Mobility Justice and Sustainable Futures

The theme of this special issue is mobility justice. Mobility justice is a conceptual lens that has grown in importance over the last decade and is extremely relevant to thinking and planning for net zero sustainable futures. Mobility justice is an important consideration as we contemplate how to accommodate everyday life in the face of climate extremes; how will we achieve aspirational visions of low-carbon, liveable, localised and inclusive communities? One of the underlying themes of mobility justice is a questioning of how we can create more just worlds in terms of not only freedom of movement but also equality of movement. Of course, social and transport justice is nothing new, but as we learn from scholar Mimi Sheller (2018) the world we live in is a manifestation of the material and relational outcomes of a colonial, extractive and patriarchal history of mobility and immobility. Our current mobility systems are a direct reflection of our history. Yet, in the post-pandemic world, now is the perfect time for reflection on how we might address the epistemic social, spatial and economic injustices of mobility systems around the globe (Lindberg et al. 2023).

In the early 2000s there was a focused interest in what became known as the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ where everything was ‘on-the-move’ (Urry 2000). Soon, places and spaces were viewed more as relational and hybrid forms of multiple intersecting mobilities rather than as bounded and static nodes (Massey 1995). Transportation, auto and aero-mobility, and commuting became more than taken-for-granted patterns and modes of movement but instead illustrated how mobility, places and subjectivities were intimately interconnected (Cresswell 2006; Cresswell and Merriman 2011). Where, how, and if, we travelled was considered a part of how we made sense of ourselves and our place in the world (Merriman 2015). Sheller and Urry (2006) led the way in exploring mobility beyond the conventions and confines of transport planning giving rise to the field of mobility studies. Within mobility studies, scholars soon showcased the embodied and affective dimensions of movement (Bissell 2010a, 2010b, 2014), paired mobility with immobility (Adey 2006; Hannam, Mimi, and Urry 2006), broadened the scope of how we understand different forms of mobility (Spinney 2006; Vannini 2011), considered how mobility may be forced or voluntary (Gill, Caletrio, and Mason 2013); and reflected on the way that mobility is relationally produced, political, and an outcome of the production of power (Cook and Butz 2019).

This signalled an interest in all things mobile, which eventually resulted in recognising the injustices of movement – where the movement of some was predicated on the immobility of others (Sheller 2018). Within the discipline of Geography, studies have made links between ‘transport’ and ‘mobilities’ (Cidell and Prytherch 2015; Kwan and Schwanen 2016; Shaw and Hesse 2010). These conversations have grown to embrace mobility justice as a concept distinct from transport justice and equity (Verlinghieri and Schwanen 2020). This conceptual framing offers a more comprehensive and overarching approach to the social, political and environmental problems that are currently being faced (Henderson 2020). It is a term which encourages a deeper consideration of the uneven movement of people, things and ideas across a range of scales from the macro (think of shipping and trade routes, migration flows) and meso level (government policies, energy and transport infrastructures) to the micro level (the lived experiences of raced, gendered, aged or dis/abled bodies; non-humans) (Waitt and Harada 2023).

Mobility justice is therefore an intersectional approach to address multiple forms of injustice that persist in the materiality of our present lives: it brings together work from multiple academic disciplines, research traditions, and theoretical perspectives. This conceptual starting point broadens the way we can approach research problems. Consider for example, how the act of turning on air conditioning at home is caught up in a web of interconnections that bring together injustices of settler colonialism and urbanisation settlement patterns, cities of automobile dependence, detrimental modes and types of resource extraction, high emitters of greenhouse gases, and systems of governance, supply and use which rely on trope of what constitutes a ‘good life’ in western industrialised democracies. The concept of mobility justice goes beyond understanding networks, borders, flows, blockages or patterns of movement. Rather, this approach promotes deliberation and reflection on how mobilities are an outcome of power and inequality (Sheller 2020).

What does a geographical take on mobility justice provide?

