This book seeks to bring together different philosophical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the study of human mobility within the discipline of geography. With five thematic sections – conceptualizing and analyzing mobility, inequalities of mobility, politics of mobility, decentering mobility, and qualifying abstraction – and 27 substantive chapters by leading researchers in the field, it provides a comprehensive overview of the latest thinking about human mobility and related issues. The contributors discuss mobility issues as diverse as everyday mobilities of young people, migrants and refugees, and sex workers; the relationships between citizenship and mobility; and the potential and pitfalls of big data for understanding mobility. This, coupled with a broad international focus, means that Geographies of Mobility will not only encourage and enrich dialogue on a theme that is of major importance to varied geographic research communities, but will also be of great interest to students and researchers across the wider social sciences. This book was originally published as a special issue of Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

This book advances an alternative critical posthumanist approach to mega-event organisation, taking into account both the new and the old crises which humanity and our planet face. Taking the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as a case study, Tzanelli explores mega-event crisis and risk management in the era of extreme urbanisation, natural disasters, global pandemic, and technoscientific control. Using the atmospheric term ‘irradiation’ (a technology of glamour and transparency, as well as bodily penetration by harmful agents and strong affects), the book explores this epistemological statement diachronically (via Tokyo’s relationship with Western forms of domination) and synchronically (the city as a global cultural-political player but victim of climate catastrophes). It presents how the ‘Olympic enterprise’s’ ‘flattening’ of indigenous environmental place-making rhythms, and the scientisation of space and place in the Anthropocene lead to reductionisms harmful for a viable programme of planetary recovery. An experimental study of the mega-event is enacted, which considers the researcher’s analytical tools and the styles of human and non-human mobility during the mega-event as reflexive gateways to forms of posthuman flourishing. Crossing and bridging disciplinary boundaries, the book will appeal to any scholar interested in mobilities theory, event and environment studies, sociology of knowledge, and cultural globalisation.

Numerous books explore the “how to” of qualitative research, but few discuss what it means to actually engage in it, particularly when researchers adopt alternative methods to shed light on the experiences of marginalized populations. In Demarginalizing Voices, scholars share personal stories about their research with marginalized populations, including Aboriginal peoples, sex workers, the dead and the dying, women and men in prison, women and men released from prison, and the homeless and the hospitalized. In the process, they answer questions of relevance to anyone engaged in qualitative research: What can scholars expect when their research requires them to establish human connections and relationships with their subjects? What role do ethics review boards and institutions play when researchers explore new, often less accepted methods? How do researchers reconcile academic life and its expectations with their activism? These powerful accounts from the cutting-edge of qualitative research not only create a space in academia that centres marginalized voices, they open up the field to new debates and discussion.

Mobility, Space, and Resistance: Transformative Spatiality in Literary and Political Discourse draws from various disciplines—such as geography, sociology, political science, gender studies, and poststructuralist thought—to posit the productive capabilities of literature in political action and at the same time show how literary art can resist the imposition and domination of oppressive systems of our spatial lives. The various approaches, topics, and types of literature discussed in this volume display a concern for social issues that can be addressed in and through literature. The essays address social injustice, oppression, discrimination, and their spatial representations. While offering interpretations of literature, this collection seeks to show how literary spaces contribute to understanding, changing, or challenging physical spaces of our lived world.

This text is about the fact that mobility is more than movement between point A and B. It concerns how the movement of people, goods, information, and signs influences human understandings of self, other and the built environment.

The 21st century seems to be on the move, perhaps even more so than the last. With cheap travel, and more than two billion cars projected worldwide for 2030. And yet, all this mobility is happening incredibly unevenly, at different paces and intensities, with varying impacts and consequences to the extent that life on the move might be actually quite difficult to sustain environmentally, socially and ethically. As a result 'mobility' has become a keyword of the social sciences; delineating a new domain of concepts, approaches, methodologies and techniques which seek to understand the character and quality of these trends. This Handbook explores and critically evaluates the debates, approaches, controversies and methodologies, inherent to this rapidly expanding discipline. It brings together leading specialists from range of backgrounds and geographical regions to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of this field, conveying cutting edge research in an accessible way whilst giving detailed grounding in the evolution of past debates on mobilities. It illustrates disciplinary trends and pathways, from migration studies and transport history to communications research, featuring methodological innovations and developments and conceptual histories - from feminist theory to tourist studies. It explores the dominant figures of mobility, from children to soldiers and the mobility impaired; the disparate materialities of mobility such as flows of water and waste to the vectors of viruses; key infrastructures such as logistics systems to the informal services of megacity slums, and the important mobility events around which our world turns; from going on vacation to the commute, to the catastrophic disruption of mobility systems. The text is forward-thinking, projecting the future of mobilities as they might be lived, transformed and studied, and possibly, brought to an end. International in focus, the book transcends disciplinary and national boundaries to explore mobilities as they are understood from different perspectives, different fields, countries and standpoints. This is an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in mobility across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study.

The digitalization of work processes and the generalization of IT are creating unprecedented opportunities. An increasing part of the workforce is experimenting with new forms of work, as freelancers, self-employed or highly skilled employees with greater autonomy. International in scope, this book comprehensively explores these new models of work, mobility and life trajectories, and the increasing role of non-metropolitan coworking spaces.