people belong and under what kind of environmental conditions. This essay focuses on the significance of borders in creating environmental privilege in the Anthropocene. Environmental privilege is accrued through the exercise of economic, political, and cultural power that enables the construction of exclusive environmental amenities such as clean air and water, open space, and safe neighborhoods. For years, environmental justice scholars have revealed the burdens and oppressive conditions associated with environmental inequality, but few studies consider the flipside of that reality. We argue that environmental privileges enjoyed by some rest upon the manipulation of the mobility of others – human and nonhuman. We believe border making will come under greater pressure as the effects of climate change increase, and the volume of resources required to maintain exclusive spaces intensifies. Continued mass migration will bring heightened anxieties about national identity and calls for greater border enforcement, despite the reality that borders – both literal and figurative – consistently fail to alleviate migratory pressures while exacerbating the effects of climate change and environmental injustice. Our research shows that greater ecological instability increases efforts to create privatized places as pristine spaces untouched by global turmoil, thereby reinforcing those social forces that produce environmental injustices in the first place.     

Indigenous mobility traditions,colonialism, and the anthropocene

ABSTRACT

The anthropocene is often discussed as an era of ‘new’ environmental changes that require unprecedented forms of societal adaptation, one example being climate-induced resettlement. Yet discussions of the anthropocene can also be better contextualized in terms of their featuring certain phenomena as ‘new’ that are really much more longstanding phenomena. For example, many Indigenous peoples have ancient traditions of environmental ‘mobility.’ This essay reviews some of the history of Indigenous philosophies, especially Anishinaabe, of mobility, migration, and resettlement. Often these philosophies focus on fluid and transformative relationships as constituting the fabric of resilient societies. Indigenous traditions of mobility are critically relevant for climate justice. They put into relief how colonial power can operate as a containment strategy that works to curtail mobility. In this way, looking at Indigenous mobility in the anthropocene involves unraveling layers of colonialism where containment has been widely imposed. This claim can be used to signal some of the dangers of centering the causal role of climate change in certain cases societal movement. To further support our claims, the essay concludes with a brief analysis of some of the literature and testimonies on resettlement in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.     

Mundane intermodality: a comparative analysis of bike-renting practices

ABSTRACT

Bike rental systems have been introduced as a sustainable urban mobility alternative. This paper analyses the social practices that emerge as part of these systems. We specifically focus on the interactions and street-level performances at a bike rental station. We argue that the bike-sharing service is a pivotal device that enables its users to transform (to re-configure from pedestrians to cyclists and vice versa), hence creating intermodality. The bike rental system ensures the technical standardization of behaviour while simultaneously revealing differences between those familiar with the system and those who are not. Thus, competences and meanings of the station are not subordinate to materials – they are interdependent, entwined and enacted in and through the practice itself.     

‘The shops were only made for people who could walk’: impairment,barriers and autonomy in the mobility of adults with Cerebral Palsy in urban England

ABSTRACT

Based on research carried out with a group of adults with Cerebral Palsy in Birmingham, UK, we consider the complex inter-relationship between the accessibility of the urban environment for those with impaired gross motor skills, and the ability of these people to lead full and independent lives. Drawing on a framework that considers mobility as movement, meaning-making and political, we demonstrate the reality of differentiated mobility. For those with bodies that function outside the presumed operating parameters of the model subjects of urban design, mobility may be possible, but is often uncomfortable and even dangerous, with significant associated effects for impaired people’s autonomy. Our study details social and structural, or design, barriers to people’s mobility, demonstrating the inter-connection between individuals’ behaviour and urban design in a manner that questions a clear distinction between the two. We draw upon the notions of emotional work and a commoning approach to mobility in suggesting that further investment in urban accessibility is squarely an issue of social justice.     

