Mobilities Studies

This paper aims to analyse the individual perceptions of belonging to social networks among migrants living in northern Spain, exploring various dimensions such as perceived inclusion and life satisfaction. A quantitative analysis was employed with data collected through a survey of 373 migrants from different ethnic backgrounds. The findings indicate that (1) women have higher levels of perceived satisfaction with their life and social networks; (2) young migrants have higher levels of friendship networks; (3) the highest levels of perceived inclusion were found among Central Europeans, followed by individuals from Latin America, Asia, Africa and, finally, Eastern Europe; and (4) each social network under analysis was positively correlated with perceived inclusion and satisfaction with life. In summary, the results emphasise that a greater presence of networks is associated with higher levels of perceived inclusion and life satisfaction.

Esta Idónea Comunicación de Resultados (ICR) es resultado del trabajo de investigación que realicé durante mi estancia en la Maestría en Psicología Social de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Iztapalapa. El objetivo general fue analizar las representaciones sociales y las prácticas de movilidad de las mujeres universitarias en Culiacán, Sinaloa, en un contexto de orden narcopatriarcal. Mi propósito fue comprender la movilidad como un entramado de prácticas, emociones y significados que evidencian las tensiones entre miedo, cautiverio y resistencia. Desde una perspectiva feminista y situada de la psicología social, parto de la idea de que moverse es también habitar, disputar y resignificar la ciudad. A lo largo del trabajo recupero los aportes del ‘‘giro de la movilidad’’ y la teoría de las representaciones sociales, con el fin de articular un marco teórico que dialogue con las experiencias narradas por las universitarias. Metodológicamente, sostengo un posicionamiento feminista y sensible que me llevó a trabajar con entrevistas en profundidad y la técnica de photovoice. En los resultados atiendo que la movilidad está atravesada por múltiples violencias: desde la narcoviolencia y la militarización hasta el acoso sexual y las restricciones simbólicas del miedo. Sin embargo, también emergen prácticas de resistencia y cuidado que disputan el espacio urbano. Este trabajo se une a la discusión académica y social sobre la movilidad de las mujeres en contextos poco explorados por la investigación, abordando cómo el narcopatriarcado estructura y condiciona la vida cotidiana, pero también cómo es resistido y resignificado en los trayectos universitarios.

Desert Magazine was founded in El Centro, California in November 1937, and it was published until 1985. It was a publishing project focused on deserts, especially those of the southwestern United States, although it also covered topics related to the northern border of Mexico and even other parts of the world. Its pages covered topics concerning Indigenous groups, flora, fauna, historical chronicles, excursions, literature, letters to the editor, Native American and white settler legends, architecture, geology, bodies of water, archaeology, history, mining, biographies, desert lifestyles, holidays, and motor vehicles. In this chapter, from the Desert Magazine content, I address the specific ways of some explorers to relationship with the nature through the use of motorized technological resources such as motor vehicles, roads and some additional artifacts.

This chapter describes the touristification process affecting Rome during the last 25 years, a period during which its effects on the city have been particularly intense. We try to answer the question as to how the pressure of several million tourists arriving in Rome each year impacts its habitability. The gradual shift towards a tourism economy, the proliferation of short-term rentals and the increasing unaffordability of housing in Italy's capital city are approached through qualitative and quantitative methods. We look at the multidimensionality of overtourism, considering the rental market, the economic and socio-spatial implications of tourism and the housing affordability crisis. With reference to the "tourism-led rentierism" perspective, fuelled by new urban imaginaries of cultural development, we discuss how the process of touristification in the past twenty-five years has led to the current situation of overtourism and to the widespread "crisis of habitability" that became striking during the run-up to Jubilee 2025.

This chapter describes the touristification process affecting Rome during the last 25 years, a period during which its effects on the city have been particularly intense. We try to answer the question as to how the pressure of several million tourists arriving in Rome each year impacts its habitability. The gradual shift towards a tourism economy, the proliferation of short-term rentals and the increasing unaffordability of housing in Italy's capital city are approached through qualitative and quantitative methods. We look at the multidimensionality of overtourism, considering the rental market, the economic and socio-spatial implications of tourism and the housing affordability crisis. With reference to the "tourism-led rentierism" perspective, fuelled by new urban imaginaries of cultural development, we discuss how the process of touristification in the past twenty-five years has led to the current situation of overtourism and to the widespread "crisis of habitability" that became striking during the run-up to Jubilee 2025.

