Overlooked insights from mobility instances? Reconsider our understanding of mobility processes

Drawing on some selected cases from a qualitative mobility study, I seek to make use of their insights to reconsider our current understanding of mobility processes derived from studies adopting a snapshot approach. My data demonstrate that viewed in a life-time perspective the relationship between father's career mobility and son's career mobility and thus inter-generational mobility, especially in relation to the self-employed, is much more complicated than researchers have expected, and that emotion could play a part in processes that generate mobility. These cases, however statistically unrepresentative or even exceptional, still serve to urge us researchers to re-conceptualise processes that link career mobility and inter-generational mobility and to explore the emotive aspect of class and mobility.     

中国农村贫困居民收入流动性研究

通过多变量Prob it模型考察我国农村贫困居民的收入流动性。分析两期之间农村贫困的状态依赖性,探讨决定我国农村居民当期免于贫困的因素,研究发现:人力资本投资中的教育投资和健康投资的反贫困效果最好;从贫困的状态依赖性来看,我国农村低收入者没有陷入明显的持续贫困,收入流动性较强;农村女性收入状况逐年改善,婚姻状况有利于缓解贫困,国家公务员或者企业经理,政府机关、国有企事业单位性质的员工陷入贫困的概率更低,东部地区居民容易免于贫困;改革开放的制度变迁给农村居民带来收入变动的机遇,同时也增加了他们收入的不稳定性;回归结果对低收入门槛的定义比较敏感,有必要在收入分布的"绝对贫困"区域上方再划定一个"基本贫困"区域。     

有关"吧文化"的几点思考

随着民众对文化生产的要求是带有越来越多的娱乐性和游戏性的文化消费,各种各样的"吧"应运而生,都市生活的多元化以及彼此的包容性就在"吧文化"的流行中被充分显现着.这种现象意味着人们的休闲方式已由过去那种随大流、赶热闹的从众心态转为追求个性特色,讲究文化内涵,注重生活质量.小而适宜人宣泄情绪和放纵心灵的吧成为都市人的精神依赖.同时,日常生活的审美化在象征着小资情调的各色"吧"里更是被表现得淋漓尽致.然而,"吧文化"为作一种时尚消费文化,唤醒了人们的潜在消费欲望.应对目前蔚然成风的"吧文化"进行冷静的理性分析,以便让其更好的服务于民众的文化生活,效力于健康的文化建设.     

Constructing a city,building a life: Brazilian construction workers’ continuous mobility as a permanent life strategy

This article provides an ethnographic analysis of domestic labor mobility among Brazilian construction workers in the context of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. We start from the premise that mobile laborers are crucial for the physical development and expansion of cities. However, the importance of domestic migrants in this process is insufficiently addressed in mobility studies. Building on existing research on domestic population movements in Brazil, we argue that the current generation of mobile construction workers draws on the intangible and material infrastructure generated by previous generations of migrants to enable novel kinds of (permanent) labor mobilities.     

Predictors of Readiness for Mobility Transition in Older Drivers

We administered the Assessment of Readiness for Mobility Transition (ARMT) to 301 older drivers and compared total scores with participant characteristics. Overall, 18% of participants were not attitudinally ready for mobility transition, while 19% were very ready. Notably, participants with hospitalizations in the past year were either very ready for mobility transition (20% vs 14% without hospitalizations) or not ready at all (30% vs 17%). Significant health events may polarize reactions towards mobility transition. Individualizing communication about driving cessation readiness could help address such differing views. To further consider its effectiveness, ARMT could be utilized in mobility transition counseling interventions.     

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working-class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Research in social stratification has shown that children from working-class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labor market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro-level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual-level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35% of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20% of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labor market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.     

撕裂土地的伤疤--《路过合庄》乡村日常书写的精神疼痛

尹守国《路过合庄》以底层身份聚焦日常生活,书写一条高速公路路过村庄所引起的躁动。他撕裂土地的伤疤,尽展合庄伦理的破碎、合庄人的人性挣扎与命运沉浮。作为合庄的书记员,作者冷静客观的态度包裹着底层关怀中无处不在的精神疼痛。     

‘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.     

Disruptions of self,place and mobility: digital nomads in Chiang Mai,Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article considers the growing lifestyle trend of digital nomadism, whereby individuals leverage digital technology to combine work, leisure and hypermobile travel interests. Based primarily on ethnographic fieldwork in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I examine the lifestyle and mobility pathways of digital nomads through two distinct yet coexisting notions of disruption. On one level disruption is viewed as a radical expression of flexibility, fluidity and newness, that evokes a sense of breaking free from a traditional past. At the same time, I consider disruption on more subtle terms, addressing ways in which historical formations pertaining to work and tourism feed into and unsettle understandings of self, place and mobility. In this article, I examine the role of a work-leisure distinction, colonial imaginaries of place and emerging norms of hypermobility in complicating attempts by digital nomads to establish a coherent sense of self, work and productivity in and across tourism destinations. These seemingly fluid lifestyle practices, I suggest, promote a continual preoccupation with boundaries, as digital nomads try to make sense of work, identity and newness amid an in/visible and intersecting constellation of mobility pathways involving Western backpackers, Chinese tourists, resident foreigners, visiting family and friends, and other nomads.     

Including people with intellectual disabilities in the mobilities turn: mobile interviews in Toronto,Canada

ABSTRACT

Geographic research about disability and mobility often foregrounds the built environment as a site of in/exclusion. People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) have been mostly absent from this scholarship. To respond to this gap, we draw from an in-depth set of ‘mobile interviews’ with people with IDs in Toronto, Canada. Using a thematic approach, this paper suggests that more-than-material relations matter to the everyday mobilities and immobilities of people with IDs in urban settings. We aim to centre the participants’ experiences and call for greater inclusion of people with IDs in critical-geographic studies of the disability-mobility nexus. We highlight participants’ regular, planned, and spontaneous mobilities; their attitudes towards their own movement, stillness, and ‘stuck-ness’; and their experiences of staring in public spaces. The contingencies of belonging/exclusion, choice/regimen, and fitting/mis-fitting – as well as the more-than-material, varied, and contextual nature of those tensions – are present in many of the participants’ (im)mobilities in and through the city.