Strangers in the night: nightlife studies and new urban tourism

This paper draws together recent scholarship from the study of urban tourism and nightlife. Though studies of urban tourism do not always specifically address nightlife, and likewise studies of the night and nightlife do not always examine tourism, both bodies of research overlap in important ways. Concerns about commercialisation, gentrification, displacement, and urban change are to be found in both bodies of research. However, while the study of urban tourism typically recognises the erasure of the host / guest binary and seeks to destabilise the notion of who is a tourist or stranger, studies of nightlife often rest on a much clearer distinction between who belongs and who does not. An argument proposed here is that while the host / guest, tourist / non-tourist binary is perhaps reconfiguring, the night and nightlife spaces reinstate these binaries in various ways. This paper thinks through debates about tourists and residents in the night, focusing in particular on questions of belonging, place identification and gentrification through night-time uses

Commutes and co-workers: complicating individual journeys through workplace relations

The everyday mobilities involved in performing paid work have increasingly been conceptualized in relation to their social context, with transport researchers seeking to move away from a view of the commuter as a solitary figure driven by a utility-maximization rationale. To date, most research which emphasizes the social embeddedness of commutes has focused on the ways in which gender, class and race shape commuting experiences, and the role of household relations in the organization of the commute. In this paper, I contribute to this body of work by exploring the links between the commute and the social relations of the workplace. The paper draws on qualitative data collected among commuters in Sofia, Bulgaria, and includes both office workers and people employed in shift work in the tourism and hospitality sector. The findings discuss the multiple ways in which formal and informal workplace interactions become part of everyday journeys, whether through commuters arranging to travel together, through strategies for avoiding co-workers on the way to work, or through managerial measures aiming to shape commutes. Commuting experiences, in turn, are not external to the workplace but are woven through it in a range of ways, as co-workers discuss commuter stress, or set time aside to plan easier, safer or more affordable travel to work

Exploring the role of the workplace in experiences of commuter stress: a mixed-method study from Sofia, Bulgaria

Several studies have argued that the effects of commuter stress spill into other domains of everyday life, including the workplace. However, the entanglements between commuter stress and the workplace are complex and multidirectional. Commuter stresses both shapes and is shaped by managerial policies, workplace social relations, and the negotiations of working schedules. The present paper explores these interconnections. Drawing on a survey of 281 office-based employees in 27 companies in Sofia, Bulgaria, the paper demonstrates how the characteristics of individuals and individual journeys are important in shaping commuter stress but not exclusively so. In examining the significance of the workplace in relation to commuter stress, the paper differentiates between the geographical location of the workplace and the employing organisation, thus offering a granular understanding of spatial (e.g., the quality of the public spaces surrounding the office) and organisational (e.g., managerial decisions regarding parking) factors. The paper highlights the social and spatial constraints within which commutes are carried out, thus emphasising the role of employers and local government in what is often understood in terms of individual travel choices

Negotiating dignity in public geography: The ethics of public engagement in pandemic times

In this paper, I reflect on some of the ethical dimensions of public engagement with geographic research. The paper draws on my recent experience of a project entitled ‘Not working from home’, which sought to make visible the everyday experiences of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project was intended as a space for essential workers to document their daily lives using text, images and video, enabling them to engage with each other, while also informing the wider public about the everyday challenges of not working from home during the pandemic. The paper discusses some of the ethical implications and challenges of conducting this project, drawing on a critical engagement with dignity as an ethical framework for public engagement. I discuss the implications of calling workers ‘essential’, the role of collective and professional identities explored by the participants, and the impact of offering rewards. I also ask some broader questions on the role that the concept of dignity might play in the ethics of public engagement with research in human geography

Essential workers’ pandemic mobilities and the changing meanings of the commute

This commentary reflects on the pandemic commute and its significance for, on one hand, engaging with the problematic category of essential work, and on the other, future geographical research on transport and mobilities. Drawing on essential workers’ contributions to the 'Not working from home' public engagement project, I outline some experiences of commuting during the Covid-19 pandemic. I illustrate the role of pandemic commuting in defining, and wrestling with, what the category of essential work might mean. I then discuss the ways in which attending to pandemic commutes may extend and reshape existing research on unequal mobilities. Some of the future research directions made more urgent by a focus on pandemic commutes include critical engagements with first, intersectional inequalities in the journey to work; second, the category of ‘essential journeys’ as used in transport policy and practice; third, the positionality of academic researchers who work on the topic of commuting; and finally, the treatment of commuting time as an integral part of working time

