Europe Beyond Mobility

Mobilities, Social Cohesion and Political Integration

Vincent Kaufmann, Ander Audikana, Guillaume Drevon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367343224
• eBook ISBN: 9781000479935
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping
• Index: Social Sciences

Mobility, which has represented a critical scientific category and political driver, is currently under strong public scrutiny: has mobility lost its potential for social cohesion and political integration? Europe Beyond Mobility: Mobilities, Social Cohesion and Political Integration assesses this question by focusing on the European integration process, conceptualized as a political project for the promotion of different flows of mobility.

Mobility has been a fundamental tool for territorial strength and political integration among European countries. Based on a realistic understanding of the potentials and limits of mobility, this book pleads for a "resonant mobility" in the interest of a renovated European integration process. It examines how, in opposition to those advocating for national borders and mobility restrictions, the EU needs to explore new regulatory models which limit mobility's adverse social, economic, and environmental impacts and make accessible the benefits of alternative flow models. It also provides an analytical framework for the study of current trends of mobility limitation, migration restriction and re-bordering, and offers a complementary and innovative framework for the study of globalization.

Europe Beyond Mobility will be of interest to academics and students as well as policy makers and practitioners internationally in the fields of mobility, migration and border studies.

1

City Europa

DOI: 10.4324/9780429325014-1

Europe has become one (very) big city, with rich and poor neighborhoods, outskirts and centers, and, above all, urban issues. In reality, Europe may have always been a megacity, but recent changes and their impact have made this analogy clearer and more pertinent than ever.

As with all cities, it is not easy to delineate the boundaries of the European metropolis. Europe indeed remains an ill-defined, vague geographic space whose borders are malleable and fluctuate with the vagaries of geopolitics. Moreover, it seems to be spreading, much as urbanization is advancing towards the outskirts of cities. New spaces join and merge with the urban continent functionally, new neighborhoods appear, and the urban perimeter expands, thus creating urban sprawl. However, Europe is also shrinking, for example with the United Kingdom’s exit following the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016.

Like cities ravaged by hurricanes, floods, eruptions, earthquakes, fires and wars, Europe, too, could lose part of its territory, as eurozone and Schengen Area crises suggest. This situation has already left some neighborhoods adrift. City Europa, it seems, has a core that mutates according to its peripheral areas to the north, south and east. It is not, however, a large, isolated city in the center of the world and could never become one, as the center of the world, we are told, is now in Asia.

City Europa is a city that by nature is cosmopolitan and extremely varied. Its inhabitants speak different languages and have specific religious affiliations, regional and national traditions, and diverse lifestyles. What is more, most people in this big city are very much attached to their neighborhoods, where they have established strong ties over generations. The neighborhood conflicts and violence that have erupted throughout its history have sent shockwaves across the planet.

In recent decades, the number of meeting places in City Europa has steadily climbed (universities, markets, beaches, train stations, airports, etc.). Concurrently, exchanges between inhabitants have intensified without necessarily becoming generalized. The latter have come to know and even, in some cases, love one another through such exchange. Yet, tensions persist between the different neighborhoods and are growing. Thus, while it is the variety and intensity of exchanges that give big cities their character, these exchanges are also the catalyst for the most passionate neighborhood conflicts.

Managing City Europa’s neighborhood conflicts is not the job of any single government; many different actors are involved in governing this great city. Certain institutions of metropolitan rank have appropriated the name “Europe.” While some are becoming increasingly powerful, none has complete control over City Europa’s problems because none can lay claim to the entire metropolitan territory. Some neighborhoods effectively prefer not to incorporate metropolitan institutions or seek to limit their participation to certain sectors. As such, each district still has considerable autonomy when it comes to acting on behalf of its own territory. At the same time, however, action at the metropolitan level can still influence the “local” politics of each neighborhood.

When we look closely at City Europa, it also seems obvious that the more central districts have greater influence over the city’s future, while smaller or outlying ones have a harder time making their voices heard.

Cities are characterized not only by their territory, their social and economic diversity, and their specific scales of government, but also by the fact that their inhabitants face common problems, which leads us to consider Europe as one giant metropolis. This does not mean the problems are the same for everyone, nor that they manifest themselves everywhere in the same way. Some neighborhoods are better equipped than others or are in a better position to cope with potential problems. However, when confronted with famine, flu, plague, fires or violence, no European inhabitant feels (or would feel) entirely safe.

