Art and materiality in the global refugee crisis: Ai Weiwei’s artworks and the emerging aesthetics of mobilities

ABSTRACT

Prominent artists and activists have documented, collected and appropriated discarded materials of refugee journeys, such as life jackets, rafts and clothing, transforming them into largescale artworks. Material belongings play an important role in migration experiences. However, materials are often used as representational measures of rights to movement, mode of travel and refugee status. This article explores how the mobilisation and transformation of materials into artworks raises questions on the material agencies operating within global representations of refugee mobilities. Discussing recent artworks of Ai Weiwei, I explore the emerging material aesthetics that open alternative dialogues on migration flows and mobilities futures.     

Urban nomadism: everyday mobilities of waste recyclers in Beijing

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates everyday mobilities through an account of the waste industry in Beijing. It suggests the analysis of livelihood strategies of waste traders as a productive domain of enquiry to foster our understanding of the connection between labour and mobility. Existing literature on China pays little attention to the everyday mobilities of marginal urban actors. Yet these practices tell an insightful story about the political, economic, and ecological transformations of the country. Through their analysis, this paper develops the idea of ‘urban nomadism’ as a tool to analyse practices that rework oppressive circumstances dictated by capital and produce new dimensions of living.     

Emotional Eruptions,Volcanic Activity and Global Mobilities – A Field Account from a European in the US During the Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull

Abstract

The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in April 2010 set off a number of environmental, economic and cultural effects obstructing thousands of people in the midst of their global mobility flows. It halted, as well, the exchange of goods and commodities and exposed the vulnerability of the global aeromobility system. In this paper an account is given of how the event was experienced by a European academic attending a number of North American conferences at precisely the time of the eruption. The paper is an attempt to describe how people reacted emotionally as well as rationally, attempting to find strategies for coping with the consequences of the eruption.     

Mobilities,mobile work and habitation: truck drivers and the crisis in occupational auto-mobility in the UK

This paper examines the relation between mobilities and mobile work through a focus on occupational auto-mobility and habitation. Drawing on qualitative research conducted on truck drivers/driving in South-east England, it shows habitation emerges when driving stops; that it is cab-based dwelling-in-transit and nomadic dwelling rooted in and bounded by the material culture of the cab; and that it is displaced to the margins and interstices of the road and logistical network. The paper highlights the discomfort of cab-based habitation and its limits, in sanitation, and examines how recent developments at distribution centres intensify discomfort by denying cab-based habitation. These developments recast the relation of occupational auto-mobility and habitation through transient dwelling and are key to understanding the current crisis in labour supply in truck driving.     

Mobilities in Finland’s Information Society Strategies from 1995 to 2010

Abstract

The article explores Finland’s national information society strategies and uses the Finnish case as an example to identify the limitation of the so-called ‘methodological nationalism’ and to explicate the advantages of the mobility paradigm. The research material consists of the Finnish national strategies published between 1995 and 2010. The article identifies two trends from the studied strategies; a further intermingling of physical movement of objects and virtual mobility, and a tendency to reduce corporeal mobility. The study also shows that most mobility-related challenges require international cooperation and multinational solutions, although state-centred thinking was prevalent in the studied strategies. In addition, it provides evidence that the various modes of mobility operate differently in micro and macro level analyses and that the mobilities paradigm could be enriched by studying policies of mobility.     

The Politics of Scaling,Timing and Embodying: Rethinking the ‘New Europe’

This paper explores ways in which we can fruitfully analyse and theorize ‘New Europe’ through migration, in so far as migration is an integral part of the way the world is imagined, and as such impacts on how individuals, communities, nations or multi/international formations such as the European Union imagine themselves and their (co)inhabitants. The article discusses three theoretical strands that relate to the forces of spatiality (scaling), temporality (timing and histories) and corporeality (embodying and ‘the European people’). These must be read as interwoven and impacting on each other in varying ways that are not linear, coherent or permanent. By bridging critical migration studies with mobilities studies, this essay calls for a reconsideration of the fluidity, accessibility and desirability of the assumed mobile world, while it also thinks about migration in relation to the ways in which ‘mobility’ has been variously established as a universal ‘right’.     

The Social Affordances of Flashpacking: Exploring the Mobility Nexus of Travel and Communication

Abstract

The proliferation of digital devices and online social media and networking technologies has altered the backpacking landscape in recent years. Thanks to the ready availability of online communication, travelers are now able to stay in continuous touch with friends, family and other travelers while on the move. This paper introduces the practice of ‘flashpacking’ to describe this emerging trend and interrogates the patterns of connection and disconnection that become possible as corporeal travel and social technologies converge. Drawing on the concepts of ‘assemblages’ and ‘affordances,’ we outline several aspects of this new sociality: virtual mooring, following, collaborating, and (dis)connecting. The conclusion situates this discussion alongside broader questions about the shifting nature of social life in an increasingly mobile and mediated world and suggests directions for future research at the intersection of tourism and technology.     

Sticky Landscapes and Smooth Experiences: The Biopower of Tourism Mobilities in the Öresund Region

As landscapes become ordered according to certain sets of economic, political, ecological or social practices and discourses, other possible orderings become limited in their potential. This article illustrates this with an example taken from the field of tourism and place marketing. The empirical focus is golf experiences in Scania, Sweden, bookable by individual consumers over the Internet. The ordering of what is termed the ‘golfscape’ is unfolded with the help of an assemblage of arguments taken from writings on mobility, biopower and subjectification, post‐foundational views of the materiality of the social and recent conceptualisations of the socio‐cultural and spatial impact of tourism. The booking sequence, i.e. the interaction between consumer and booking software, is analyzed as a series of negotiations, techniques and technologies of control and enactments of power. It is concluded that mobility studies can benefit from a Foucauldian power perspective when explaining practices of mobility and spatial fixation.     

The Packaging of Efficiency in the Development of the Intermodal Shipping Container

Abstract

This paper addresses different forms of spatio-temporal ordering in the stowage and handling of cargo on board cargo vessels, as well as docksides. Whilst the introduction of containerisation profoundly altered the urban geographies of many large port cities, as well as devastating the communities built around maritime labour, the core argument developed in this paper concerns the incremental development of spatio-temporal ordering strategies and practices. In particular, it situates the intermodal shipping container within a trajectory reaching back to earlier forms of unitisation such as crates and pallets. In doing so the paper outlines a genealogy of packaged efficiencies, arguing that the central thread linking maritime cargo handling practices in the twentieth century is the unitisation of shape. However, it concludes that the intermodal container achieved global hegemony through the packaged systemic efficiencies of standardisation.     

Intertwined therapeutic mobilities: knowledge,plants, healers on the move between Laos and the U.S.

ABSTRACT

We investigate the notion of therapeutic mobilities through the case study of transnational health care practices and medicinal flows within the Hmong diaspora between Laos and the U.S. Drawing upon narratives of traditional healers, pickers, and plant sellers, as well as a collection of postal registers, we highlight how therapeutic mobilities follow the routes of migration and organize the practices of healing among Hmong in receiving countries, particularly in the U.S. Through the different and multidirectional aspects of therapeutic mobilities, we illustrate how transnational healing touches upon questions of cultural identity within the Hmong diaspora. Therapeutic mobilities not only involve border-crossing, they also strengthen existing bonds within the Hmong diaspora. Similarly, herbal treatments not only achieve a therapeutic function, they also represent a range of meanings and values for patients. We explore the fabric of therapeutic mobilities through the prism of translocality and medical pluralism.