Leaving or staying: (Im)mobilities in a changing Europe

After the lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, human mobility has regained momentum both internationally and nationally, for both permanent migration and temporary movements. At the same time, new global trends have emerged, such as the re-evaluation of rural areas as places that provide a better quality of life, an increase in remote work, the rise of digital nomadism, and the search for new lifestyles that ensure a better balance between work and personal time. There is also the emergence of a new value system in which perceived quality of life is influenced by many factors beyond just economic ones.

The Globility-Global Change and Human Mobility Commission, in proposing this session, aims to explore the various forms of (im)mobility that have characterized the European space in recent years. The session intends to discuss both subjective and territorial factors that influence (im)mobility and the impacts that (im)mobility has on both origin and destination areas.

We will consider (im)mobility as the result of a free choice or a lack of options, the influence that personality traits have on (im)mobility, how different life stages entail different (im)mobility, how gender affects mobility decisions, why some regions produce greater (im)mobility, the role played by the territorial endowment of economic, human, and social capital, and the importance of place-identity and place-attachment in (im)mobility decisions.

The session welcomes contributions based on both theoretical reflections and empirical research.

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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Lockdown

The lockdown measures implemented throughout 2020 in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, while varying from one country to the next, implied a major restriction on people’s freedom of movement for a given period. Presented as a solution to the spread of the virus, the lockdown impacted local, interregional and international travel. By transforming the spatial and temporal dimensions of people’s lifestyles, the lockdown accelerated a whole series of pre-existing trends, such as the rise of teleworking and teleshopping and the increase in walking and cycling, while also interrupting of long-distance mobility. The ambivalent experiences of the lockdown pave the way for a possible transformation of lifestyles in the future.

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