In Europa, what ultimately connects different neighborhoods, unites the most diverse entities and pools local governability strategies is a long list of common problems. This book aims specifically to explore City Europa and to address it from the particular angle of mobility – the catalyst of many of its issues. It is the fruit of the work of three European researchers, Spanish, French and Swiss respectively, who met at the EPFL Urban Sociology Laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland. Specialists in the fields of human geography, political sociology and urban sociology, all three are also active in the field of urban studies and of mobility more specifically. Their respective work shows that, over the past 15 years, mobility has become an increasingly relevant phenomenon in urban dynamics and has brought about profound change since the 1970s. Driven by the potential speed of transport and communication systems, mobility has spread, globalized and fragmented. Beyond the mosaic of terminology and wealth of approaches, this shift does not blur differences; on the contrary, it accentuates and fortifies them based on new criteria such as mobility.

The movement of people, goods, capital and ideas is clearly at the heart of global changes in City Europa and affects all aspects of economic, political and social life. The shrinking of time and space and the relaxing of regulations with regard to the movement of people, goods and capital have had a major impact on societies and their territories, with the mobility of factors of production increasing considerably. In terms of capital, mobility has been concurrent with the development of the financial industry and booming returns. Liberalization, the development of information and communication technology and the ongoing development of new services by the financial industry have given rise to extremely rapid capital flows on a global scale. In daily life, the opportunities afforded by rapid transit systems were acclaimed by the population, which uses them not only intensively but often in ways that differ from those originally conceptualized by their designers. Cities are now traversed by considerable speed differentials, which are ultimately an essential vector of their cosmopolitanism.

In a very concrete way, the book you are holding in your hands follows on from several research projects carried out conjointly by the three authors: theoretical work on the concepts of mobility and motility (Drevon, Gerber, & Kaufmann, 2020; Kaufmann, 2011; Kaufmann & Audikana, 2020), research on cross-border commons in Europe funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and a survey of political controversies around mobility in Switzerland, which was the subject of a book published in 2017 (Kaufmann & Audikana, 2017).

In fact, social crises directly linked to mobility are coming thicker and faster: the pressing demand for the right to amble in Taksim Square in 2013, the cry for public transport versus Olympic Game funding in Rio in 2016, the rejection of speed limitations and carbon taxes by the Yellow Vests in winter 2018, the general strike in Chile following the increase subway tickets prices in October 2019 and, in 2020, the forced immobilization of a good part of the planet to fight against the spread of COVID-19.

All are signs that highlight mobility’s role as an organizing agent of society and the urgent need to rethink it. Curiously, little research thus far has addressed these issues from a mobility perspective. Implicitly taking for granted article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that every person has the right to move freely, many works are based on the more or less explicit assumption that increases in flows are a “mere” reflection of the democratization of the right to “free” movement, which is considered a natural right.

Some of City Europa’s problems are directly related to mobility. Immigrants who arrive in Lampedusa and Idomeni are part of a south-north migratory flow that structures the relationship between City Europa and one of its “suburbs” on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The circulation of currency – which can also be seen as a form of mobility – in search of havens safe from market developments is another problem. On another note, the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur full of passengers traveling on business and for pleasure that was shot down over the Ukraine is also a paradigmatic example of the systemic importance of mobility in our societies.

Ultimately, City Europa’s evolution and development are inseparable from contemporary mobilities. In this book, we would like to go even further and suggest that its construction is based on a conscious political strategy to increase flows between different neighborhoods, banking on the fact that increasing exchanges will allow for greater inclusion of the parties. This process would ultimately strengthen cohesion and allow for the forging of a true common identity. If we adhere to this hypothesis, Europe would actually create mobility.

This hypothesis seems particularly relevant for that institutional scale that is primarily responsible for governing City Europa: the European Union (EU). The EU has become so central to city governance that, in their usage, the terms “Europe” and “EU” have become synonymous. While admitting that “Europe” refers to a broader, more complex reality than the “EU,” our remarks will essentially be structured relative to the latter. We will focus notably on the strategic goal of promoting increased mobility within City Europa as led by EU.

