Paper short abstract:

Juxtaposing the top-down governance of the metro and fares in Brussels with bottom-up mobility habits, we argue that fare evasion is not only a practice of breaking formal public transport rules and transgressing infrastructure, but also a tactic of contesting the idealised publicness and appropriating the material environment.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we unravel the dynamics of metro

infrastructure and fare system development in the Brussels-Capital

Region to contrast an inherent idealisation of the publicness of public

transport (PT) with the everyday mobility experiences of its users. We

argue that this tension is reflected in the practice of fare evasion,

which, despite increasing popularity in Brussels, has received little

attention from urban researchers, including ethnographers and

anthropologists. Instead, economists and legal scholars have framed it

as an illegal practice or a dysfunctional customer behaviour calling for

infrastructural fixes. Based on observational studies and qualitative

interviews with fare evaders and transport operator representatives, we

explore the diversity of forms, motives, and implications of fare

evasion, finding that the practice comprises an embodied engagement with

the control and transportation infrastructure that serves to transgress

material and political boundaries and to appropriate the space and

publicness of PT. The extension of our study into the virtual spaces

where PT users meet and exchange real-time information on controls and

evasion tactics shows that fare evasion furthermore enables encounters

between strangers, the (re)negotiation of social norms, forms of

community-building and knowledge-sharing practices. Moreover, we reflect

on the changes and challenges for PT in times of the COVID-19 pandemic,

during which the new measures have led to changed circumstances and

temporary suspension of ticketing and control activities, thus changing

fare evasion practices and opening up discussion around the importance

of mobility rights, common goods, and essential services.