Learning mobility: high-school exchange programs as a part of transnational mobility†

Long-term high-school exchange is a popular way to go abroad for German youth (2.5% of 16-year-olds go abroad for 6–12 months). The ongoing research project is dealing with the long-term impact of high-school exchange programs on further mobility of the participants. Using an online survey among 3000 former exchange students and 30 qualitative focus interviews, it is shown that mobility reproduces itself. Six years after the exchange, about 80% of the respondents have been abroad again for a period of longer than six weeks. This is seen as part of a normalization of transnational social practices.     

第二居所居民对“家”的感知与认同研究

流动性语境下的"家"不再被视为稳定不变的概念,而是被不断建构的社会空间。第二居所赋予了传统社会中的"家"更丰富的动态内涵与独特的象征意义。文章以避暑旅游地重庆仙女山镇为例,研究第二居所避暑居民对"家"的空间想象与感知,及产生的特定认同。研究认为,第二居所避暑居民实现了对舒适空间的功能认同、对精英空间的社会认同及对家庭空间的情感认同,三者凸显出家的休闲属性、社会属性与日常属性的有机统一。第二居所表明了一种逃离现代性及满足休闲需求的旅游形式,也是一种规律性、重复性和循环性的生活方式,同时彰显出对身份、情感及真实性的渴望。第二居所的居住过程是家的解构与重构的过程,与第一居所及流动空间一起,构成了完整的"家"。     

Embodied bicycle commuters in a car world

As an initiative to increase cycling, bike to work (BTW) events emphasize a pragmatic approach in which people learn through sensory experience. Pragmatism contends that the lived experience of the commuter within fluid geographies of social and physical conditions informs commuting knowledge and behavior. I researched how bicyclists participate in the 2012 BTW event in Lake Tahoe (USA) and how these experiences facilitate the process of becoming bicycle commuters. My study included participant observations, interviews, video observations, and route mapping. I analyzed this data with thematic and narrative analyses. I find that the BTW event illuminates bicycling, a normally invisible practice in a car world, and creates temporary bicycle-friendly spaces that provide the embodied experience and knowledge of bicycle commuting within context. Through this lived experience, participants can break free from unconscious car-based patterns and become embodied bicycle commuters who engage in active renegotiations of their commuting practices.     

Student geographies and homemaking: personal belonging(s) and identities

Studies of the ‘geographies of students’ have become increasingly prevalent across the social sciences and are particularly concerned with the predilection for young UK University undergraduates to be mobile in their institutional choice. A more recent focus within this work has been upon student identities, with attention given to how the spaces to which students move and in which they settle can have both positive and negative consequences for the evolution of the student identity, and how such identities are often framed within the context of social activities; learning environments; friendship networks; or other sociocultural factors. This paper contributes to these discussions by considering the role of student accommodation – a site which often remains on the periphery of discussions of student identities – in offering students opportunities to construct, adapt and manage their student identities. This adds to the important contemporary geographies of student accommodation, which are currently debating, among others, purpose-built student accommodation and the broad housing ‘careers’ and strategies of students. In contrast, this paper explores the micro-geographies of student accommodation (and more specifically, the bedroom) to highlight its value in providing young, mobile students with an anchor within which they can draw together their learner, social and domestic dispositions into one geographical location.     

Development of a systems model to visualise the complexity of children's independent mobility

Substantial changes to the built environment, urbanisation patterns, and societal norms have contributed to limiting children's opportunities for being independently mobile. Several linear causal pathway models have been developed to understand the influences on children's independent mobility; however feedback loops between and within the various levels of influence cannot be modelled using such an approach. The purpose of this paper is to refine the interrelationships of factors related to children's independent mobility, taking into account earlier models, broader contextual factors, recent children's geographies literature, and feedback loops. Systems model components were informed by attributes known to influence children's independent mobility, related qualitative findings, and the development of a framework that could lend itself to multilevel modelling approaches. This systems model may provide a useful structure for identifying how best to develop and monitor interventions to halt the declining rates of children's independent mobility.     

