Theorising mobility justice

“Mobilidades justas” configuram uma das questões políticas e éticas cruciais de nossos dias, quando o mundo enfrenta a questão urgente de como fazer a transição para mobilidades ambientalmente mais sustentáveis e socialmente mais justas. Em todo o planeta, órgãos governamentais urbanos, regionais e internacionais estão lidando com uma série de crises relacionadas aos deslocamentos: uma crise urbana em torno da poluição e do congestionamento, uma crise global de fronteiras e de humanitarismo face aos refugiados, e uma crise climática imposta pelo aquecimento global e pela necessidade de descarbonização. Este artigo busca pensar sobre tais crises, mostrando como cada uma faz parte de distúrbios mais amplos nas instituições responsáveis pela gestão de mobilidades e imobilidades. Na interface entre mobilidade, equidade e justiça, ergue-se uma nova maneira de pensar, desde a escala micro à macro, sobre a transição para mobilidades mais justas. Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day, when the entire world faces the urgent question of how to make the transition to more environmentally sustainable and socially just mobilities. All around the planet urban, regional, and international governing bodies are grappling with a series of crises related to how we move: an urban crisis of pollution and congestion, a global refugee crisis of borders and humanitarianism, and a climate crisis of global warming and decarbonisation. This article seeks to think across these crises showing how each is part of a wider disturbance in prevailing institutions concerned with the management of mobilities and immobilities. Mobility justice offers a new way to think across the micro and macro scale of transitioning toward more just mobilities. 

On the Maintenance of Humanity: Learning from Refugee Mobile Practices

This CARGC Paper drew on Sheller’s Distinguished Lecture and presented a project in collaboration with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and French curator Guillaume Logé. For many refugees, smartphones have become their most valuable asset. While theories of migration have long spoken of the “double absence” of migrants (both from their country of origin and from their host country), Sheller identified that certain researchers now allude to the “double presence” made possible by ICT. This paper explored the increasingly intrinsic overlap between physical and virtual mobility.https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/1004/thumbnail.jp

Oraliteracy and Textual Opacity: Resisting Metropolitan Consumption of Caribbean Creole

Sheller, M. ‘Oraliteracy and Textual Opacity: Resisting Metropolitan Consumption of Caribbean Creole’. Language and Intercultural Communication, 4: 1-2 (2004): 100-108The incorporation of 'creole' vemacular languages into texts written in 'standard' languages is an especially fraught crossroads of intercultural communication. This article considers the difference between a kind of literary tourism in which non- Caribbean readers 'taste' the flavour of creole language within Caribbean literature versus an 'oraliteracy' that would recognise the full autonomy and complexity of Creole languages. Rather than reading textual linguistic hybridity as an unproblematic form of intercultural communication, it is suggested that metropolitan consumption of literary representations of Creole vernaculars can serve to naturalize cultural boundaries and reinforce racist stereotypes - especially in postcolonial situations

Caribbean aeromobility: Offshore economies, mobile technologies, and changing island spatiality

The convergence of intensive human mobilities, “offshore” financial flows, export processing zones, virtual connectivity, and new forms of border surveillance make the Caribbean a crucial region in which to study emerging mobility regimes and cultures of movement in the Island Americas. There is a longstanding interest in island-centered themes of movement, migration and transnational ways of life amongst Caribbean writers and artists, but few studies within the social sciences that address how new technologies of mobile communication, software-supported mobility, and changing patterns of air travel are re-shaping island spatialities. This paper aims to update the well-established view of the Caribbean as a mobile region by investigating how recent changes in the technologies and infrastructures of mobility, the cultural practices of air travel and virtual travel, and the economic and political regulation of national borders and financial flows are reconstructing and respatializing the Caribbean islands, leading to major reconfigurations of territory, authority and rights. Examples will be drawn from dependent territories such as the Turks and Caicos Islands and the French départements d’outre mer, as well as from independent countries such as Jamaica and Barbados

Mobility intersections:social research, social futures

This special issue seeks to deepen conversations at the intersections between mobilities research and a number of adjacent fields. Contributions explore how mobilities research has emerged and travelled along with a range of approaches concerned with the lived production of socio-material orders, such as science and technology studies, non-representational and feminist theory, critical and speculative design, and cosmopolitanism, to name but a few, while also intersecting with many applied fields, such as transport planning and policy, disability studies, or disaster response. The field of mobilities research has grown by connecting different epistemological frames, and offering new post-disciplinary approaches to complex interconnected phenomena. In pausing to reflect on these mobility intersections, we suggest that mobilities research is integral to a broader project of transforming the social sciences that is currently underwa

Mobile Transformations of “Public” and “Private” Life

Sheller, M. and Urry, J., ‘Mobile Transformations of “Public” and “Private” Life’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20: 3 (2003), pp. 107-12

Publics in History

Emirbayer, M. and Sheller, M. ‘Publics in History’, Theory and Society, 28 (1999): 145-19

Revisitando as mobilidades turísticas:

