High Mobility in Europe

Work and Personal Life

Gil Viry, Vincent Kaufmann, Gil Viry, Vincent Kaufmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781349562596
  9781137447371
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137447388
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Travelling intensively to and for work helps but also challenges people to find ways of balancing work and personal life. Drawing on a large European longitudinal study, Mobile Europe explores the diversity and ambivalence of mobility situations and the implications for family and career development.

1

High Mobility as Social Phenomenon

Vincent Kaufmann and Gil Viry

Challenging preconceptions

Over the past 20 years, several forms of long-distance travel have intensified in Europe and in most industrialised countries (Frändberg and Vilhelmson, 2011; Meissonnier, 2001; Schneider et al., 2002; Hofmeister, 2005). This refers to bi- or multi-location family arrangements (for example, living apart together relationships, commuter marriages, long-distance parenthood), a pied-à-terre near the workplace when the principal residence is hundreds of miles away, or leisure activities in multiple places (for example, vacation homes used seasonally). It also refers to daily long-distance or long-duration commuting, when people must travel hundreds of miles each day for their job, or spend a great deal of time commuting between home and work. Likewise, it includes people who often sleep away from home – whether for work-, leisure-, or family-related reasons. None of these forms of travel are completely new. However, while they were marginal practices just a few years ago, together they have become a major social phenomenon. In this book, we focus on work-related forms of long-distance travel. We grouped them under the umbrella term: high mobility.

These emerging practices are challenging many analytical categories and require epistemological reconsideration. The conceptual and methodological apparatus of urban sociology is primarily concerned, because it is largely based on a territorial conception of social space. This territorial conception posits that human society is organised around groups that can be described and located according to typological logic (Urry, 2000; Kaufmann, 2002). People and territories are grouped based on their similarities, leading to distinct boundaries between categories. While the idea of social class clearly fits into this logic, the same is true of concepts like neighbourhood social mix, migration, city and agglomeration. All these concepts reflect a categorical approach and draw upon a fixed framework, without which they would be impossible to identify. Yet, this framework is an area-based (that is, delineated) territory, wherein the phenomenon is identified and sometimes compared with other reference frameworks. This can be the neighbourhood, municipality, urban agglomeration, country or metric units such as the square metre, acre or mile.

High mobility practices challenge the conceptual apparatus of urban sociology’s framework. For instance, how can neighbourhood diversity be measured if a large share of residents are not locally integrated because they spend half the week in another city or commute 50 miles each day? More generally, these forms of travel reflect the fact that the spatial organisation of societies is changing. The relationship between what is next to, what is connected and what moves is changing, thereby changing the meaning of these notions.

From an epistemological viewpoint, there are various ways of approaching high mobility. Three stances are particularly present in the literature.

The first – and certainly the most widespread – is the post-structuralist school of thought. This considers high mobility as part of a wider epochal turn, making categorisation impossible. Social categories are becoming blurred or even disappearing. Societies construed as states, and spatial divisions such as urban/rural areas, are fading away. In this context, moving, that is uprooting and resettling elsewhere, is becoming impossible in some ways, as there is no longer any clear border to cross. Contemporary mobilities, such as long-distance commuting and dual location households, become a kind of neo-nomadism, in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari (1980). John Urry’s work Sociology beyond societies (2000) fits clearly into this perspective, as do Manuel Castells’ The rise of the network society (1996) and Jeremy Rifkin’s The age of access (2000).

A second perspective – also very common in the literature – is to consider high mobility as a practical consequence of an ideology of speed, to which we are all subject. From this perspective, the social requirement of mobility is becoming increasingly urgent, especially in the labour market. Moving fast, far and frequently has become an imperative for those who claim to be dynamic, motivated and ambitious. Knowing how to identify and play with the rules of this requirement becomes an essential skill for social and professional integration in general, and for a successful career in particular. The rise of long-distance travel reflects the symbiosis between the government’s investment in high-speed transport infrastructure to promote economic development (the latter considered a by-product of travel speed) and how people use it within the context of a strong social pressure to be highly mobile. This second vision is more critical, as in the work of Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid modernity (2000), David Harvey when he discusses ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey, 1990; Harvey, 2001), Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in The new spirit of capitalism (2005 [1999]), and Pierre Lannoy and Thierry Ramadier in La mobilité généralisée (2007).

The third main approach is to interpret high mobility as a sign, among others, of the emergence of a society of individuals. This approach is a legacy of methodological individualism. The phenomenon of high mobility is seen as the radicalisation of the founding principles of modernity, and particularly the simultaneous search for self-fulfilment and efficiency. Society as a whole is therefore based on the idea of freeing humans from ascribed roles and pre-existing social structures of class, gender, race, community and so on. Individuals are compelled to make choices rationally and reflexively to shape their own biographies. From this perspective, emerging forms of long-distance travel reflect an aspirational model that results in new (mobile) lifestyles. François Ascher’s Métapolis ou l’avenir des villes (1995) and Alain Bourdin’s La métropole des individus (2005a) clearly reflect this third perspective.

These three interpretations oppose one another in their Weltanshauung on numerous points. While they can be found throughout the scientific literature, they all present, in our opinion, major limitations.

First, the post-structuralist view confuses the gradual disappearance of some types of territories (that are both distinct and homogeneous in their composition) with the impossibility of categorising spaces and social positions alike. In this vein, John Urry provocatively proposes abandoning the notion of society as an object of sociology and replacing it with that of mobility (Urry, 2000). This means giving precedence to network over territory, which is highly questionable as it is, de facto, a self-fulfilling prophecy. By considering the world through the network lens, we overlook fixity, the institutionalised nature of societies and their stratification (Offner and Pumain, 1996; Montulet, 1998). Empirical evidence clearly shows the interplay between networks and territories. Both social and technical networks shape and are shaped by territories (Amin, 2002; Offner, 2000; Swyngedouw, 2004; Takhteyev et al., 2012; Viry, 2012). Besides the overemphasis on networks (versus territories), the literature often yields to the temptation of binary interpretation by the exclusion of access. Yet, often, the question is not knowing whether or not we are linked, but rather how we are linked – and to what.

