Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the rising phenomenon of recreational endurance mobilities and what this tells us about wider societal trends. It discusses how certain aspects of these physical practices are interpreted as an escape from dominant societal trends while others are actually a reification of them.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the rising phenomenon of recreational endurance mobilities and what this tells us about wider societal trends. People with the requisite free time and resources engage in long-distance walking or running as a temporary escape from living in overdrive, in a state of excessive activity (not necessarily physical) and speed. They yearn for a slower pace of life, closely related to nostalgia for an idealised and romanticised slower pre-modern past, with an emphasis on authentic experience (over external rewards) and the sensuous human body. Self-conscious slow mobilities such as walking or running, particularly in (remote) areas of natural beauty, nicely fit the quest for the proper pace related to the 'good life'. Ironically, this temporary escape from dominant societal tendencies is ideologically recuperated in unexpected ways. Within neoliberal frameworks, the potential feelings of agony, hurt and suffering linked to endurance practices signify hard work and the ability to succeed. Learning how not to give up (with the acceptance of pain) and pressing to attain specified goals or aims are seen as helpful for life outside recreational endurance activities, particularly in the context of overwork, burnout and general 'exhaustion'. Mainstream popular culture, arts and (social) media often tend to represent endurance practitioners as model individuals in contemporary society: dedicated, controlled, disciplined, culturally and economically invested in health and self-responsible. In other words, whether they themselves like it or not, endurance athletes are framed as symbolical 'pacemakers', people who set standards of performance and achievement (efficiency and success) for others.

Paper short abstract:

Engaging with sport in any form involves allocating time as well as embracing smaller and larger patterns of mobility by participants, whether athletes, coaches and/or fans. This paper elucidates factors that shape the pacing of mobility for individuals involved in amateur and professional sport.

Paper long abstract:

Engaging with sport, whether as an athlete, coach, or fan, entails not only allocating time but also undertaking journeys of varying frequency, duration and cost. Getting to and from sporting events, whether routine and local or more celebrated but further away, is an oft-overlooked aspect of participation in this field. The strategic timetabling and distribution of such events by sport authorities effectively issues mobilization orders that others, who wish to be part of this field, are expected to heed. This paper examines instances and modes of mobility that reflect not merely the types of arrangements specified in official sport programmes but also some of the tactical means employed by those who, though they do not determine these schedules and destinations, nonetheless seek to finesse and bend sport journeys to serve their own purposes. These processes are illuminated by reference to two ethnographic settings that reveal a variety of tactical initiatives with respect to sport mobility. The first examines formal and informal negotiation of travel schedules established for child and youth athletes and parents by community sport organizations in Canada. How and to what ends do athletes and parents navigate exhausting and expensive travel regimes designed by sport officials to 'achieve excellence?' The second setting discusses how sporting events structure the everyday lives of football supporters who may often plan the year ahead economically and logistically in accordance with fixture lists. How are often long, time-consuming and costly travels to away games negotiated with family, friends, and employers?

Paper short abstract:

I will discuss the pacing of water tourism mobilities, focusing on the diurnal rhythms of canal boating in the UK. The diurnal alternations between light and dark form a socio-natural rhythmscape, where the embodied and sensed combine with the hierarchical and governed.

Paper long abstract:

A variety of mobilities, including boating, running, walking, cycling and others intersect on and near inland waterways. In regards of pace, these mobilities emerge in varied tempos and rhythms on their numerous trajectories. In this paper, I will pay closer attention to the intersecting human, non-human and environmental rhythms as exemplified on canal and river boating, a water mobility that has until very recently not yet received sufficient academic attention. The seasonal, diurnal and circadian rhythms on the canal converge and contradict, creating an ever changing dynamic rhythmscape that comes to being through a number of embodied experiences, materialities, metaphors and representations. In this paper, I will focus mainly on rhythmanalysing the diurnalities on the waterways, demonstrating how the alternations between light and dark create a certain socio-natural rhythmscape where embodied and sensory experiences combine with the hierarchical and governed, thus determining a number of mobile practices on the canal from the choice of routes to the particular activities undertaken. The paper is based on my 2014-2017 ethnographic fieldwork (participant observation and semi-structured interviews) with the boaters and canal enthusiasts in northern England and Wales, UK.

