RURAL–URBAN SPATIAL INTERACTION IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: LONG‐DISTANCE MOBILITY CHANGES,DESIRES AND RESTRICTIONS OVER TWO DECADES IN RURAL PHILIPPINES

The spatial interaction between rural and urban areas is intense in the Global South. While research into how this interaction influences livelihood opportunities is extensive, longitudinal identification and analysis of rural people's long‐distance mobility is rudimentary. This is problematic given the possible repercussions of a greater flow of people for transport system management (congestion, emissions, investments, social exclusion, etc.). Based on longitudinal survey data from 1990 to 2008/2009, this article addresses this gap by exploring how the long‐distance mobility behaviour of households and individuals has changed over a period of intensified rural–urban interaction in a rural Philippine area. The article furthermore addresses the individuals' mobility desires and restrictions related to long‐distance travel. The results indicate that both accessibility effects and effects related to information and communication technology (ICT), concentration of activities and opportunities towards major cities, age, labour market, and economic situation. Over time, particularly since improved accessibility conditions have enabled much faster travelling, more people have come to travel more frequently (although a suppressed demand is still present and inequalities are considerable) to more distant destinations, major cities in particular, for mainly social motives. A recent countertrend is evident, partly arising from mobile phones replacing physical movement. The increase in private vehicle ownership has so far been slow, so modal choice is still highly sustainable. Overall, the findings support core ideas derived from the new economic geography, but also notes, with earlier studies in transport geography, that travel time is a prime consideration.     

Childhoods past and present: anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and contemporary parenting practices

ABSTRACT

Outdoor play is considered an essential aspect of a ‘proper childhood’. However, unsupervised outside play is declining, a decline attributed to parental anxieties about children’s safety. However what drives these anxieties and how this impacts on contemporary outdoor play is less clear. Our paper seeks to explore this through an analysis of adult narratives generated through digital map-making and forum discussion about where they played as children and where they would allow a child to play unsupervised now. Our analysis explores the nature of these narratives and pivotal moments in which adults articulated the disconnect between their own recollections of idyllic spatial freedom and the spatial restrictions they place on contemporary children. This offers a rich understanding of how parents navigate conflicting cultural imperatives on risk-avoidance and children’s rights to a ‘good’ childhood.     

Imperial Mobility: The Colonial Worlds of Sir Anthony and Lady Jeanie Musgrave

Mobility—of people, products, and capital—is a common trope of the contemporary globalized world. Yet, mobility is not only a current phenomenon, but has an integral role in the constitution of past empires. In particular, the governance of empire requires the mobility of administrators and their families: people who, in the service of empire, travel between metropole and periphery, and even more typically, in the multiple circuits between peripheries. The life of Sir Anthony Musgrave, a colonial administrator who served in posts in the Caribbean, Canada, South Africa, and Australia, exemplifies the movement which empire demands. In their travels around the British world of the late nineteenth century, the Musgraves—Sir Anthony, his American-born wife Lady Jeanie, and their three sons—engaged with empire in ways both physical and conceptual. In this essay, I explore how the Musgraves’ mobility contributed to a sense of overlapping colonial worlds that were supported and challenged by the rise of communication and transport technologies, the flows of international labor, and the competing demands of national and imperial identities.     

'MOVING AROUND': THE SOCIAL AND SPATIAL MOBILITY OF YOUTH IN LUSAKA

Claims have recently been made for a 'mobilities paradigm' which is challenging the relative 'a-mobile' focus of much of the social sciences. The agenda drawn up for this mobilities paradigm is clearly based on Northern trends with little consideration of the South. African populations have always been mobile but little is known about the mobility of urban populations and in particular of the youth, who constitute a large proportion of the population. This paper explores the daily and residential mobility of young people in Lusaka building upon interviews held with low- and middle-income youth. The aim is to contribute to discussions of: how mobility varies by gender and class; the links between spatial mobility and social and economic mobility; the nature of the relationship between patterns of mobility and residential structure; and how examining mobility can illuminate many other aspects of young people's lives. Overall the picture emerging from Lusaka is rather bleak. In a context of spiralling economic decline and rising HIV/AIDS rates, the social mobility of youth is predominantly downwards which is reflected in the residential and daily mobility patterns of the young people. There is a strong link between young people's mobility and their livelihoods, an aspect of mobility that is widespread in the South but largely overlooked by the emerging mobilities paradigm.     