Transit boundaries: race and the paradox of immobility within mobile systems

ABSTRACT

The central city is once again hot. Many city areas where poor minorities were left behind during the decades-long suburban growth are experiencing a revival. New high-rise condominiums and other developments are drawing tens of thousands back to city spaces that were once considered undesirable. These ‘return to the city’ trends are supported in part by growth machine engines, such as Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts, often to the detriment of lower-income minority residents, who still find themselves trapped within the boundaries of spatial inequalities in the city. Drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, I show how public transportation is used to buttress the city’s growth machine, while simultaneously maintaining the boundaries of spatial and other types of inequalities. In doing so, I highlight how public transit is used to create and support growth along race (and class) lines. Specifically, I show how mobility and growth for Whites and predominantly White spaces in the city are proactively shaped through favorable new public transit development and revitalization initiatives such as TOD and TIF. At the same time, in predominantly Black and Latinx spaces, where intracommunity public transportation usage is high, new transit related development is below sparse or completely lacking, further fortifying transit and other spatial boundaries.     

What’s in a Pronoun?: The Ungovernability and Misgendering of Trans Native Kids in Juvenile Justice in Washington State

ABSTRACT

Recognition of transgender identities and best practices in care for trans youth in juvenile justice settings have been gaining increased visibility. However, in interviews with juvenile justice defense attorneys, I have found that even attorneys who want to be supportive and affirming of transgender youth struggle with consistently affirming the youth’s pronouns, especially in the case of Native trans youth. In this article, I will explore the ways that systems of “justice” are not set up to recognize transgender and Native youth correctly, because the goal is always to make Native youth invisible/assimilated and to make trans youth normative. For a transgender Native kid, even the best intentions of people working within this system are not going to be enough to overcome these systemic goals of settler colonial justice systems. This article highlights the limits of the U.S. juvenile justice system and argues for a turn to two-spirit critiques to fundamentally change the justice system for transgender Native youth.     

And yet it moves! (Climate) migration as a symptom in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

While the climate-migration nexus raises crucial questions of mobility and climate justice, it is commonly understood through simplistic narratives that reify a complex set of relations. The spectre of environmentally-induced exodus is recurrent in media, policy and activist circles, in spite of numerous studies that reveal the empirical flaws and noxious normative implications of such narratives. This article explores this insistence and the desire(s) for there to be a reified relation between climate and migration such insistence reveals. The article proceeds in three movements. First, it situates discourses on climate migration in relation to the crisis of humanism the Anthropocene signifies. Second, it operates a symptomatic reading of climate migration discourses, drawing on two understandings of symptom elaborated by Lacan – as ‘return of the repressed’ and as ‘Sinthome’. Read as a symptom, the figure of the climate migrant/refugee appears as the return of fundamental contradictions that carve contemporary regimes of socioecological (re)production. Through the concept of ‘Sinthome’, discourses on climate migration can be read as (illusory) attempts to shore up for the waning consistence of modern forms of ‘being human’. Finally, the article proposes a symptomatic reading of the Anthropocene itself, and elaborates on what the dissolution of this symptom/ Sinthome would entail.     

Indigenous (im)mobilities in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

This paper explores Indigenous (im)mobilities in the Anthropocene, and their relationship to Pacific Islands climate activism. In a context where Indigenous peoples and perspectives are poorly represented in global climate politics, it is important to understand how Pacific people represent their own interests and imagine their own futures as pressures to move due to climate change take hold. We examine political action outside of formal governance spaces and processes, in order to understand how Indigenous people are challenging state-centric approaches to climate change adaptation. We do so by studying the works of Pacific activists and artists who engage with climate change. We find that *banua – an expansive concept, inclusive of people and their place, attentive to both mobility and immobility, and distributed across the Pacific Islands region – is essential for the existential security of Pacific people and central to contemporary climate activism. We find that Pacific activists/artists are challenging the status quo by invoking *banua. In doing so, they are politicising (im)mobility. These mobilisations are coalescing into an Oceanic cosmopolitanism that confronts two mutually reinforcing features of contemporary global climate politics: the subordination of Indigenous peoples, perspectives and worldviews; and the marginalisation of (im)mobility concerns within the global climate agenda.     