Paper short abstract:

Time becomes more flexible on the move and is essential to all who live full-time in a van on the road. There's always a (good) time for mobility: to decide to quit and hit the road; to turn on the key; to move or to settle in a few places; to move from a daily routine to "a seize the day" behavior.

Paper long abstract:

Based on fieldworks in North America on full-time RVers (people who live full-time in recreational vehicles) and on analyses of Vanlifers' blogs, I would like to discuss shifts in the way of thinking about time and temporality for the ones choosing to live on the road. Most of them had a "wake-up call" about the way they were living their lives (e.g., a health issue for them/their relatives, the loss of a loved one, a stressful episode). They wanted a change in their daily routine and living full-time on the road was their way out. Having a mobile lifestyle is not only about moving from place to place, it is also about shifting the way of thinking about time. Time becomes more flexible on the move; less scheduled, more spontaneous. You can turn on the key and go anywhere, anytime. Time seems freer as well. Full-time RVers usually mention having back the control over their time, over their schedule. They enjoy having the freedom to seize the day and to decide on their own when and where to move, how long they want to stay, and how often they want to move. They choose their own pace of mobility, even if it relies on other elements to consider. In this presentation, I will attempt to demonstrate, through the cases of mobile lifestyles I have been studying for over a decade, that the shifts in thinking about time are essential to the understanding of the pace of their mobility.

Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the mobility routines of the lifestyle migrant families in Goa. It also elaborates on their transnationally mobile, yet locally immobile lives and discusses how the families' rhythms and timings of mobility change when children grow older.

Paper long abstract:

Increasing numbers of "Western" families spend several months a year in Goa, India, and the rest of the year in the parents' native countries or elsewhere. These "lifestyle migrants" are motivated by a search for a better quality of life. The lifestyle is clearly transnationally mobile, yet, the families' lives in Goa are strikingly immobile as they move within a relatively small area there. Moreover, although their moving to Goa is voluntary, the lifestyle involves an aspect of forced mobility, in terms of timing at least, because of the frequent "visa runs" that people must do. In principle, the transnational mobility of the lifestyle migrants in Goa is seasonal, following the weather conditions and tourist seasons (that provide income), yet, children's schooling set certain limitations to the families' mobilities, especially when children grow older. The yearly routines of the families' lives in Goa are to a great extent characterised by seasons of arrivals and departures; those who stay longer (e.g. because of children's schooling) need to adjust to the reality that many lifestyle migrants with whom they socialise leave earlier and arrive later than them. This paper is based on an extensive ethnographic research among lifestyle migrant families in Goa. The paper discusses the yearly, weekly and daily mobility routines of the lifestyle migrant families and elaborates on the children's experiences of the culture of frequent arrivals and departures. The paper also discusses how the families' rhythms and timings of mobility change when children grow older.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines return mobilities of young Ghanaian men who are forcefully relocated to Ghana. It explores the transportation, speed, duration, and violence of relocation versus the legal mobility categorisations and discusses return vis-à-vis other parts of their journeys and post-return life.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines involuntary return (im)mobilities, with a focus on young Ghanaian men who have engaged in precarious migration projects and are forcefully relocated to Ghana from North Africa and Western countries. Inspired by Cresswell's notion of a politics of mobility, I explore the means of transportation, the speed and duration of the relocation processes, the modes of enforcement and violence encountered (friction), and the legal categorisations of return; likewise I examine the affective and embodied experience of (im)mobility en route and 'back home'. Four types of relocation processes are identified: deportation by air, overland deportation, evacuation, and flight from conflict. While these returns differ according to speed, friction and legal categorization, they share an experiential dimension of taking place against the movers' intentions and will.

Based on three fieldworks in Ghana between 2012 and 2015, I further analyse the shifting temporal, spatial and affective dimensions of these return mobilities, linking them with the 'outbound' and onwards journeys and post-return life. Some returnees find themselves in the same or worse social and economic situations as prior to their return, often engaging in precarious mobile livelihoods in Ghana. Others succeed in social and economic regeneration, (re-)positioning themselves as respectable persons who no longer engage in high-risk or irregular mobility. Many returnees are engaged in several migration projects over time, however, regardless of the mode of return. A temporal and long-term perspective is therefore crucial to understand the pacing as well as the temporal and spatial trajectories of return and post-return life.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will interrogate the factors catalyzing, as well as the ensuing implications of, an attenuation of mobility among professionals whose education and/or careers have hitherto required frequent and ongoing long-distance travel.

