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NEW VOICES

Unfixing the City: Rickshaw Mobilities, Modernities and Urban Change in Dhaka

Annemiek Prins

25/05/2022

It is almost impossible to imagine the streets of Dhaka without the colourful shape of the cycle-rickshaw. Or without the hundreds of thousands of drivers who operate the rickshaw across the dense and congested streets of Bangladesh’s capital city. Despite this overwhelming presence, the vehicle is strikingly absent from plans, policies, and visions for the urban future of Dhaka. This thesis tries to make sense of this discrepancy and examines how the mobilities and employment projects of cycle-rickshaw drivers unfold amidst efforts to ban and restrict the presence of the rickshaw in Dhaka. This work received the 2021 New Voices Award from the Mobile Lives Forum.

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SOUTHERN DIARIES

Inequalities in the geographic access to COVID-19 healthcare

Rafael Pereira

16/05/2022

Rafael Pereira sheds new light on the issues of inequalities in access to health services in Brazilian hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic. By cross-referencing the quality of their transport accessibility with the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the neighborhoods they serve, he suggests new directions for public policies — a methodology that European countries could learn from.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

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RESEARCH NOTES

An emblematic model of a car-free day: Bogota’s Ciclovía

Mobile Lives Forum

16/05/2022

Every Sunday for almost 50 years, the City of Bogotá has closed off a continuous network of streets and avenues, banning motorized vehicles so that residents can safely go for a walk or ride a bicycle safely. What began as an activist and community initiative progressively became institutionalized and is now a core measure in the city's public policy with regards to leisure and improving the quality of life. A source of inspiration for the world's largest cities today, how did this event of unprecedented magnitude develop?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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RESEARCH NOTES

Time, leisure and mobility

Benjamin Pradel

23/03/2022

This report aims to contribute to the Mobile Lives Forum’s research on mobility and rhythms of life from the standpoint of leisure and to open new research avenues. This report, which combines elements of a summary, an analysis, and some surprising discoveries, questions the concept of leisure as a social activity in its relationship to time and travel. Of general scope, it probes a part of the literature that mixes the sociology of time, leisure, and mobility. It combines existing concepts and attempts an exploratory study on the importance of mastering one’s time, especially leisure time and free time, in the construction of well-being, through the idea of "rhythmic capability" and …

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

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NEW VOICES

Sexual harassment in the metro: the experience of violence on the move

Sian Lewis

09/03/2022

This article focuses on research that explored experiences of and the policing of sexual harassment on the London Underground. It highlights that the research took a qualitative approach in the form of interviews with victims and the police. Using a novel conceptual framework built around the concepts of space, mobilities and rhythm, temporalities and knowledges, this research opens up a new perspective at the intersections of feminist research on gendered violence and a mobilities perspective. This thesis as a whole makes an important contribution to our understanding of a particular form of gendered violence happening within the transitory space of an underground in a major Western…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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RESEARCH NOTES

The Flone Initiative tackles sexual harassment and violence against women in Nairobi

Mobile Lives Forum

09/03/2022

In Nairobi, Kenya, an association is mobilising to tackle sexual harassment against women in matatus, the thousands of informal minibuses that provide public transport in the city. Their goal : to integrate the issue of gender inequality into transport policies and the training of professionals in the sector, in order to remove obstacles to mobility and the emancipation of women. How successful has it been?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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NEW VOICES

Emotions, entrepreneurship and globalisation: the petit capitalism of migrant women between China and Taiwan

Beatrice Zani

08/03/2022

On the backroads, hidden inside a suitcase, invisible to border controls, a fluorescent orange bra made in a textile factory in Southern China crosses the Strait and arrives in Taiwan. There, it wanders and circulates, on physical and digital platforms, and then returns to its place of production in China. Studying the mobility of this particular object allows us to interrogate the social and emotional journeys of its producers: young female workers from rural Chinese regions who first migrate to towns within China for work, and then marry in order to travel to Taiwan for work later.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

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SOUTHERN DIARIES

The future of mobility in the world’s capital of scooters

Huê-Tâm Jamme

21/02/2022

With more than 10 million inhabitants, Ho Chi Minh City is not only the economic powerhouse of Vietnam; it is also the world’s capital of scooters and other motorized two-wheelers (“motorbikes” for short). Less than ten years ago, in 2014, nearly all households (83%) owned at least one motorbike according to a large survey conducted by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Today, riding a motorbike remains the most convenient way of traveling the narrow roads and alleyways that cut through this particularly dense city. While a rising number of cars is making motorbike mobility increasingly uncomfortable, difficult, and dangerous, motorbikes might soon become a memory of the…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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NEW VOICES

Why teenage girls have fewer real opportunities to ride a bike than teenage boys

David Sayagh

02/02/2022

By combining several methods, this sociology thesis shows that urban, mobility and sport socializations are highly gendered during adolescence, leading to generally more limited real opportunities for girls to practice cycling. The analysis of variations between young people of the same gender illustrates how cycling both reveals and helps to construct social relations based on sex, age, class and territory. This thesis was awarded the New Voices Award in 2021.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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SOUTHERN DIARIES

Santiago's “Plurinational Cycling Revolution” - cycling as a tool for multiple demands

Matthieu Gillot, Patrick Rérat

02/02/2022

Cycling movements have multiplied in South America, particularly in Santiago de Chile, where their scope has brought together all kinds of demands: social, feminist and ecological. Matthieu Gillot and Patrick Rérat followed this "plurinational cycling revolution" which brings together several thousand people every week.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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NEW VOICES

The work of mobility, between parking lots and particles. The space-times of work under pressure

Meike Brodersen

06/12/2021

Within two mobile occupations - university research and road haulage - tensions emerge between contemporary mobile norms, the way they translate into work control and professional ideals. Meike Brodersen’s thesis draws on an ethnographic study of time and space to show how workers resist, attach themselves and adapt to these mobile occupations.

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RESEARCH NOTES

Is it possible to know how many workers live in mobile housing?

Arnaud Le Marchand

03/12/2021

Mobile housing, in its many forms, is inherently invisible in statistics. However, it is part of a way of life that has become essential for many workers in certain professional sectors. For these workers to be understood and properly taken into consideration in public policies, they must first be counted. For this, Arnaud Le Marchand combines statistical traces, observations of living spaces and interviews, in this exploration of workers living in mobile housing. Illustration : Ferjeux van der Stigghel

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

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