In the mid-1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) created a series of educational comics. We argue these comics represent the melding of artistic geographies with an early form of GIScience, and thus push geography to include an expanded set of activities within its understanding of what constitutes GIScience. We argue these comics are a form of radical placemaking and represent how Black geographies are at the center of broad struggles for justice.
By incorporating the knowledge of Black geographies within GIScience, we can extend our understanding of geography more broadly. This impacts our understanding of how political geography can center and be responsive to Black liberation struggles.

In the mid-1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) created a series of educational comics. We
argue these comics represent the melding of artistic geographies with an early form of GIScience, and thus push geography
to include an expanded set of activities within its understanding of what constitutes GIScience. We argue these comics
are a form of radical placemaking and represent how Black geographies are at the center of broad struggles for justice.
By incorporating the knowledge of Black geographies within GIScience, we can extend our understanding of geography
more broadly. This impacts our understanding of how political geography can center and be responsive to Black liberation
struggles.

The course studies the phenomenon of tourism from a territorial perspective, based on theoretical concepts and methodologies of Economic Geography. The analysis covers the various territorial elements of the tourism system, in particular, tourist locational factors and tourist resources. Additionally, it analyzes the historical development of tourism and the current situation of tourism destinations at different scales. The subject introduces methods and techniques to locate tourism activities in the territory as well as techniques to evaluate the impacts of tourism on destination. Finally, it addresses spatial and urban planning as well as land management techniques to assist decision making in public policies in order to face the challenge of sustainability principles applied to tourism. At the end of the course, the student should: 1. Understand the tourism phenomenon from a spatial and evolutionary point of view.

This article examines how irregularized migrant transit has become a central tool of contemporary migration governance in the Americas. Drawing on the empirical trajectories of Venezuelan migrants crossing multiple countries under precarious and shifting conditions, the article argues that transit is not merely tolerated or obstructed, but strategically instrumentalized by states and other actors to govern mobility. The analysis of policies such as visa restrictions, bilateral agreements, the instrumental use of administrative permits, and the discretionary application of the law shows that these devices generate prolonged and fragmented mobility. Far from reflecting a failure of migration policies, the findings indicate that the persistence of migrant transit constitutes a functional outcome of a pragmatic governance architecture, embedded in dynamics of flexible externalization and sustained by both state and non-state actors. This regional framework operates under a dual logic: while in the corridor crossing northern South America and Central America transit is promoted as a mechanism to evade reception and protection responsibilities (a pragmatic laissez-passer logic), in Mexico it is used to hinder progress through bureaucratic circuits and indefinite waiting periods (a chutes and ladders logic). Through a multilevel approach that links governmental and other actors' strategies with migrants' trajectories, the article contributes to the literature on the intersection between transit and migration governance in Latin America by empirically conceptualizing transit as a functional component of the regional governance of mobility.

The funeral bier was a common object in Christian funerals in Finland from the Middle Ages up to the Second World War. The bier was used throughout Europe for carrying the deceased into the church or to the gravesite, in the funerals of both the nobility and commoners. The biers were simple wooden stretchers, but some of them also carried death-related imagery and texts. They also served as stands under the coffins, and images of such arrangements also appeared alongside texts in printed funeral works. The funeral bier has been a largely overlooked object in scholarly studies in art, cultural, and literary history. This article focuses on the funeral bier and its use as a medium of communication in Early Modern Finland. The aim is to show how messages between the living and the dead, and the transcendental and the mundane in a broader sense could have been conveyed during and after the Lutheran funeral through the funeral bier. As an object, the bier was combined with text in two different ways: adding image compositions featuring biers to printed texts and adding texts to actual biers. This is illustrated with selected cases of Finnish funeral biers depicted in 17th-century funeral works, and extant biers from the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on how the funeral bier could have served as a medium for addressing the unknown, that is, for communicating with the transcendental realm.

La centralitat del comerc de proximitat en l’estructura economicosocial de la ciutat ha estat un dels trets caracteristics de la ciutat durant segles. L’estructura comercial de la ciutat es caracteritza fins a principis del segle XX per l’existencia d’una oferta comercial molt diversificada basada en una estructura economica molt fragmentada en multitud de petites i mitjanes empreses de caracter familiar, que donen la base a l’imaginari d’una Barcelona caracteritzada com a ciutat de botiguers (un imaginari que troba en L’Auca del Senyor Esteve de Russinol la seva caricaturitzacio mes reconeguda); aixi com per una xarxa de mercats municipals ben distribuits arreu dels barris de la ciutat, que abastien el consum quotidia i constituien autentics centres socials (Carreras i Romero, 2000).

