Youth mobility and well-being: transitions and intersections

This introductory paper, reflecting the rubric of the special issue, brings together two themes that have recently become prominent in migration research: a focus on youth mobilities, and a concern to analyse the process and outcomes of migration through a well-being lens. The five papers that follow approach this intersection in a variety of European contexts and from a plurality of theoretical, methodological and thematic angles. The special issue is a product of the Horizon 2020 YMOBILITY research project on ‘New European Youth Mobilities’, which ran from 2015 to 2018, and most of the papers were first presented at a dedicated session on Youth Mobility and Well-being at the IMISCOE Annual Conference in Rotterdam, 28–30 June 2017.1 The purpose of this editors’ introduction is to ‘map the fields’, which we do by organising our presentation in the following way. In the next section, we open up a discussion on the nature and diversity of youth mobility, looking, in particular, at the way in which young people’s international mobility interfaces with their youth transitions to ‘adulthood’. Then, we review the well-being approach to migration and mobility, with special reference to youth mobilities. The final section of the paper summarises key findings from the five papers that follow

Introduction

This thematic issue of Comparativ examines the relationship between place and cultural encounters in conceptual as well as empirical respect. The introduction delineates the discussions revolving around the concepts of place, space, and encounter. It proposes a reappraisal of the concept of place, which had almost been pushed off the agenda by the spatial turn and globalisation debates. The authors of the introduction and of the other thematic contributions argue for a perspective on place which connects spatial configurations and practices of encounter, understanding places as products of social, material, and conceptual relations. In doing so, they take up theoretical reflections about the relationality of place or space as put forward by Tim Ingold (in social anthropology), Doreen Massey (in geography) or Karl Schlögel (in history). All of their approaches emphasize that places are formed in relational processes, often spanning across time and space. In this sense, places are not mere stages or contexts for events of encounter but are being constituted by them. From such a perspective, the room for manoeuvre, which opens up through interaction, becomes apparent: Neither identities nor (hi-) stories are inalterably bound to pre-existing places, but they are just as dynamic as the relations forming particular sites. The great diversity of (cultural) encounters only emerges jointly with the respective places of interaction. Such lines of thought also allow for new approaches to past and current forms of global connections and mobility. In this sense the contributions united in this interdisciplinary thematic issue examine case (or: place) studies from the 17th century up to the present. Grounded in historiographical, literary- and religious-studies scholarship, they undertake to further refine the process-oriented perspective presented in the introduction

Smart Geographic object: Toward a new understanding of GIS Technology in Ubiquitous Computing

One of the fundamental aspects of ubiquitous computing is the instrumentation of the real world by smart devices. This instrumentation constitutes an opportunity to rethink the interactions between human beings and their environment on the one hand, and between the components of this environment on the other. In this paper we discuss what this understanding of ubiquitous computing can bring to geographic science and particularly to GIS technology. Our main idea is the instrumentation of the geographic environment through the instrumentation of geographic objects composing it. And then investigate how this instrumentation can meet the current limitations of GIS technology, and offers a new stage of rapprochement between the earth and its abstraction. As result, the current research work proposes a new concept we named Smart Geographic Object SGO. The latter is a convergence point between the smart objects and geographic objects, two concepts appertaining respectively to

Data collection framework for understanding UFT within city logistics solutions

Urban Freight Transport (UFT) is a fundamental component of city life. It involves a vast range of activities resulting from relationships among different actors with conflicting needs and goals. Manufacturers are interested in fast and on-time deliveries, retailers require complete assortment and frequent deliveries, citizens wish to have easy access to goods while not losing their quality of life and City Authorities have to face negative externalities related to UFT (i.e. congestion, air and noise pollution, and safety). Concretely, few cities have a well-developed and comprehensive city logistics strategy because authorities generally focus their attention on passenger transport. When city logistics measures have been conceived and implemented, frequently private requirements have not been considered sufficiently. The European Commission includes the lack of data and understanding of freight flows among the main obstacles to the improvement of operational efficiency and planning process for a sustainable UFT in economic, social and environmental terms. Also, the research community raises the issue of the unavailability or the low quality of data on urban freight and the need to identify effective data collection methods in order to understand processes and actors' behavior and then define appropriate city logistics solutions. The NOVELOG EU project is providing city authorities and practitioners with a new framework aimed at systematizing all data to be collected, directly or indirectly, and to be elaborated in order to understand and represent the different aspects of the UFT sector. In order to achieve a complete knowledge, the framework approaches this sector according to four main thematic pillars: 1) profile of major supply chains served in the urban area under study; 2) mapping of urban freight and service trips activity; 3) organizational and legal framework; 4) procedural and technological methods and innovations. The present paper introduces the framework and the guidance it provides to its target audience

Drones for parcel and passenger transportation: A literature review

Delivery drones and ‘air taxis’ are currently among the most intensely discussed emerging technologies, likely to expand mobility into the ‘third dimension’ of low-level airspace. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 111 interdisciplinary publications (2013 - 03/2019). The review systematizes the current socio-technical debate on civil drones for transportation purposes allowing for a (critical) interim assessment. To guide the review process four dimensions of analysis were defined. A total of 2581 relevant quotations were subdivided into anticipated barriers (426), potential problems (1037), proposed solutions (737) and expected benefits (381). We found that the debate is characterized by predominantly technical and regulatory problems and barriers which are considered to prevent or impede the use of drones for parcel and passengers transportation. At the same time, definite economic expectations are juxtaposed with quite complex and differentiated concerns regarding societal and environmental impacts. Scrutinizing the most prevalent transportation-related promises of traffic reduction, travel time saving and environmental relief we found that there is a strong need to provide scientific evidence for the promises linked to the use of drones for transportation. We conclude that the debate on drones for transportation needs further qualification, emphasizing societal benefits and public involvement more strongly.TU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel - 201