You will find here the various research projects of the Mobile Lives Forum:

The Mobile Lives Forum’s research program

is in keeping with the perspective of the “mobility turn.” Its aim is to study mobility in relation to lifestyles and territories.

28 hours per week: The mobility and energy implications of working time reduction (WTR) in Germany

Ongoing research

In 2018 German metal industry workers won the right to reduce their working week from 35 to 28 hours. As with similar schemes elsewhere, sustainability commentators have highlighted the potential of working time reduction not just to achieve a better work-life balance but also to reduce energy consumption by reducing overall material consumption. This research project examines the desirability and sustainability of this scheme, paying particular attention to the conditions under which reduced working hours can produce social and environmental benefits. What are the participants’ aspirations? What are the impacts on their mobility and lifestyle? Is the reduction of direct and indirect energy consumption as significant as expected?

Keywords : Travail; marché du travail; temps de travail; mode de vie
Research participants : Miklós Antal, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Thiago Guimarães Rodrigues, Barbara Plank

The mobility/immobility of homeless people in the public space of Bordeaux

Ongoing research

“Homeless people” are often subject to stereotypes and generalizations that don’t take into account the increasing diversity of situations that result from new kinds of poverty and poor housing. Studies on their needs and aspirations in terms of dwelling and mobility are often misinterpreted or based on standards that aren’t appropriate for them. This research, conducted by a multidisciplinary team of students in political science and architecture in Bordeaux, seeks to understand the mobility and immobility of people who don’t have access to a private place of dwelling and intimacy, and the reasons why these practices come up against normative injunctions emanating from a variety of actors.

Keywords : SDF, Immobility, questions sociales, Public Policy
Research participants : Projet collectif SciencesPo/Architecture Bordeaux

Mobilities and externalities in Nova Scotia’s local food movement

Ongoing research

Local food movements argue that a reduction of food-miles has positive social, environmental and economic impacts. A full account of the costs of food production, however, needs to go beyond the path from food to plate and consider the wider set of translocal social and economic relations involved in local food production. Using a multi-method, ethnographic approach, this project examines the costs of local food production with special attention on the international labour migration that sustains Nova Scotia’s agricultural sector.

Keywords : proximity;agriculture;local;consumption;canada
Research participants : Catherine Bryan, Elizabeth Fitting, Karen Foster

Reducing the carbon footprint of mobility: what are the right policies for France?

Finished research

In 2019, transport accounted for 30% of greenhouse gases in France, discounting international travel. Far from being under control, these emissions have continued to rise, unlike those of other economic sectors, increasing by 11% since the 1990s. When the National Low-Carbon Strategy (or SNBC, for Stratégie Nationale Bas Carbone) was implemented in 2015 to cut transport-related emissions by a factor of 33 by 2050, the message was: we’re taking note of the problem and ambitiously rising to the challenge. Five years on, can we say that a real “mobility transition” is under way in France?

Keywords :
Research participants : Pierre Bocquillon , Caroline Bouloc, Laure Cazeaux, Damien Masson, Jean-Baptiste Frétigny
Digital Nomads in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Digital Nomads in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Ongoing research

Digital nomads are itinerant worker-travelers who simultaneously combine work, travel, consumption, and leisure. Their lifestyles is enabled by information and communication technologies that break the need to co-locate work and “home” and enable location independence. Digital nomads use so-called “lifestyle arbitrage” strategies to exploit the difference between the compensation that they receive and their costs of living. There is strong reason to believe that the community of digital nomads has been severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and this project seeks to assess the impacts of the coronavirus on the ability of these individuals to reproduce their lifestyles.

Keywords : lifestyle, Work, travel, covid-19
Research participants : Maurie Cohen, Laura Stanik

Autonomous vehicles: what role do they have in the mobility transition?

Ongoing research

At a time when companies and governments are pouring their energy into the search for innovation, autonomous vehicles seem to embody the epitome of an innovation that promises to revolutionize the future of the automobile. Around the world, the progress made by Google and Uber as well as the announcements of American, European and Asian manufacturers are being closely monitored and covered by the media. In this context, the Mobile Lives Forum commissioned La Fabrique Ecologique, a French environmental think tank, to study whether autonomous vehicles can be part of the transition to a more sustainable world.