In addition to this hypothesis, our research on urban mobility demonstrates that mobility is fundamentally ambivalent: it can undoubtedly be a vector for reinforcing cohesion but can also be at the root of renewed tension and conflict. The building of an airport or of a road through a neighborhood, traffic, security, noise and pollution, the loss of a certain local “soul” due to more traffic, the increase in highly mobile individuals (people who work several hundred kilometers from their primary residence) are all potential sources of fragmentation and weakened cohesion and are all linked to mobility. Faced with these threats, inhabitants of big cities usually try to protect themselves as much as possible. This is reflected in the often strong opposition to the construction of new infrastructure, the installation of anti-noise panels, the prohibition of transit in many neighborhoods and the increase in gated communities with private security patrols. This desire to “protect ourselves” incites us to avoid certain routes or places at certain times of the day. In all of these cases, mobility is not experienced as a vector of inclusion but rather as a dynamic that puts inhabitants of big cities at risk, an out-of-control force that raises numerous issues.

With these observations, we concur with sociologist George Simmel (1950, p. 416) when he suggested that life in the big cities gives rise to a “reserved character” marked not only by indifference but also by “a faint aversion, reciprocal strangeness and repudiation” due to an increase in encounters. However, he goes on to say that, directly or indirectly, all strategies to avoid contact have an integrative function:

A latent antipathy and the preparatory stage of practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions without which this mode of life could not at all be led. The extent and the mixture of this style of life, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is satisfied – all these, with the unifying motives in the narrower sense, form the inseparable whole of the metropolitan style of life. What appears in the metropolitan style of life directly as dissociation is in reality only one of its elemental forms of socialization.

(Simmel, 1950, p. 416)

In recent years, avoidance tactics have been on the rise in City Europa. A certain “reserve” or “indifference” towards the inhabitants of other neighborhoods and towards EU metropolitan institutions is gaining ground and is accompanied by pessimistic rhetoric and fear. Some suggest reforming EU metropolitan institutions while others seemingly want to eradicate them, considering them to be the cause of the problem. Some argue for a “return to neighborhoods,” others point out that neighborhoods have become too small to face the challenges that plague big cities. Thus are the integral promises linked to greater mobility called into question.

Starting from the metaphor of Europe as a continent-city, this book addresses the social and political integration process by applying theoretical and analytical tools derived from urban and mobility studies. The integration of the “European metropolis” has been historically promoted by European institutions through policies that seek to intensify mobility flows. The process of European integration has been conceived in this perspective to promote different types of mobility without systematically considering the impact. Based on these considerations, the book aims to rethink mobility policies in Europe in order to shape another Europe.

It begins with a theoretical chapter that aims to define the notion of mobility in a broad way, and in so doing provides a framework for analyzing political ideologies relative to different types of mobility (reversible, irreversible, materiel, immaterial), and ranging from ultra-liberal to isolationist positions.

Based on the theoretical considerations raised, Chapter 3 analyzes the links between the European integration process and the promotion of different mobility flows. Over its history, the EU has conceived and implemented different policy interventions oriented towards promoting transnational mobility. Three types of interventions are distinguished: 1) regulatory policies, which have attempted to create a common framework as regards the technical and juridical conditions of mobility; 2) investment policies, which have aimed to equip the European territory with new infrastructures and spatial interventions; and 3) incentive policies, which provide the resources for developing mobility skills and support the mobility strategies of individual and collective actors.

Chapter 4 explores the effects of the mobility policies in Europe described in Chapter 3 on individuals’ lifestyles and travel patterns. Based on the results of several major surveys, it shows how mobility has gradually been transformed from a freedom to travel fast and far to an obligation for those who simply wish to work. This reversal is dramatic, and people who move fast, far and frequently generally feel their lifestyle is a constraint from which they cannot escape. Freedom of movement has thus become an obligation to move.

The book continues ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1 City Europa
• 2 Mobility, Social Cohesion and Politics
• 3 Constructing Europe Through Mobility
• 4 From Free Movement to the Obligation to be Mobile
• 5 Towards New Perspectives of Cohesion for Cross-Border Areas
• 6 Voices Against Mobility
• 7 The Swiss Experience: An Advanced Laboratory for Mobility Policies
• 8 Resonant Mobility for Displaced People
• Index