In December 1949, the founding stones of the world's largest Stalin monument were laid in the centre of Prague, on the Hill of Letná, as demonstration of loyalty of Czechoslovak communists, who seized power in 1948. A 15-metre-high statue of granite was erected, depicting Stalin at the head of a procession of the Czechoslovak and Soviet people (Šindelář 2010, cf. Ptichnikova & Antyufeev 2018). The process of construction demonstrates how significant the project was for the Stalinist regime. High-quality materials were used, some even imported from Western countries, and the construction required innovative engineering solutions. Research institutes were even tasked with developing new materials to improve its aesthetic quality. When unveiled on 1 May 1955, Stalin's monument visually dominated the cityscape (Fig 1). Despite given resources and priority, the completion had been delayed. Nine months after the statue's unveiling, Khrushchev condemned Stalin's cult of personality. The most splendid statue of Stalin thus missed the era for which it had been created. The monument stood above Prague for only seven years. In 1962, during de-Stalinisation, the Party decided to blow it up in November that year. After its removal, only a massive pedestal remained, which is a unique modern archaeological monument in Prague's Cityscape.

Este texto es un estudio de las interacciones sociales ocurridas en el Metro de la Ciudad de México. Es el resultado de un trabajo de campo de seis meses y se basa en la perspectiva analítica de la micro-sociología de Erving Gorffman y en la geografía social de Guy Di Meo. Propone una observación centrada en el cuerpo y sus gestos como medios de comunicación, así como formas de uso y transformación del espacio. En el caso del Metro de la Ciudad de México, esas expresiones están orientadas por la sexualidad y los roles de género que ella supone. Aunque en principio este medio de transporte es considerado un espacio público, los vínculos que los pasajeros establecen durante sus trayectos lo exhiben como un espacio más complejo, flexible y ambiguo, en donde es posible establecer relaciones tradicionalmente encasilladas en el ejercicio de lo privado.

The political discussion on intra-European mobility differentiates between mobile, interna- tionally employable individuals and immobile, locally employed ones. Mobile EU citizens, in turn, are subdivided into “attractive” highly skilled workers and “unwanted” lower skil- led workers. Transnational labour mobility among the highly skilled often results from an individual’s free will to move, disregarding structural reasons. This article examines the expectations and experiences of highly skilled Swedish labour migrants seeking qualified employment in Germany and the UK, exploring their strategies and modes of handling the mismatch between expectations and actual experiences. The findings demonstrate that the vulnerability migrants experience while working abroad does not seem to affect their self-understanding of being independent, flexible and highly mobile European citizens. The interviewees’ self-understanding is therefore conceptualised as an imagined independence, and one that ...

This article explores the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) technologies in enhancing accessibility within live performance. Moving beyond conventional definitions of access as physical or logistical, the analysis addresses how digital tools are reshaping creative practices, participatory models, and performance environments. Through five thematic lenses-remote participation, inclusive creation, smart archives, disability-led innovation, and ethical challenges-the article illustrates how AI and XR technologies are expanding not only who can engage with performance but also how performance is conceived, made, and experienced. Emphasis is placed on the importance of inclusive design, digital literacy, and the active involvement of disabled artists in technological development. The article argues that while these tools offer unprecedented opportunities for inclusion, their implementation must be critically informed by relational accountability and equity. By integrating research from performance studies, disability studies, and media theory, the article proposes a framework for responsible innovation that centres accessibility as a core aesthetic and infrastructural value in contemporary performance-making.

This study explores the experiences of leisure hitchhikers on Europe's roads, drawing on "detours" as a framework. Utilising interviews with 16 active hitchhikers, the research reveals how detourswhether imposed by drivers or tactically seized by hitchhikers-lead hitchhikers to develop capacities for resourcefulness, imagination, and solidarity within structural constraints. Key themes include the unpredictability of detours, heightened feelings of vulnerability, chance encounters, and how these diversions shape hitchhiker subjectivities and self-narratives. This research contributes to our understanding of how individuals navigate and find meaning in experiences at the edge of their comfort zones, while also illuminating how detours can help cultivates a form of mastery and even resistance. In conclusion, detours, it was found, are not always negative and often serve as catalysts for personal growth and skill development.

En este artículo se discuten las distintas desigualdades que surgieron con el establecimiento de los nuevos sistemas de gestión y organización de las movilidades del proceso de colonización de la Gobernación del Tucumán (Siglos XVI-XVII). Se trabajan tres aspectos del proceso de "anclado" de un lugar y los tiempos inmediatamente posteriores: las prácticas cotidianas y la materialidad de la vida en los tiempos iniciales de gran movilidad, los efectos en los distintos grupos de una población del traslado de un asentamiento y los diversos roles que las movilidades tuvieron a lo largo de la vida de las personas.