Keywords : Voiture autonome; mobilité durable; mobilité du futur; transition; automobile
Research participants : La Fabrique Écologique

Removing Paris’ périphérique ring road: towards more sustainable and desirable lifestyles?

Finished research

For the 2020 Paris municipal elections, many proposals and claims were made on the future of the périphérique, the 35 km ring road around Paris: removing it, redesigning it as a main road with traffic lights, creating green spaces, making several dedicated lanes to promote different modes of transport, etc. The Mobile Lives Forum wanted to explore the option of totally removing it. What consequences would this have on the Parisian, metropolitan and regional scale? Under what conditions could this removal be part of a transition towards more desired and sustainable lifestyles?

Keywords :
Research participants : Professional Workshop Urban Planning and Development, Jean Debrie

Yellow vests and mobility crisis: what did the “True” and the “Great” Debates lead to?

Research notes

With the Yellow Vests movement that exploded in France during the winter of 2018/2019, the question of travel in people’s lifestyles and the need to better understand their mobility in order to design efficient public policies was unexpectedly brought to the fore in the public debate. With a commitment to pursuing research related to current events and the social reality of mobility, we wanted to conduct a series of exploratory research projects to report on these matters and ensure that we fully understand the lifestyles and systems that caused the discontent and desires exposed by these movements.

Keywords : Yellow Vests, Debate, citizen participation, mobilization
Research participants : Mobile Lives Forum, Antoine Lévêque, Marc Antoine Messer, David Moreau, Christophe Parnet, Stephan Utz, Vincent Ventresque

When working hours disrupt the mobility of everyday life

Ongoing research

In recent decades, work has been affected by a number of social changes (the increase of women in the labour force, for example) and technical breakthroughs (the explosion of ICTs). The restructuring of such a core element of our daily activity schedule has also redefined our habits, constraints and movements. In order to capture how new work modalities impact other activities, this research departs from the traditional time frame for analyzing mobility (the day) in favour of a broader framework that encompasses all aspects of our fractured lives.

Keywords : Travail, Télétravail, mobilité quotidienne
Research participants : Benjamin Motte-Baumvol, Olivier Bonin, Leslie Belton Chevallier, Giulio Mattioli

Rural mobility during the lockdown

Research notes

The lockdown and its strict restrictions on people’s movements led many French people to live and organize themselves differently, especially in rural areas where mobility is a crucial resource. This study, which is part of a larger project, aimed to understand the impact of this unprecedented situation. How did people in rural areas experience this restriction of their movements? Did the lockdown foster the emergence of new aspirations in terms of rhythms of life and mobility, as it did for people living in cities?

Keywords : rural, lockdown, pandemic, covid-19
Research participants : Aurore Flipo, Nicolas Senil

Covid-19, lockdown and mobility

Research by theme

The Covid-19 crisis represents a unique occasion to analyze our system of hypermobility and its limits. Lockdown measures and their impact on travel reveal the extent to which our regular lifestyles are dependent on the ability to move quickly, far and often, which goes against people’s aspirations to live slower, more localised lives. What role did mobility play in the scale of this crisis and the responses to it? This report, which is intended to be regularly updated, collects in one place all the Forum’s publications about this subject to date.

Keywords :
Research participants : Mobile Lives Forum, Tim Cresswell, Matias Echanove, Aurore Flipo, Christian Licoppe, Alexandre Rigal, Nicolas Senil, Rahul Srivastava

Dialogue on mobility between F. Dureau, P. Lannoy, J.-P. Orfeuil and T. Ramadier. 1 : The origins of a field

Research notes

As part of the 16th edition of the MSFS symposium “Spatial Mobilities, Methodologies for Data Collection and Analysis,” four experts (Françoise Dureau, Pierre Lannoy, Thierry Ramadier and Jean-Pierre Orfeuil) participated in a round table on the evolution of the field of spatial mobility . Coming from different backgrounds and adopting different theoretical perspectives, these researchers took a retrospective look at how mobility emerged as a research topic in their respective fields. The discussion shed new light on the disciplinary singularities and transdisciplinary developments shaping mobilities research.

Keywords :
Research participants : Françoise Dureau, Pierre Lannoy, Jean-Pierre Orfeuil, Thierry Ramadier

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