In the second perspective, the totalising ideology of high mobility as the essence of freedom and success is not entirely convincing either. In this ideology, there are good and bad movements, and a more or less precise geography of the origins and destinations associated with this normative judgement. As we argue throughout this book, high mobility is a highly ambivalent phenomenon (Schuler et al., 1997; Schneider et al., 2002), associated with a plurality of personal situations. In some cases, high mobility is caused by disruptive events (for example divorce, unemployment, business relocation) that are not necessarily associated with (economic) success (for example Preston et al., 1993; Vignal, 2005). Moreover, high mobility unfolds in different life domains that may conflict (Huinink and Feldhaus, 2009). For example, high mobility may have a positive effect on career advancement but a negative effect on family development. De facto, it is more accurate to talk about mobility requirements than a mobility requirement – requirements that are often contradictory, and that, consequently, do not allow for a unilateral reading of the relationships between mobility phenomena and contemporary societies.

Mobility as a paradoxical ideology is not new. From the 1950s, for instance, in the analysis of intergenerational social mobility, social reproduction was considered an indication of the ‘immobilisation of society, and mobility as an indicator of social fluidity’ (Cuin, 1983). From the beginning, capitalist societies have valued social mobility because it has helped establish a collective dynamic of social development based on an individual’s desire to improve his or her socio-economic conditions. People engage in capitalist production in the hope of improving their living conditions and social status based on merit. This view implies two principles (Montulet and Kaufmann, 2004). The first claims individual freedom in the definition and realisation of status acquisition. The second appeals to the principle of equality among individuals, so that people’s backgrounds are no longer an obstacle to their desired social ascension. The paradox is to hold an egalitarian discourse in an inherently unequal competition for social status. The paradox is usually raised by implementing procedures that seek to ensure an initial position of equality among actors. The modern-day valorisation of spatial mobility is based on the same logic. When travel is fast and far, it reflects the idea of freedom. Through spatial mobility, individuals are supposedly free to establish desired contacts without spatial or temporal obstacles. This discourse suggests that the individuals that are most likely to occupy the most enviable positions are also those ready to accept a logic of unfettered flexibility. Thus, the contemporary ideology of mobility particularly assumes that spatial mobility inevitably favours a fair distribution of individuals within the social hierarchy. It would therefore suffice to promote access to ensure equality in the social game. When addressing mobility issues, it is important not to confuse the ideological dimension of mobility (paradoxically associated with the notion of freedom) with mobility as a concept in social science.

It is also important to note that the notion of mobility as an ideology places a strong emphasis on the labour market. However, spatial mobility includes other areas, such as leisure and family activities. Yet, in these areas, an all-encompassing ideology of mobility as the essence of freedom and success does not completely work. Analysing the links between different forms of mobility reveals a much less mechanical relationship between work and leisure (Schneider et al., 2002; Vignal, 2005). In particular, people who are not very mobile in their jobs – socially and spatially – may compensate for this professional immobility with long-distance travel for private reasons.

Finally, the methodologically individualistic position of viewing the mobility increase as a consequence of the individualisation process fails to recognise the interpersonal and collective dimensions of mobilities (for example Manderscheid, 2014). Social and spatial structures are also at work in mobility behaviours. Mobilities are constrained socially and opportunities for upward social mobility through physical mobility are as much the realisation of desired opportunities as choices by default (Montulet, 1998). First, as we argue throughout this book, much long-distance travel is driven by the need to balance conflicting space and time demands of work and personal life. For example, dual-earner couples can opt for daily long-distance commuting when partners are working in distant locations. In other situations, the ‘production of some kinds of mobilities often creates immobilities for others’ (Uteng and Cresswell, 2008: 7). For example, frequent absences from home by fathers is often associated with professional immobility of mothers. Moreover, high mobility arrangements depend on the mobility of collective actors like companies, which can likewise be mobile. Second, forms of travel reflect the specific mobility cultures of social groups. Hanja Maksim (2011) thus demonstrated that low-income individuals develop specific spatial mobility habitus to compensate for their economic handicap. These highly mobile people do not correspond to the dominant model of mobile workers, dealing with the requirements of flexibility that characterise contemporary capitalist societies. In other words, the analysis of high mobility cannot be subsumed in an individual approach.

Approaching high mobility: a reversal of perspective

How, then, to approach mobility, and in particular high mobility? In some sense, deconstructing mobility is a simple intellectual exercise. Now, we must take this material and rearrange it to create a relevant, practical framework for analysing high mobility. For this, we propose a reversal of perspective that is summarised in three points.

Considering mobility as a total social phenomenon

The epistemological positions briefly described above show that mobility is at the heart of social dynamics, be it social values, social stratification or social spaces. Echoing what has been termed the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ and the ‘mobility turn’ (Canzler et al., 2008; Cresswell, 2006; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007), mobility contributes to the structural and ideological underpinnings of societies. This is realised through the terri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  High Mobility as Social Phenomenon
• 2  Methodological Choices and Research Design
• 3  High Mobility in Europe: An Overview
• 4  Socialisation to High Mobility?
• 5  High Mobility Over the Life Course
• 6  Motility and High Mobility
• 7  Territories of High Mobility: Micro and Macro Analysis
• 8  Family Development and High Mobility: Gender Inequality
• 9  Travel Time Use and Place Attachment among Highly Mobile People
• 10  Conclusions
• Appendices
• Index