Everything changes to stay the same: persistent global health inequalities amidst new therapeutic opportunities and mobilities for Filipino nurses

ABSTRACT

The global migration of Filipino nurses has received significant attention, yet little is known of these healthcare workers’ experiences and mobilities within the Philippines. I explore the experiences and narratives of Filipino nurses living in Manila, some of whom have no desires to migrate. I uncover the often novel forms of therapeutic mobilities undertaken by these nurses, focusing on call centre nursing and entrepreneurship as key alternative career pathways within the realms of ‘therapeutics’. Through interrogating the various mobilities undertaken by nurses – physical mobilities and migration, socioeconomic mobilities and occupational mobilities in the form of a career change – it becomes clear that international physical mobility is no longer key. Nevertheless, Filipino nurses continue to provide care in global contexts in novel ‘therapeutic’ industries and doing so allows them to increase their socioeconomic mobility.     

The im/mobilities of ‘sometimes-migrating’ for abortion: Ireland to Great Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper furthers the concept of im/mobilities through an investigation of the reproductive mobilities of women migrating for abortion from Ireland (north and south) to Great Britain. Where more often the focus of reproductive mobilities concerns the movement of people and matter in order to reproduce, there is less (although some) attention to movement aligned with the prevention of reproduction. We consider the variegated im/mobilities of conception not brought to birth, in the frictional movement of people, things, ideologies and imaginations in staying with and moving beyond the dichotomy of mobility and immobility. We engage in transdisciplinary dialogue between mobilities and migration studies. Hence, underlying this exploration is the concept of the ‘sometimes-migrant’, used to challenge binary oppositions between mobility and immobility, broader conceptualisations of ‘migrants’ as ‘exceptional’, and more specifically the notion of travelling for abortion as ‘abortion-tourism’. We adopt the call to focus on different incarnations of the ‘sometimes-migrant’ in the form of women travelling temporarily across national borders of intermittent porosity in order to seek care that is not available in their own country. Intersections of migration and mobilities reveal the ways women are im/mobilised through geopolitical and cultural practices at local and global scales.     

‘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.     

Blood drones: using utopia as method to imagine future vital mobilities

ABSTRACT

How might we undertake life-saving vital mobilities, like moving blood, in future? Specifically, how might blood transfusion and drone technology – both war dividends – intersect? We explore four scenarios based on eclectic influences including cross-pollination between co-authors, a futures design workshop and exposure to science fiction. The scenarios are ‘ethnographic fragments’ from fictional futures, or conversely, imaginative time travel to possible futures. These are informed by and loosely correlate with established future-building scenario on the theme of carbon constraint: low-carbon society, digital lives, magic bullet technology and resource fights. Through the scenarios – Blood Bikes, HemoIkea, O Magic and Bloody Battles – we experiment with mobilizing utopia and dystopia as method to theorize vital mobilities. This experimental approach raises questions about possible and preferable futures of societal blood circulation and provokes a wider cultural imaginary surrounding blood and drone mobilities specifically, and vital mobilities generally.     

Tropophilia: A Study of People,Place and Lifestyle Travel

This paper explores the changing relations between people and place that are set in motion through mobility. Examining the mobilities of lifestyle travellers, it argues that new relations are sought by this group that undermines traditional assumptions of stability and preservation in the person–place relation. In their stead, lifestyle travellers seek dynamism, change and instability in their engagements with place. This situation suggests that the traditional recognition of the need for a rooted, static and stable set of relations with place – i.e. topophilia – can be supplemented by the love of mobility, change and transformation in the person–place relation – coined tropophilia. The paper raises the important point that a desired connection between ‘people’on one hand and ‘place’ on the other may only occur when their respective paces and trajectories positively coincide.     

Transnational Mobilties in Snowboarding Culture: Travel,Tourism and Lifestyle Migration

Abstract

Drawing upon global ethnographic methods conducted in six countries over seven years, this paper offers the first in-depth examination of the transnational flows and corporeal mobilities in the contemporary physical culture of snowboarding. Focusing on the travel and migration experiences of various groups of snowboarders (that is, tourists, professional athletes and lifestyle sport migrants), and engaging recent work by human geographers, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, capital and habitus, this paper reveals fresh insights into the lived transnationalism and global migration of contemporary youth facilitated by the ‘action’, ‘alternative’ or ‘extreme’ sports economy.     

