Mobility data justice

Abstract

Mobility experiences are becoming intrinsically linked with digital and data experiences. Being mobile increasingly involves the production, storage, processing and sharing of data (consciously or not), from car sensor data for diagnostics and insurance apps for driving, to ticketing apps for public transport, urban micromobility share schemes, Google maps, fitness and wellbeing apps, Internet of Things sensors, AI in migration “management“, or air pollution data. The ‘datafication’ of mobility raises new questions with regards to justice. What kinds of inequalities emerge at the intersection of mobilities and datafication? Whose mobility gets included and excluded through data collection and sharing, why and how? How are mobilities enabled and restricted through data? How are access and ownership to mobility and data changing? What about the mobility of data in relation to justice? This article links scholarship on mobility justice and data justice to develop a mobility data justice framework. It closes with a discussion of critical issues for mobility data justice and develops an agenda for future research in this area. The lens of social justice helps to understand the multiple ways power and (in) equalities are transformed or amplified at the intersection of mobility and data.

Keywords:

• Mobility
• data
• social justice
• smart mobility
• transport
• mobility justice
• digital society

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Julia M. Hildebrand for their input on this paper.