Paper long abstract:

What happens when people whose lives have been significantly fashioned around the frequent and ongoing long-distance travel required by their educations and careers face a change of circumstances in which this mobility is either no longer necessary, possible and/or desirable? Drawing on two studies of peripatetic professionals, this paper will review factors, such as life course transitions, which can prompt this shift in mobility patterns. It will also probe some of the social and personal implications of assuming more sedentary lifestyles for people whose work-based mobility has hitherto played a significant factor in configuring their daily routines, identities and/or professional as well as personal networks -i.e., who have spent a considerable period of their adult lives 'dwelling in travel/mobility'(Clifford 1991; Urry 2000)? What impact does this shift have on their activities, involvements, relationships, as well as conceptions of home and belonging? Where does someone who has previously lived in a succession of locales or who has spent a substantial portion of their annual round away from their official residence, settle when the impetus for this kind of mobility has abated? And what do their choices about where to land and with whom to establish or maintain contacts reveal about the continuities, disjunctures and inequalities that are entailed in different patterns of spatial mobility?

Paper short abstract:

The Brexit Referendum prompted many French settlers in London to express resentment -- the feeling of being rejected and no longer "at home." This paper sheds light on the role of emotions in the pacing of mobility through a case study of relatively privileged migrants facing an uncertain future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper sheds light on the role of emotions in the pacing of mobility practices through a case study of French settlers in London, a city bearing the traces of several periods of intense migration from France, and their reactions to the 2016 Brexit Referendum. There are approximately 300,000 French people living in London today, many of whom arrived with the benefits of mobility associated with being EU citizens. An acceleration of movement to Great Britain that began in the 1990s was layered upon that of the Normans, Huguenots, Royalists fleeing the French Revolution, exiles from the Franco-Prussian War, and the Free French government of World War II. Brexit has intensified an overall feeling of uncertainty about their future in London among a wide range of French settlers, including both newcomers and more long-term residents. Many of those with whom I have interacted during ethnographic research begun in 2015 have long enjoyed a sense of being desired residents in a desirable location, and benefited from being in close physical proximity to France. This only intensified the feelings of betrayal and rejection they experienced after the vote. In light of the changing legal and socio-economic landscape in which they dwell, French "middling" and relatively privileged (Amit 2007; Raj 2003) "EU movers" (Recchio 2015) in London are now compelled to reflect upon their positionality and trajectories. Emotions (desires, aspirations, anxieties, and refusals) are central to their deliberations and plans about whether or not, and when, to leave London.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is interested in the pacing of family mobility. The presentation looks at how family mobility is negotiated and lived between a specific set of migration infrastructure and culturally embedded family dynamics.

Paper long abstract:

With the opening of the Chinese markets, more and more Europeans move to China for a shorter or longer period during their working life. These individuals are often skilled (or highly skilled), holding a higher position in a company and living a relatively well-off life in China. The economic lens has dominantly been applied to explain the mobility of migrant professionals, while the social and cultural embeddedness of such mobility has seldom been highlighted.

My paper is embedded in the migration infrastructure approach which sees migration as a "multi-faceted space of mediation" in which various actors and their respective logics shape its process, direction and outcome (Xiang & Lindquist 2014). Based on in-depth interviews with around 30 Swedish intra-corporate transfer family migrants, the paper specifically focuses on the moving family that is channeled through the various dimensions of the specific infrastructure between locations in Sweden and two Chinese metropolises, Shanghai and Beijing. As the paper shows family dynamics play a crucial role in the mobility of these professionals; they do so not only for their decision to migrate, but they also impact on the timing and direction of the migration (outmigration, return migration, onward migration) as well as the duration of stay (or im/mobility). Hence, while the infrastructural dimensions largely reveal how migrants move, a mobility/time perspective coupled with the understanding of the family as a cultural entity offers an in-depth understanding of crucial moments that pace their mobility.