Co‐ordinating Passages: Understanding the Resources Needed for Everyday Mobility

Abstract

This article contributes to the ‘mobilities turn’ in social science by proposing new concepts and methods for analysing the ways in which people draw upon a range of resources to manage everyday mobility. We distinguish between the ‘projects’ people want to achieve and the ‘passages’ they need to go through in order to do so. We also distinguish between ‘pre‐travelling’ and ‘re‐ordering’. The analysis builds on insights from time‐geography, mobility studies and actor‐network‐theory to develop a conceptual vocabulary for understanding the dynamic and situated nature of travel in everyday life. The study combines qualitative and quantitative data from a study of hypermobile people in the Netherlands.     

Lifestyle Mobilities: The Crossroads of Travel,Leisure and Migration

Abstract

This article examines how the mobilities paradigm intersects with physically moving as an ongoing lifestyle choice. We conceptualise a lens of ‘lifestyle mobilities’ that challenges discrete notions of and allows for a wider grasp of the increasing fluidity between travel, leisure and migration. We demonstrate how contemporary lifestyle-led mobility patterns contribute to and illustrate a breakdown in conventional binary divides between work and leisure, and a destabilisation of concepts of ‘home’ and ‘away’. We unpack issues of identity construction, belonging and place attachment associated with sustained corporeal mobility, and conclude by suggesting avenues for the further study of lifestyle mobilities.     

‘Home is Never Fully Achieved … Even When We Are In it’: Migration,Belonging and Social Exclusion within Punjabi Transnational Mobility

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon transnational research in the UK and India, primarily over 150 semi-structured interviews in Newcastle, UK and Doaba, Punjab, as well as the ‘mobilities turn’ within contemporary social science, this paper examines the pursuit of ‘home’ within a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that this transnational pursuit of home is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia, in particular processes of social inclusion and exclusion therein. Thus, returning Punjabi migrant attempts to distinguish themselves from the resident population through conspicuous consumption, and simultaneous attempts from Punjabi residents to exclude Non-Resident Indians from ‘real’ Indian status, lead to a continual reprocessing of home across different sites of mobility, as well as demonstrating the ‘never fully achieved’ nature of home.     

Waiting in motion: mapping postcolonial fiction,new mobilities,and migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

ABSTRACT

While mobilities studies have often drawn on postcolonial theory, few studies draw on the unique contributions of postcolonial literature. This article charts new directions for mobilities studies and postcolonial literature through an analysis of Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 novel Exit West. The novel shows how the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ could be usefully extended by paying more attention to migration as an expression of the way that mobility and immobility exist in complex relation to one another, especially with regard to the affective and existential experiences of waiting that persist even after arrival. I suggest that contemporary fiction, such as Exit West, interacts with and shapes cultural imaginaries around mobilities and migrancy; Hamid’s use of irrealist and fantastic modes challenges readers to entertain normative claims about the world. In addition to outlining the potential contributions of postcolonial fiction to mobilities studies, I conclude with an overview of the new directions that mobilities studies offer for postcolonial studies as well.     

Canada’s forced birth travel: towards feminist indigenous reproductive mobilities

ABSTRACT

The mandatory travel for birth experienced by Indigenous women living in rural and remote areas of Canada is examined using an emergent lens of Indigenous reproductive mobilities. Current evacuation practices are contextualized within the historic and ongoing systems of oppression experienced by Indigenous people in Canada. Indigenous feminist and decolonial theoretical approaches are used to outline one way in which Indigenous women counter settler colonialism to assert sovereignty over their birth experiences – through the resurgence of culturally-based doulas or birth workers. A further contribution of these analyses is the inclusion and centering of the voices and experiences of those previously neglected within this particular body of scholarship, shifting the power relations underpinning reproductive mobilities.     

