Is mobility the answer to poverty ?

Like everyone else, the poorest households need to travel to access employment, public services and leisure activities. But they are more distant (objectively in kilometres) or distanced (in terms of experience or perception[^1]) from these amenities than the more advantaged households. But what sort of poor household are we referring to? Poverty has several facets and concerns an increasingly wide variety of individuals and households. Several research projects on mobility of the poor have focused their comments on the “disastrous immobility” these households face, the need to “move to get themselves out of the rut”, to access employment. In so saying, they imply a certain mobility requirement. In line with other work, qualitative interviews with low-income outer-urban households reveals, contrariwise, that their lesser (or lack of) residential, daily or professional mobility results from the fact that they place greater value on their roots and closeness to their networks than spatial mobility as resources to overcome their poverty. Many prefer to stay close to their friends and relatives, who can provide them with a range of assistance (child-minding, help with travel, etc.), rather than change municipality, and so to move closer to potential or better-paid employment, and a greater number and more diverse shops. This is in any event particularly evident for poor outer-urban households, even though their decision to stay in an outer-urban area plays a decisive role in their poverty. Being poor can also be synonymous with frequent and even complex mobility. The least skilled professional categories (and so those most exposed to the risk of poverty) face considerable insecurity which is characterised by frequent job changes and so locations (place of employment, places where workers are liable to find a job – job centre, temporary employment agency, etc. – and even place of residence). In situations of extreme poverty, the issue is less about having access to employment or services than to your own decent housing, heating, food, etc. Subsistence does not necessarily involve employment: gleaning, welfare, resorting to associations like a soup kitchen charity, emergency shelters, etc. These practices are hugely time-consuming and require considerable distances to be covered to get from one to the other, find the right contacts, etc. In conclusion, mobility is undeniably a resource for the poorest households but no more so than proximity or residential roots. [^1]: It is possible to be close in kilometres but still remote from amenities. The price of an activity but also the associated social image act just as much as a barrier as the fact that numerous kilometres have to be covered to access them. This is particularly so for leisure activities.

There are potentially many barriers to mobility. In terms of their defining economic situation, “poor people” first have to face material barriers insofar as it is more difficult, when on a low income, to own a car, find accommodation in the immediate vicinity of shops and services, or even to buy a bus ticket. These financial barriers can be compounded by physical barriers that surround their situation: residential (urban enclave, urban dissection, etc.) or professional. Nonetheless, these material barriers do not prevent “poor people” from being mobile, even though the distances they travel are shorter. Repair you old car yourself, use so called “active” modes (walking, cycling, etc.) or alternatives to solo-driving (hitch-hiking, carpooling, etc.), borrowing a motorised vehicle, and using public transport without paying are all methods enabling mobility. True, these arrangements do not always correspond to the standard notion of autonomous, legal or motorised mobility, but they show that complex mobility practices are possible. While they imply short distances, they are nonetheless exhausting physically and psychologically. The cognitive and symbolic barriers are at times more significant even if they are more attributable to the social origin and position experienced by people than their objective economic situation (the two being more or less linked). The difficulty of situating yourself spatially and of reading a map are cognitive difficulties that restrict mobility or make it a particularly difficult task to confront. These difficulties are also of a symbolic nature insofar as they force the individual to confront his or her lack of ability in performing a task considered by others as normal, and his or her exclusion, as evidenced in studies on seniors, the disabled and migrants. The symbolic barriers to mobility are compounded by other symbolic limitations concerning people’s spatial entitlements. What places do they feel they have the right to frequent, where they feel their presence is legitimate and according to what means?

Mobility is needed when it effectively improves the economic situation of the poor, by encouraging access to employment, essential amenities like shops and their social network. This mobility may be daily, residential, professional, etc. Given the barriers mentioned earlier, numerous means can be implemented to encourage it and make it more inclusive: financial travel assistance, social housing near shops, services or social networks (including in the least densely populated areas), mobility training or learning (how to read a transport network map, ride a bike, drive, etc.). Mobility itself is however not enough and does not guarantee a successful return to employment or a respected place in society for the long-term unemployed. Other solutions are also used to combat poverty and exclusion. In addition to seeking economic growth leading to an ideal of full employment and a more equitable sharing of wealth, the public policy instruments are often based on the minimum wage or income-based government assistance as well as tax exemptions based on so-called “social” criteria. With regard to exclusion itself, other means focus less on aligning the mobility of the “poor excluded” members of society on that of the “rich included” than on developing a local lifestyle: implementing local neighbourhood actions, solidarity grocery shops, home visits for the elderly suffering from financial insecurity, etc. To conclude, the “poor” are neither a homogeneous category or necessarily socially excluded. Indeed, a growing number of people in active employment (employees, workers, etc.), owning their own home, do not correspond to the archetypal image of the poor. While being mobile provides access to employment and services, it does not necessarily mean getting out of poverty or exclusion, supposing once again that the two are linked. Mobility is neither an end in itself, nor a magic bullet. Placing mobility at the centre of solutions to end the exclusion of society’s poor reveals a binary vision in which mobility is synonymous with inclusion and belonging to the dominant class and in which its absence indicates exclusion and belonging to the dominated class. This leads to imposing an increasingly forceful “mobility commandment”, rejected by certain authors. If mobility is a tool for the dominant classes, the wealthiest, for maintaining their social position, it is not necessarily so for the other classes, whether they are poor or not.