西方城市居住行为研究进展及其对中国的启示

改革开放40年以来,住房市场化转型使中国拥有了一个相对独特的住房制度环境,对城市空间结构、居民居住状况和民生福祉等各方面都产生了深远影响。中央政府明确强调需加快研究建立符合国情、适应市场规律的房地产基础性制度和长效机制,而这需要对城市居民微观居住行为进行深入研究。居住行为作为城市地理学的重要议题,近年来,相关研究虽不断涌现,但尚缺乏系统的理论梳理和实证研究总结。本文利用知识图谱可视化刻画了居住行为研究热点的演化,从居住迁移、住房产权获得、住房生涯三方面对西方相关研究进展和前沿进行评述,并进一步梳理了居住行为与城市空间的关系,以深化对城市居住空间分异机制的理解;在总结中西方差异的基础上,对中国现有实证研究进行了回顾;立足于中国国情和现有住房政策,分别从理论、内容、数据和方法三个方面对未来中国居住行为研究方向进行展望,旨在引起学术界对居住行为的关注,为推动中国居住行为研究理论构建、理解社会空间重构机制提供参考。     

Spaces of the street: Socio-spatial mobility and exclusion of youth in Recife

The ‘street’ and ‘youth’ have long been issues of social concern and the subject of research both in Brazil and elsewhere. The perception and experiences of youth in relation to the street, however, and the corresponding gender and class relations which permeate these, remain an under-researched topic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in low- and middle-income neighbourhoods in Recife, this paper shows how the street consists of different spaces and how the youth experience corresponding layers of socio-spatial exclusions and inclusions which vary over time.     

Negotiating spatial identities: mobile perspectives on street life in uganda

Previous geographical research with street children has principally focused on their micro-geographies in the city. This paper draws on nomadic and episodic processes of homeless mobility, to explore street children's geographies from a wider social, spatial and temporal perspective. By examining street life in Kampala, Uganda as a continued negotiation of public/private and street/non-street locations, the fluid nature of street children's identity is illustrated. Over time, movement between spaces, such as divergent city niches, institutions, homes and other towns, is often subject to power relations operating in street/non-street spaces with each requiring conformity to a different set of values and behaviours. The paper demonstrates how this results in children's street identity changing as they move through the street life path.     

Vacuums and Veils: Engaging with Statistically ‘Invisible’ Indigenous Population Dynamics in Yamatji Country,Western Australia

Although much is known about broad trends in Australian Indigenous geographies, particular aspects of Indigenous spatiality continue to be rendered invisible by standard statistical measures. The national census, for example, only registers moves at one and five year intervals. Any mobilities enacted within these timeframes are not measured. Yet these statistically ‘un‐captured’ mobility processes are often integral to Indigenous lived experiences and have a significant dialectical relationship to government service delivery processes. Understanding these population dynamics is therefore a critical, though underdeveloped, consideration within geographic enquiry and contemporary debates about State and Federal Indigenous policy directions and initiatives. This paper presents qualitative research findings regarding local experiences and perceptions of Indigenous spatiality in Yamatji country, Western Australia. Within this grounded framework, the paper builds on existing literature by drawing out some of the common spatial, temporal and demographic characteristics, or dimensions, of statistically un‐captured Indigenous mobility processes. With this discursive, albeit generalised and malleable, typology established, the analysis turns to a reflection on some of the methodological and conceptual complexities of measurement, interpretation, and translation of these mobility processes across the policy‐research nexus.     

迁居对单位老年人日常生活社会网络的影响

社会网络对于老年人的日常活动与生活质量起着至关重要的作用,关系到老年人的身心健康、主观幸福感以及生活满意度等多个维度。本文以单位老年人为研究对象,通过深入观察、追踪研究、结构访谈、案例剖析等质性研究方法,对比迁居前后单位老年人的日常生活与社会交往状态,分析迁居后单位老年人应对新居住空间与原有社会交往空间分离下的日常活动与交往模式的调整与变化,重点剖析迁居老年人与原单位社区之间的互动,进而归纳迁居对单位老年人社会网络的影响机制,并从老年人迁居与社会交往的互动关系的角度提出相关的老龄政策。