Asymmetrical therapeutic mobilities: masculine advantage in nurse migration from India

ABSTRACT

This paper examines masculinity, migration and the changing occupational status of nursing through the lens of therapeutic mobilities; health related mobilities of people (nurses) and products (credentials). Indian men have become increasingly interested in nursing as a career, and this interest is strongly associated with the profession’s international motility—its mobility potential. The research reported in this paper traces the migration trajectory across time (2008–2016) and over space (India to Canada) and reveals an overrepresentation of male nurses in international migration contexts (Canada), compared to the Indian context. Male nurses also disproportionally benefit from these mobilities in terms of their occupational success post-migration. Mobilities can be therapeutic for the status of nursing in India, which rises in line with the degree of international motility the profession offers, but gendered distinctions in the outcomes of the migration process illustrate the importance of highlighting uneven mobilities. International mobilities are also deeply implicated in ongoing transformations occurring in the ‘moorings’ of nursing educational, employment and regulatory structures in India.     

Moto-mobilities: Geographies of the Motorcycle and Motorcyclists

Abstract

This paper draws upon and seeks to extend accounts of systems of automobility through an examination of geographies of the motorcycle and motorcyclist – or what we term ‘moto-mobilities’. We utilize the figure of the motorcycle to raise the importance of analysing alternative mobilities: to consider how they appeal to different travelling dispositions and emotions; how they have been represented; and how they have been produced, marketed and consumed. The paper first reflects upon the experiences and embodiment of the motorcycle-rider; second, evaluates representations of moto-mobility; and finally attends to the materiality of mobility via an examination of the economy of motorcycle qualities.     

Journeys to Knua: displacement,return and translocality in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

Return journeys to ancestral lands are a central dimension that underscores contemporary ideas of origin, identity, kinship, custom, health and prosperity for the East Timorese. The material and social reproduction of knua – both in the sense of the ancestral territory and associated kin-based ritual community – is heavily reliant on ongoing place-based and translocal customary reciprocal exchanges. Based on multi-sited fieldwork, this article examines the return journeys to Lesuai, an ancestral settlement in the remote central southern highlands of Timor-Leste, which was abandoned during the Indonesian invasion and restored in the later years of occupation. Lesuai community believes the spirit realm exerts an overwhelming influence over their general well-being, compelling ‘house’ members to renew their connection with knua to maintain family ties and benefit from ancestral protection. Closer ethnographic attention reveals how the motivations, experiences and understandings of ‘return’ to origin places are highly personal, gendered and generational. Broadly, these return mobilities demonstrate the agency, adaptability and resilience of conflict-affected populations. Through prolonged displacement and resettlement, dispersed knua members have created new livelihoods, subjectivities and attachments across multiple places, which are reconfiguring family ties, connections to ancestral places, and how ritual obligations are fulfilled.     

Carers Cruising Cumbria and Meals on the Mile: The Drive of Migrants in Fieldwork and Fiction

Abstract

This article focuses on first-generation migrant workers in the service sector of England’s North West and their mobile subjectivities. It combines the research on cars and driving with the mobilities agenda on transnational migrants. In this essay, we draw from both fiction and fieldwork to explore the mobile experiences of migrants who work within the region’s ‘service diaspora’. Two inter-related stories unfold about cars, care and curry. Both groups, one in a city-region, and the other rurally based, are defined heavily by their mobile labour. By placing literary and oral accounts together, disparate locations and situations suddenly appear connected as never before and driving becomes embedded in migrant worlds in both real and imaginary ways.     

Mobile Ideas: Tracking a Concept through Time and Space

Abstract

John Urry’s defining work on mobilities calls for research into the movement of people, ideas and information. This article identifies that as things stand the work of the ‘mobilities turn’ has tended to concentrate almost exclusively on the movement of people and information and has given far less attention to the mobility of ideas. In order to address this absence this article focuses upon one idea in particular, the Spime neologism, and attempts to understand its movement, the systems that enable it and the implications it creates. This article demonstrates the potential offered by the contemporary mediascape for tracking, tracing and visualising the mobility of ideas.     