El objetivo principal de este ensayo es el de presentar y discutir elementos esenciales para el estudio del turismo y de las movilidades, a través del Paradigma de las Nuevas Movilidades. El argumento central del trabajo – que está basado en la traducción y extensión de un capítulo introductório del libro Tourism Mobilities: places do play, places in play (Sheller & Urry, 2004) – es que el turismo se desarrolla a partir de la creación (o invención) de lugares turísticos (places to play). Al mismo tiempo y de manera metafórica, los lugares también se mueven (places in play), indicando movilidad de estilos de vida, visiones del mundo y narrativas que moldan este fenómeno conectado globalmente. Asimismo, el trabajo dialoga con las reflexiones de John Urry acerca de futuros, respecto a la gran dependencia de los recursos derivados del petróleo en las sociedades capitalistas. Aunque no sea este el enfoque del texto, concluimos con reflexiones sobre el futuro del turismo en un contexto pós-pandémico, en el cual las movilidades turísticas estarán potencialmente influenciadas por la introducción de nuevos protocolos sanitarios y por una posible emergencia de nuevos estilos y demandas de viajes.Este artigo, de caráter ensaístico, tem por objetivos apresentar e discutir elementos essenciais para o estudo do turismo e das mobilidades, tendo por referência o paradigma das novas mobilidades. O argumento central do trabalho – que tem por base a tradução e ampliação de capítulo inicial do livro Tourism Mobilities: places do play, places in play (Sheller & Urry, 2004) – é que o turismo se desenvolve a partir da elaboração (ou invenção) lugares turísticos (places to play). Mas, ao mesmo tempo e de maneira metafórica, também os lugares estão em movimento (places in play), indicando que a mobilidade de estilos de vida, visões de mundo e narrativas dão forma a este fenômeno conectado globalmente. O trabalho também dialoga com as reflexões de John Urry sobre futuros, especialmente nas críticas à alta dependência dos derivados do petróleo nas sociedades capitalistas. Ainda que não seja o enfoque do texto, encerra com algumas reflexões sobre o futuro do turismo em um contexto (pós-)pandêmico, em que as mobilidades turísticas estarão potencialmente influenciadas por revisões nos novos protocolos sanitários e pela possível emergência de novos estilos e demandas de viagem.This essay aims to present and discuss key elements for the study of tourism and mobilities, as understood within the New Mobilities Paradigm. The central argument of this paper - based on the translation and extension of the introductory chapter of the book Tourism Mobilities: places do play, places in play (Sheller & Urry, 2004) – is that tourism develops from the elaboration (or invention) of tourist places (places to play). But, at the same time, metaphorically places are also on the move (places in play), indicating the mobility of lifestyles, worldviews and narratives that shape the flux of globally connected destinations. The work is also in dialogue with John Urry’s reflections on futures, especially the criticism of the highly carbon-dependent capitalist society. The article ends with some reflections on the future of tourism in a (post-)pandemic context, in which tourism mobilities will potentially be influenced by the introduction of new health protocols and the likely emergence of new travel styles and demands

Gender, Disaster, and Resilience: Assessing Women\u27s Water and Sanitation Needs in Leogane, Haiti, before and after the 201 O Earthquake

This study investigates differences in men\u27s and women\u27s access to water and sanitation in Leogane, Haiti (population -300,000), a town situated at the epicenter of the January 2010 earthquake. While research suggests that women\u27s water and sanitation access is crucial to health, security, and equity in post-disaster situations, there are a number of limitations to current participa­tory approaches in post-disaster reconstruction. Underlining the social impor­tance of water access in Haiti were reports citing a Jack of potable water and sanitation as one factor contributing to the spread of cholera, which was intro­duced by UN peacekeepers aher the earthquake. Limited access to water and sanitation facilities was also reported as a factor in the lack of security for women and children in the internally displaced persons camps. The results of this NSF-RAPID study are presented pertaining to gender issues in the context of post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction efforts in Haiti. We ask specifically how gender dimensions can be integrated into community-based participatory processes of water and sanitation planning, which face many challenges in post-disaster situations. We conclude that more robust participatory processes that include women and other marginalized groups in planning and decision ­making can be used to elicit and support local knowledge, practices and preferences, ultimately leading to more appropriate infrastructure systems that will be more socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable

AIS Politics: The Contested Use of Vessel Tracking at the EU’s Maritime Frontier

Automatic identification system (AIS) is a vessel tracking system, which since 2004 has become a global tool for the detection and analysis of seagoing traffic. In this article, we look at how this technology, initially designed as a collision avoidance system, has recently become involved in debates concerning migration across the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, after having briefly discussed its emergence and characteristics, we examine how through different practices of (re)appropriation AIS, and the data it generate, have been seized upon, both to contest and to sustain the exclusionary nature of borders, and the mass dying of migrants at sea to which it leads. We do so by referring to forms of data activism we have contributed to in the frame of our Forensic Oceanography project as well as to situations in which AIS has been mobilized by xenophobic groups to demand even stronger exclusionary measures. At the same time, we point to the multiplicity of actors who participate in the politics of migration through AIS in unexpected ways. We conclude by highlighting the irreducible ambivalence of practices of appropriation and call for persistent attention to one’s own positioning within the global datascape constituted by AIS and other data