Exclusion and vulnerability on public transit: experiences of transit dependent riders in Portland,Oregon

In urban areas, the inequitable distribution of transit systems and services has been shown to reproduce safety and environmental risks – potentially exacerbating preexisting inequities. Thus, how vulnerable populations access and utilize public transportation is of critical concern to urban scholars. This paper utilizes focus group data to explore how transit-dependent (particularly low-income) riders engage with the public transit system in Portland, Oregon. We illustrate specific ways in which transit-dependent riders experience marginalization and exclusion. We find that certain groups, particularly mothers with young children and those with disabilities are not well served by a public infrastructure oriented toward an ‘ideal rider’ who is an economically stable, able-bodied, white, male commuter. We conclude that a public infrastructure meant to serve all riders equitably, yet which fails to consider the unique experiences of marginalized transit users risks further amplifying existing social vulnerabilities and reinforcing gender, racial, and class inequalities.     

The justice of earnings in dual-earner households

Over recent decades, the rise in female labor market participation and the increase in “atypical” employment arrangements have brought about a steady decline in traditional “male breadwinner” households and an increasing number of dual-earner households. Against this backdrop, the present paper investigates how different household contexts—ranging from traditional “male breadwinner” households to those challenging this model through joint contributions to household income—affect household members’ subjective evaluations of the justice of their personal income. In the first step, we derive three criteria used by individuals to evaluate the justice of personal earnings: compensation for services rendered, coverage of basic needs, and the opportunity to earn social approval. In the second step, we apply considerations from household economics and new approaches from gender research to explain why men's and women's evaluations of justice are determined to a considerable degree by the specific situation within their household. The assumptions derived regarding gender-specific patterns in justice attitudes are then tested on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The results support our central thesis that dual-earner households both reinforce and undermine gender-specific patterns in the evaluation of personal earnings. These patterns are undermined because women in dual-income households tend to have higher income expectations that challenge the existing gender wage gap. At the same time, gender-specific patterns are reinforced because men evaluate the justice of their personal income in relation to their ability to fulfill traditional gender norms.     

Making Connections: Crossing Boundaries of Place and Identity in Liverpool and Merseyside Amateur Transport Films

Abstract

In this paper I draw on a selection of local transport films, dating from the 1930s to 1970s, to explore issues of mobility, place and identity in Liverpool and Merseyside. The archive footage discussed in the paper includes amateur film of the Birkenhead and Wallasey tunnel openings, commuter ferry services to Liverpool, and also of the river crossings at Runcorn. Mapping the changing social and cultural geographies of mobility in Merseyside, it is argued that these films engage in a spatial dialogue expressive of a shift between, on the one hand, local, organic spaces of place and identity and, on the other, centrifugal spaces and non‐places of transit, which, since the 1960s and with the expansion of regional and national motorway networks, have shaped much of Liverpool’s contemporary urban fabric.     

The Impact of Long-term Scientific Mobility on the Creation of Persistent Knowledge Networks

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of long-term international scientific mobility – associated with advanced training or research positions – on knowledge network formation and network persistence In particular, it investigates whether and in which conditions relationships established during extended periods of co-location in one organisation play a relevant role in the subsequent knowledge exchange activities of the mobile scientists. Empirical research on the case of Portuguese scientists in three different fields provides evidence on the relevance and persistence of the networks established in those conditions and identifies some factors that increase the likelihood of these effects taking place.     