While the transdisciplinarity of mobility justice studies has been highlighted, in this issue we seek to make further contributions to how we can approach mobility justice from a geographical position. By giving attention to the unique characteristics of the cultural and social spaces of mobility, we open up the potential for discussions about the importance of particular places, practices, subjectivities that are enabled or constrained by forms of mobility. The Australian context provides a rich milieu from which to explore our close neighbours in the Pacific and New Zealand, and to the north in Indonesia. We are able to examine the mobility practices, which enable our ongoing partnerships and collaborations with these populations. Enriching our understandings of the mobility practices which underpin our relationships enables us to develop richer insights into how, why, when, and what matters for creating just and equitable outcomes and opportunities in the region. Equally important are understandings that arise through a more fine-grained examination of our own regional and remote areas across the States and Territories. Australian geographers have provided contributions to these developing ideas (Bissell et al. 2023). The starting point for this ‘regional’ perspective is on the unique sets of circumstances that make up the social and cultural fabric of Australian small towns including the effect of our historical settler colonial legacy (Clarsen 2015; 2017); Indigenous perspectives (Suliman et al. 2019); employment configurations (Straughan, Bissell, and Gorman-Murray 2020); and affective and embodied pushes and pulls that influence everyday mobility decisions (Boyd and Harada 2022; Clement and Waitt 2018). As mobility justice as a concept evolves in this part of the world it takes on a distinctive shape that can supplement European, North American, and Global South perspectives and lead to further theoretical and pragmatic elaborations that can help to address current social and environmental challenges.

With this in mind, it is with much pleasure that I introduce the Australian Geographers’ special issue on Mobility Justice. The special issue is an outcome of a 2-day symposium on Mobility Justice held at the University of Wollongong in June 2022 as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage project, and generously funded by the Geographical Society of NSW. This was one of the first in-person events to be held after Covid restrictions were lifted and we all rather cautiously felt our way back into the world. It marked a return to almost normal post-pandemic life for many of us who had been sheltering at home. There was something almost magical about being on the beautiful grounds of the Wollongong campus on a cold, crisp morning close to the escarpment and Mt Keira – both significant sites for the Wodi Wodi people of the area. Aunty Joyce Donovan provided a Welcome to Country on the opening day with many heartfelt words about how mobility justice for the Aboriginal community is an issue that is relevant for both young and elderly, and in remote, rural and urban communities.

This event was a first for the University of Wollongong and it brought together a diverse group of scholars all passionate about mobility and justice, and we enthusiastically considered the many different dimensions and manifestations that we study in our work and encounter in our everyday lives. We were fortunate to have two very exciting keynote presentations – Dr Carol Farbotko (University of Melbourne) and Professor Mimi Sheller (The Global School Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts) to start the proceedings for each day of the symposium.

The hybrid event provided a very welcome forum for discussion of subjects as diverse as bus stops without shelters (Kurt Iveson, University of Sydney), hotels as detention centres (Andrew Burridge, Macquarie University), cycling territories (Lance Barry, University of Wollongong), and the fate of regional airports (Lyn Gallacher, University of Melbourne). Also included were discussions of transport policies in Jakarta (Isti Hidayati & Wendy Tan, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia & Western Norway University of Applied Sciences), Covid border closures and strandings (Maria Borovnik, Massey University, NZ), pedestrian restrictions in Paris during the pandemic (Meric Kirmizi, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Turkey), and the provision and regulation of wheelchairs and mobility scooters in Australia (David Sinclair, Assistive Technology Services Australasia). Other presenters provided insights into on-demand transport services for disadvantaged groups (Ainsley Hughes, University of Newcastle), shared transport solutions for social housing residents (Helen Fitt, Angela Curl & Simon Kingham, University of Otago, University of Canterbury, NZ), automated vehicles and driver-car relations (Brendan Doody, University of Oxford UK), and student/tourism mobilities in Europe (Chiara Rabbiosi University of Padova/Melbourne). The interactions and discussions over the course of the two days were inspirational and I believe helped to generate greater appreciation for the breadth and depth of the subject of mobility justice.

In this special issue, the articles provide a glimpse of the complexities of mobility justice through the generous work of those who presented at the symposium and then followed up with a paper for this issue. The scale of the subject is reflected in the order of the papers – from the global scale of politics and neo-liberal corporate interests to the permeable, corporeal, and intimate boundaries of the body. The depth of papers also speaks to the technical, social, cultural, more-than-human aspects of im/mobilities experienced as injustices. We hope that the works presented here may inspire you, and that mobility justice will continue to be a topic that attracts much research interest and attention.