跨国精英移民的日常生活实践与根植性家的营造

流动性背景下，跨国精英移民如何在迁入地实践、重构和感知家，以实现长久居留既是现实问题也是学术问题。本文援引“根植性家（rooted home）”的地理学概念，采用半结构化深度访谈和观察法等质性研究方法，以根植性类型的跨国精英移民为研究对象，探究其日常生活实践与家的营造。研究发现：①跨国精英移民对家的根植性理解并非意味着他们“不流动”，而是在流动中与“过去的家”保持联系与平衡。②跨国精英移民对家的根植性实践表现在使用怀旧性的日常生活实践策略，涵盖物质性、情感性和外部性维度，其中物质性维度较易实现，而情感性和外部性维度即使是精英移民也难以实现。③流动性加深了对根植性类型跨国精英移民对“过去的家”的认同，并影响其对现在和未来的家的感知和去向的思考。研究借助日常生活视角补充和完善了“根植性家”的理论与实证，也为跨国精英移民的深度研究提供了可供参考的范本。     

‘So that we don't spoil them’: understanding children's everyday mobility through parents’ affective practices

ABSTRACT

Children's everyday mobility and freedom of movement have been closely linked to parental practices, or what has been referred to as parental ‘mobility permits’ or ‘mobility licences’. Most research tends to focus on parental restrictions, while this article explores the affective practices Swedish middle-class parents use in order to enhance their children's mobility, i.e. how emotions are perceived as enabling parents’ and children's spatial experiences and thus their feelings of safety and security; as well as how emotions are talked of as disabling or disrupting the potential for children's mobility. These affective practices are analysed in relation to the parents’ self-reflexive positioning on a continuum between ‘the helicopter parent’ and ‘the engaged and enabling parent’. The material for the article is comprised of 33 interviews with the children's parents, carried out within a larger ethnographic research project on children's everyday mobility in Sweden.     

Children’s independent mobility: the role of school-based social capital

ABSTRACT

Research has documented the decline in children’s independent mobility (CIM) globally. CIM is a measure of the level of a child’s freedom to move about his or her local neighbourhood without direct adult supervision. This paper explores the effectiveness of three intervention programmes to change travel behaviours of children to and from school in 26 Catholic primary schools in a range of urban and regional settings in Victoria, Australia. Using pre and post intervention surveys with 1600 students and parents, and interviews with school principals, we measured the influence of a range of individual, social, and built environment factors on the effectiveness of these intervention programmes. The degree of social connectedness of the school and the individual was found to have the most impact on the effectiveness of the intervention programmes to change behaviours, while the interventions themselves were not greatly effective without being embedded in a supportive school culture.     

Mapping the Nation for War: Landscape in Danish Military Cartography 1800–2000

The focus in this article is on the way the post eighteenth-century cartographic turn in military practices developed into a particular military perception of landscape that continues to set the standard of Danish topographical mapping. My argument is that the development of modern topographical maps is the result of a long process of military comprehension and measurement of the terrain in order to conduct field operations. The demand for spatial data for actual or potential military operations had a direct impact on the specifications of maps produced by the military, as landscape representation was adapted to meet operational demands and as lessons learned from war experience were incorporated. In this and other respects, the development of Danish topographical maps in and after the nineteenth century followed the general trend of European military mapping as regards methods and standards.     

THE VIRTUALIZATION OF URBAN YOUNG PEOPLE'S MOBILITY PRACTICES: A TIME‐GEOGRAPHIC TYPOLOGY

A time‐geographic approach, including time–space diaries and in‐depth interviews, is used to investigate the daily use and implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among a group of Swedish urban youth. We identify individual variations and nuances in ICT‐based practices in our respondents' social and spatial contexts. Using individual cases and detailed time‐geographic trajectories, we demonstrate how daily communicative actions – physical and virtual – are combined and integrated. From this we identify four ideal types of mobility practices: (i) home‐oriented, heavy Internet users; (ii) physically mobile, heavy mobile phone users; (iii) physically mobile, heavy Internet and mobile phone users; and (iv) home‐oriented, rarely mobile people (virtually and physically).