Care-related journeys over the life course: Thinking mobility biographies with gender, care and the household

As they go about everyday life, members of households negotiate complex arrangements around mobility and immobility, which continue to change over time. Mobility biographies research has made an important contribution to our understanding of these dynamics. At the same time, mobility biographies often rely on limited definitions of the household and change over the life-course, reflecting an empirical focus on cohabiting nuclear families in North-West Europe. In this paper, we approach everyday im/mobilities as based in the changing relations of care which shape the everyday life of households. We demonstrate how the care relations which underlie everyday im/mobilities are gendered and intergenerational, exceeding distinctions between productive and reproductive activities, or living together and apart. The transformations which everyday im/mobilities undergo over the life-course are not limited to pre-defined milestones, but unfold through a range of abrupt, subtle and multi-directional processes. Drawing on data from Manila and London, we examine these dynamics with particular reference to childcare and ageing, in order to make visible the complex ways in which households negotiate and re-negotiate everyday im/mobilities

“We usually have a bit of flood once a week”: conceptualising the infrastructural rhythms of urban floods in Malate, Manila

In Malate, a district of Manila, flooding is a frequent occurrence. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with Malate inhabitants to approach urban floods as more than discrete disastrous episodes which interfere with a pre-existing normality. The paper employs a Levebvrian conceptualisation of rhythm and entrainment, while also offering some reflections on the limits of its relevance to global South cities. Theorised from Malate, urban floods can be understood in terms of the mutual constitution of the social-technical-natural relations of urban infrastructures and the on-going disruptive rhythms of floodwater. We argue that the rhythms of floodwater are especially visible at the intersections of different yet interrelated urban infrastructures. In the Malate context, we focus on the infrastructures identified by research participants as pertinent to flood risk: drainage, domestic waste management, and transport and mobility. By tracing the spatial intersections and temporal rhythms of infrastructurally mediated urban floods, this paper contributes to a growing body of research into the situated hydrosocial relations of everyday life

Care-related journeys over the life course: Thinking mobility biographies with gender, care and the household

As they go about everyday life, members of households negotiate complex arrangements around mobility and immobility, which continue to change over time. Mobility biographies research has made an important contribution to our understanding of these dynamics. At the same time, mobility biographies often rely on limited definitions of the household and change over the life-course, reflecting an empirical focus on cohabiting nuclear families in North-West Europe. In this paper, we approach everyday im/mobilities as based in the changing relations of care which shape the everyday life of households. We demonstrate how the care relations which underlie everyday im/mobilities are gendered and intergenerational, exceeding distinctions between productive and reproductive activities, or living together and apart. The transformations which everyday im/mobilities undergo over the life-course are not limited to pre-defined milestones, but unfold through a range of abrupt, subtle and multi-directional processes. Drawing on data from Manila and London, we examine these dynamics with particular reference to childcare and ageing, in order to make visible the complex ways in which households negotiate and re-negotiate everyday im/mobilities

Moving safely at night? Women’s nocturnal mobilities in Recife, Brazil and Brussels, Belgium

This paper examines the links between women’s un/safety and their night-time mobilities in Brussels, Belgium and Recife, Brazil. While the significance of women’s intersectional identities to the construction of fear and safety in urban space has been well documented in feminist urban geography, we argue that the lens of South-North comparison highlights specific ways in which local urban spaces are implicated in women’s experiences of un/safety. A comparative perspective draws out the spatial and temporal embeddedness of un/safety, while at the same time challenges the framing of particular cities and areas as either safe or unsafe (which is particularly damaging when it reproduces simple global North – global South binaries). The paper draws on mixed-method research combining a questionnaire-based survey and a series of interviews with women in Recife and Brussels. The four dimensions examined include transport modes; situated experiences of un/safety; the accumulation of unsafety feelings over the long term; and the work women perform in maintaining mobility. We find that while unsafety broadly limits women’s access to cities at night, feeling unsafe plays out differently in specific and situated interactions, many of which are recognisable from both Brussels and Recife. Across the two research locations, women’s mobility strategies at night are similar, in that they involve extensive planning, preparation, and drawing on financial and non-financial resources. We conclude with some reflections on the role of comparative research in the feminist geographies of gendered urban mobilities, particularly in relation to previously little-studied cities