The first paper by Mimi Sheller speaks to mobility regimes. From a planetary perspective Sheller thinks about the interconnections between the high-emission lifestyles and movements of the Global North, settler colonialism, slavery, the legacy of extractive industries and the modern energy culture of the Anthropocene. Here, the built and natural environments are shaped by the flows of energy, materials, capital and ideas that play out in uneven ways, subjugating the values and rights of the poor and marginalised. In this paper, Sheller links mobility justice to climate coloniality by building on feminist, Indigenous and Black studies of climate ethics. Sheller advocates for the ‘ongoing communing of relational worlds of care’ to help imagine alternative futures. Thus, the opening paper sets the scene for broadening our horizons on how we understand mobility and mobility justice.

This challenge is taken up by Luis Everess. Taking a theoretical perspective, Everess suggests in his paper that climate im/mobilities research has much to gain from an engagement with the mobility paradigm. Everess proposes four ways that this theoretical engagement could enrich understandings about the reasons that people decide to move, or to remain in response to climate change. Everess suggests that by developing a more nuanced conceptual approach that recognises human agency, mobile relations, cultural practices and the circulation of power that climate mobilities research can move beyond the current conceptual constraints that position climate mobilities as largely an issue of physical migration.

Following on from this conceptual piece, is a paper that speaks to the way that mobilities have lived outcomes and are shot through with differing levels of agency. Luis Hernando Lozano Paredez discusses the way that technologies have facilitated new social alliances and strategies that allow people to structure Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in the context of South America. Lozano Paredez points to how these grassroots organisational complexes are emerging in other contexts such as in Europe and Australia. The potential for these groups of generally low-income, precarious gig economy workers to be engaged in developing policy frameworks around the regulatory and aspirational goals of transport policy remains to be harnessed, and this paper elicits consideration of the way that power is negotiated and relational.

The next paper considers im/mobilities in relation to institutional barriers to movement. Johanna Thomas-Maude writes about the movement and stasis of medically trained doctors in the Global South and highlights the barriers they face when emigrating to Global North contexts. Thomas-Maude provides an explanation of the processes that result in ‘brain waste’ – where doctors are unable to practice because of regulatory hierarchies. This paper points to the structural inequalities that reinforce conceptions of the competencies and abilities of doctors trained in the Global South and which privilege those trained in the Global North, meaning that communities are deprived of knowledge and skills that are much needed in an understaffed health workforce.

Meanwhile, in the Australian urban context, Jennifer Kent’s paper explores how institutionalised ways of travelling are juxtaposed against ideas of ecological or environmental justice as a form of care. Her discussion of the reasons that parents continue to drive private vehicles as a form of care for self and family will be of interest to readers who are themselves parents, as well as planners and other professionals that deal with the congestion and emissions that result from these decisions. Interesting questions are posed in this paper about how we might overcome the paradoxes of care for a more sustainable low carbon economy and lifestyle, and care for self and family.

From a more regional Australian perspective, Harada and Waitt provide a discussion of how people with disabilities negotiate everyday spaces and what this means in terms of the politics of exclusion/inclusion. They discuss the results from their empirical research project with people who use motorised wheelchairs and identify the barriers to public space. They propose that the desire for social connections and independence is what motivates people to access public spaces but those normative ideas that privilege standing and walking bodies result in public spaces that do not adequately accommodate wheelchairs. They point to the interconnections between the built form of public spaces, the need for planning and coordination to achieve journeys, and the way that stereotypes and stigma surrounding disability make it difficult for people to utilise public transport to participate in social and economic life.

With a window to the Pacific, Carol Farbotko elucidates the cultural dimensions of climate im/mobilities in her discussion of the islands of Tuvalu. As the last official place to remain free of the Covid pandemic until February 2023, and with a government strategy to prevent the spread of the virus, there was considerable internal migration. Sharing of land by Indigenous groups from other islands facilitated the movement of much of the population from the city centre to more rural islands. This paper discusses how the strong border closures, remoteness and im/mobilities resulted in a rebuilding of community through a focus on cultural customs and traditions, strengthening connections to place, feelings of security and empowerment, and that this has the potential to counter dominant narratives that position the people of Tuvalu as vulnerable climate change refugees.