‘Stories of distress versus fulfilment’: A narrative inquiry of midwives’ experiences supporting alternative birth choices in the UK National Health Service

BackgroundSome childbearing women/birthing people prioritize out of maternity care organizational guidelines’ approaches to childbirth as a way of optimizing their chances of a normal physiological birth. Currently, there is little known about the experiences of midwives who support their choices.AimTo explore the experiences of UK midwives employed by the NHS, who self-defined as supportive of women’s alternative physiological birthing choices.MethodsA narrative inquiry was used to collect and analyse professional stories of practice via self-written narratives and interviews. Forty-five midwives from across the UK were recruited.FindingsThree overarching storylines were developed with nine sub-themes. ‘Stories of distress’ highlights challenging experiences due to poor supportive working environments, ranging from small persistent challenges to extreme situations. Conversely, ‘Stories of fulfilment’ offers a positive counter-narrative where midwives worked in supportive working environments enabling woman-centred care unencumbered by organisational constraints. ‘Stories of transition’ abridge these two polarized themes.ConclusionThe midwives’ experiences were mediated by their socio-cultural working contexts. Negative experiences were characterised by a misalignment between the midwives’ philosophy and organisational cultures, with significant consequences for the midwives. Conversely, examples of good organisational culture and practice reveal that it is possible for organisations to fulfil their obligations for safe and positive maternity care for both childbearing women who make alternative birthing choices, and for attending staff. This highlights what is feasible and achievable within maternity organisations and offers transferable insights for organisational support of out-of-guideline care that can be adapted across the UK and beyond.     

Mobilities and Utopias: a critical reorientation

ABSTRACT

What does utopian thinking have to offer students and scholars of mobility? Could ‘mobile utopias’ assist us in envisioning futures – including those of mobility – differently? Do utopias provide a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between mobile societies and lives and the environments against which these are formed? By providing different ways of reading and arguing within different theoretical frameworks and doing so in relation to the contexts their contributions engage, the articles included in this special issue explore the limits of what the mobile utopias of the future might be, their social and spatial dimensions, and their totalizing, fragmentary, or, personal definitions. As a whole, the issue contributes to the intellectual project of how to turn utopia into a method, as Levitas, Jameson, Harvey, and others have long encouraged us to do. With a few exceptions, utopias have not received the attention they deserve from mobilities scholars. Our aim in putting together this special issue is to redress this balance and invite further reflection on what utopian thinking might offer current debates in mobilities scholarship. This Introduction draws connections across approaches, foci, methods, geographies, and sources, including those deployed in the issue’s six articles, in the interest of excavating possible hopeful orientations through critique. Central to this is the recognition of the significance of critiquing the images of mobility which circulate widely (think of drones) and of the necessity to listen attentively to voices overlooked by mobility futures which stand far removed from the reactions and feelings of people in their everyday worlds. Ours is an invitation both to pay close attention to what utopian thinking does – rather than what utopia is – and to help us carve out a new intellectual space where to reflect on the how, when and where mobilities and utopias meet, now, but also in the past, and in the future.     

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.     

Embodying the Mobilities of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway

Abstract

This paper develops a critical understanding of one of the key railway journeys in India, namely, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR). Using the mobilities paradigm, this paper offers a cultural analysis of the ‘journey’ of the DHR: how it is instrumental in making travel experiences and how it is itself constituted through different embodied travel practices and performances. Different modes of travel involve contrasting experiences, performances and affordances. In this context, this paper explores the ‘hybrid geographies’ of the DHR as involving a complex relationality between the traveller and the mode of travel: how it incorporates different aspects of mobilities. What is significant is the relative slowness of the DHR and the ways in which it communicates a different sense of time, which also leads to a blurring between practices of walking and travelling on the train itself. The train itself is also conceptualised as playful, as it engages with the places it passes through. Drawing upon recent literature on landscape and visuality, the DHR is further explored in terms of its movement through and engagement with the landscapes of the Himalayas.