When People Stay and Things Make Their Way: Airports,Mobilities and Materialities of a Transnational Landscape

Abstract

This article explores different meanings of mobility and place by examining the interweaving of people, things and airports in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two airports – of departure and arrival of this migratory route – I look at the practices of sending and receiving objects by migrants in Lisbon and their kin in Bissau. The transnational yet grounded setting helps to provide a better understanding of the complexity associated with different forms of mobility – including corporeal, imagined and desired – and their key role in socially and relationally constructing a lived airport space, as well as wider social landscapes. Bringing in evidence from a less-explored setting – a small airport in a West African country – will particularly challenge some of the assumptions that tend to associate mobility with ‘modernity’ and fixity with ‘tradition’. It will show how people in Guinea-Bissau are, as much as migrants abroad, dynamically involved in global practices of movement – materialised in trading and reciprocating objects between two continents – through local performances of mobility that do not necessarily involve corporeal travel across borders.     

Illuminating urban street (u)topias

ABSTRACT

A utopian vision of the city is often bright, well-lit, and conversely darkness and night are more often associated with dystopia. This paper uses an ethnographic study of night-time in a busy street space in the middle of a south coast UK city in order to demonstrate the application of ‘utopia as method’, or rather utopia as a mobile method in understanding justice and injustice in urban space. In doing so, we suggest the possibilities of urban mobile space, arguing that ‘utopia as method’ originates in Lefebvre’s (1991) work on the possibilities that arise from the seemingly impossible imaginings of urban transformation. We use what are considered to be distinct approaches to photography: ‘ethnographic’ and ‘expressive’ in demonstrating this. Photography tells a story of the lighting of the space in illuminating the street in particular ways and making visible aspects that otherwise may go unnoticed. We draw from the boundaries, of photography (and therefore light), of method, and of urban space, looking to the ‘territorial edges’ for Lefebvre’s possibilities.     

Stop and Go: A Field Study of Pedestrian Practice,Immobility and Urban Outreach Work

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork observation of a team of street-level welfare bureaucrats, this article presents a pedestrian case-study of routine footwork and slow progress in the making and maintaining of contact between outreach workers and the urban homeless. This material is used to highlight two aspects of modern-day mobilities that are perhaps under-examined and certainly worthy of attention. The first is urban pedestrianism, described here not as a means of transport – walking as a way of getting somewhere (else) – but as a nonetheless necessary practice, a job of work, or chore. The article also examines immobility – stopping – as an active accomplishment, something other than the absence or tethering of movement, and reciprocally linked to the pedestrian activity described. The politics of urban public space provide background and context.     

‘Walking out’: the mobilities of love

ABSTRACT

In this article, I propose that mobility performs a crucial role in the production and sustenance of intimate relationships and focus, in particular, on courtship practices and their modern-day equivalents. I pursue this discussion through close readings of literary and autobiographical texts from the nineteenth century through to the millennium, and by means of a framework that triangulates the work of Tim Ingold, David Seamon and Henri Bergson. My focus here is on how the mobilities we practice during the everyday routines of courtship – i.e. the paths we make, the routes we take, the roads we travel, the journeys we repeat, the transport we use – come to characterise the relationship concerned and impact upon its progress. Both Ingold’s work on ‘lines’ and Seamon’s on ‘place-ballet’ are conceptually suggestive in this regard and speak to recent work in mobilities/cultural geography on the significance of patterns of movement in the praxis of relationships.     

Assessing LGBT People’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

ABSTRACT

Although lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have achieved increased acceptance and access to social institutions in recent years, they have continued to be confronted with persistent homophobic attitudes, including from U.S. law enforcement personnel. Police culture often fosters these beliefs, and consequently results in the under-policing of LGBT citizens when victimized, but over-policing in places of leisure. This relationship is exacerbated when considering the intersectional effect of gender and sexual orientation, undoubtedly impacting legitimacy perceptions due to perceived (and actual) procedural injustice. Using original data collected at an LGBT festival in Arizona (N = 428), the current study examines the relationship between procedural justice and perceptions of police legitimacy among a historically marginalized population. Implications for theory and policy are discussed, with special attention given to contextualizing the findings within the current legitimacy crisis faced by American law enforcement.