Mobilities

Viapolitics and the emancipatory possibilities of abortion mobilities
Freeman C
Scholarship on abortion travel has examined the places women travel between and why such journeys are necessary. However, there has been scant attention paid to the journeys themselves and these journeys are undertaken. This paper uses William Walters' notion of 'viapolitics' to better attend to people travel by focussing on the role of vehicles in abortion politics. This takes three parts: an exploration of the emotional and embodied journeys that women have to take to access abortions; the role of the vehicle as a site of political activism around abortion rights; and the transportation of abortion medication. Viapolitics has to date only been used within migration politics but as this paper shows, it has utility beyond this field to interrogate abortion travels and highlight the role of vehicles in abortion access as well as to explore how abortion transport can be emancipatory for women. This paper furthers viapolitics by arguing that we need to consider the journeys of 'things' and not just people. In the case of abortion access, it is the transportation of abortion medication rather than the travel of women that is the most socially just solution to discriminatory laws and extra-legal barriers.
Kinetic health: ecologies and mobilities of prevention in Europe, . 1100-1600
Geltner G
This article coins and deploys the term kinetic health as part of a broader attempt to historicize the mobilities paradigm from the standpoint of past community prophylactics. It uses the example of Galenic or humoral medicine, which for millennia organized individual and group health as a dynamic systems balance among several spheres of intersecting fixities and flows. The radical situatedness it fostered emerges clearly from tracing preventative health interventions among different communities in 'preindustrial' Europe, including urban dwellers, miners and armies, whose different motilities both bound people to and released them from their immediate environment. Beyond reframing past practices, kinetic health benefits mobilities studies scholars by interrogating stagist narratives of civilization and modernization in two ways. First, as an analytic, because although humoralism and other medical systems continue to inform present-day approaches to health and disease around the globe, they are often obscured by layers of colonialism and biomedicine. And secondly, as a perch for viewing the long-term ebb, flow and mingling of ideas about ill/health as an assemblage of (social) bodies and their natural and social environments.
A movement in motion: collective mobility and embodied practice in the central American migrant caravan
Wurtz HM
In this article, I examine the psychosocial and phenomenological implications for the lived experiences of collective mobility among Central American asylum seekers and irregular migrants bound for the United States. I argue that attentiveness to migrants' embodied practices and encounters with the material world engender novel insight into the generative and productive potential of collective journeying. I focus on migrant caravans through Mexico that have surged in recent years in response to escalating rates of gang violence, extreme poverty, and environmental devastation in Central American countries. The analysis reveals that the transformative power of the caravan lies in its capacity to disrupt patterns of collective trauma by bearing witness to the atrocities migrants have suffered and giving meaning to their collective struggle. Close examination of how these processes unfold may help explain how and why collective mobility promotes resilience among participants and their ability to resist the effects of long-term collective trauma.
Seasonal differences in mobility and activity space in later life: a case study of older adults in the Northern Netherlands
Meijering L, Osborne T, van Doorne M and Weitkamp G
Mobility is crucial for maintaining well-being in later life. Previous research has shown that older adults' mobility fluctuates throughout the day, with a particular focus on afternoon outdoor movement. This paper takes a broader approach and explores the seasonal differences and similarities in mobility and activity space in later life, using older adults in the Northern Netherlands as a case study. Seventeen older adults participated in the study, for which we used a mixed-methods approach combining GPS-, activity diaries, and in-depth interview data analysed through grounded visualisation. We have collected data from each participant for a week, once during fall/winter and once during summer. The findings of this paper defy common expectations around older adult mobility; for instance, the participants walked less in summer and had a larger activity space in winter. Equally, we demonstrate that it is crucial to distinguish between daily and incidental activity spaces, particularly when factoring in seasonal variations. Yet our mixed-methods approach revealed discrepancies between perceived and measured mobility and activity space. We argue that the intricate interplay of seasonal influences, weather conditions, and personal factors significantly shapes mobility practices in later life, underscoring the need for holistic planning of age-inclusive environments.