Este trabajo propone discutir acerca de la utilidad de los registros de protocolos de escribanos como fuente seriable para abordar el estudio de los desplazamientos, migraciones y movilidades a diferentes escalas (sociales, espaciales y temporales) de grupos registrados como indígenas en la ciudad de Córdoba durante el último cuarto del siglo XVI. Dentro del contexto de la dominación colonial los documentos analizados permiten reconocer la agencia de los sujetos bajo estudio y diferenciar aquellos desplazamientos compulsivos, grupales o individuales, ocasionados por la élite española, de aquellos otros que representaron más bien tomas de decisión propias que habrían constituido formas de resistencia y/o supervivencia de las poblaciones locales en el marco de las relaciones sociales, económicas y políticas coloniales en las que se encontraban insertos.

Presentamos un análisis de los protocolos de escribanos de la ciudad de Córdoba en el último cuarto del siglo XVI para reconocer las posibilidades y límites que presentan para el estudio de las movilidades de personas y bienes desde y hacia la jurisdicción en cuestión. El estudio se centra en los aspectos metodológicos del estudio de este tipo de documentación y busca destacar el valor de las escrituras públicas, en tanto fuentes seriables, para la historia social y económica a escala local como regional y/o global.

El artículo analiza cómo habitan la ciudad quienes quienes están en situación de calle o en riesgo de estarlo pero lo hacen con una discapacidad motriz. A partir de una serie de entrevistas tomadas en hogares y organizaciones que asisten a quienes se encuentran en la calle, se relevaron los testimonios de personas comprendidas en alguna de las siguientes situaciones: quienes viven y se ganan la vida en el espacio urbano de uso público, quienes habitan en un hotel/pensión, pero desarrollan estrategias de vida en la calle y quienes habitan en un hogar adaptado y transitan la ciudad para ir al médico, trámites, pasear con dificultades de movilidad.

Mobility is acknowledged as a key practice through which pastoralists adapt to climatic and socioeconomic stressors. Yet, 'how' it is enacted and experienced is less understood. By approaching mobility through the lens of pace, this article explores how the Rabari pastoralists of western India plan, organise and embody their movements at the intersection of weather and crop cycles, animal and human lifecycles, production objectives, social relations and affective experiences, embedded in their own history and politics. It unpacks dynamics at four integrated scalesthe intra-day, intra-seasonal, inter-seasonal and long-term scale, which, while foregrounding the temporal, incorporates multiple spatial scalesfrom the field, to the village and the regionand social scalesfrom the individual flock to the migrating group and the communityto tease out key interlinkages for pastoral mobility. It shows how pastoralists seize unique opportunities through flexible and precise movements. It indicates the ways in which pastoral mobility produces and is produced by myriad human and more-than-human entanglements, while also intersecting with multiple mobilities including those of people, goods and capital, that all impinge on each other. Further, these movements are experienced affectively and differentially by each member of the household and community, across intersections of age, gender and wealth status. Finally, 'pace' disrupts the 'sedentist bias' often found in pastoral development that not only privileges spatial concerns but also a framework of fixity, regularity, and boundedness that counters the flexibility, ambiguity and multiplicity characteristic of pastoral mobility, adaptation and attunement to context. It reveals mobility as adaptive capacity and opens inquiry into new avenues of action to address growing challenges, and secure pastoralism's current and future contribution to food and livelihood security as well as benefits to climate mitigation and nature conservation.

The figure of the migration route looms large in the way publics, humanitarians, security experts and migration policymakers in the global North try to make sense of human migration - particularly those forms of migration and mobility that have come to be associated with issues of insecurity, criminality and illegality. Why do migration routes have this prominence today? What is their meaning for migration governance and politics? This chapter interrogates the migration route not as a given but as a form of power/knowledge that presupposes a very specific way of governing migration. The chapter offers a survey of critical research on routes, an argument for seeing routes in relation to struggles over space, a look at alternate ways of depicting migratory movements and passages (for example, in the language of the journey), and several proposals for new routes of research on routes.

This paper offers a novel analytical framework to enhance understanding of freedom of information (foi) in borders and migration studies. Drawing on scholarship in science and technology studies which understands scientific activity in terms of 'knowledge-control regimes' (Hilgartner 2017), our first section proposes four analytics. These are: a focus on the constitutive power of interactions; a principle of symmetry when it comes to studying what and how things are concealed and how they are made public; a concern with the mediating role of devices and infrastructures; and attention to the cultural as well as legal regimes which shape the conduct and identity of the actors who populate a given field of information control. The second part puts these analytics to work in the study of a particular area of immigration enforcement: the UK's use of charter flights as a political, logistical and symbolic practice that shapes its deportation operations.