Still in the Pacific region, the next paper by Ruth Faleolo provides deep insights into the way that mobility practices of Tongan elders are intertwined with cultural ideas about collectives. Faleolo recounts how family members negotiate the regulatory requirements of a trans- Tasman mobility route to Australia that allows them to sustain familial relations and what this means in terms of understandings of collective wellbeing. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is illustrated as an event that not only disrupted the accepted mobility practices of Tongan elders but caused a rethinking of the importance of the relations that uphold ideas of family, shared care and collective good. Along with the previous paper, Faleolo’s paper helps to uncover the unique geographical and cultural contexts that nuance our understandings of mobility justice.

From a tourism point of view, Yan Huang and Yungang Liu’s paper provides an insight into how Chinese patterns of settlement are caught up in understandings of political allegiances and the activation of a geo-political identity for tourists to the Xisha islands (the Paracel islands in the South China Sea). Huang discusses how the restriction on movement to these islands is understood as reflective of the political and territorial powers of different nations and how citizens experience tourism in the area as a form of geo-political activation. The little-known policies of tourism in these rather remote areas provide an interesting insight into how Chinese people position themselves as patriotic citizens who may experience affects such as love and pride or conversely may feel suspicion or scepticism about differentiated rights to travel.

The last two papers in this issue bring us to an altogether more intimate scale from which to consider mobility justice. Kaya Barry and Samid Sulliman provide a visual exploration of the plight of the eastern sea bird in the context of Brisbane waterways, and they encourage us to consider more-than-human mobilities. They point to the interactions and interconnections between human mobility and the mobility of this migratory bird species through how mobility paths intertwine. The images used in this paper are provocative and give texture to the built and regulatory environments that are held up as contested spaces for the Far Eastern Curlew. The discussion in this paper focuses on how communities have been instrumental in bringing attention to the issues of non-human rights to habitation.

The final paper is one which brings home the enormity of scale for thinking about mobility justice. Michelle Duffy, Susan Yell, Larissa Walker, Damian Morgan and Matthew Carroll discuss the Hazelwood mine fire of 2014 in Victoria, Australia that burned for 45 days. This paper discusses how local communities were impacted by smoke, ash, and elevated carbon monoxide levels creating a range of significant health hazards that are still not fully understood. They discuss how the smoke from the fire infiltrated homes, offices, and bodily boundaries and that community members were powerless to prevent such intrusions because of the nano-scale of smoke particulates. Such smoke mobilities, were at the same time enabled by the immobility of this disadvantaged community. Government advice to just leave the area did not adequately consider the impossibility of leaving homes, workplaces, and schools with vulnerable community members even more impacted by what they term the ‘trans-corporeal toxicity’. This is a fine-grained reflection on the political dimensions of uneven mobility in times of crisis.

Conclusion

The papers in this collection bring attention to the multiple scales through which we might approach mobility justice. From the grassroots movements of entrepreneurs taking advantage of technologies to make a living, the importance of trans-pacific mobility for maintaining culture, the rights of non-humans as they struggle to survive, or the invisibility of particulate matter that permeates bodies, we are all caught up in deliberate and unintended circuits of mobility. Ideas, practices, materials, things, money and the non-human are shot through with mobilities that create opportunities, stimulate or constrain feelings of belonging, and often times launch us on trajectories with unknown destinations. As we face a new era of politics where high carbon lifestyles will need to be altered, we might take time to think more clearly about where the circuits of mobility have brought us to, and more importantly where we might aim to arrive in the future. The geographies of mobility justice offer a lens through which to approach the ontological, epistemological and material conditions of everyday movement. In an era of globalisation, climate crisis and the transition to net zero futures we must address the disparities which play out in who can and cannot move, and find ways to undo existing social, racial and climate injustices (Sheller 2020). I hope that the papers in this issue will stimulate conversations across disciplines, and lead to further studies that can help address the urgent social and environmental problems of our time.

As a final word, I want to thank the authors for their contributions to this issue and to express my gratitude to several people who made the symposium possible including Professor David Bissell for his help and support in organising the symposium; Dr Bronwyn Bate for her consistent support and enthusiasm; the Geographical Society of NSW and the Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space for financial support; Mr Nao Harada for his extraordinary emergency catering prowess; and Associate Professor Kathy Mee for her support and advice for bringing together this special issue.