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.

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

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

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

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

Dialogue on mobility between F. Dureau, P. Lannoy, J.-P. Orfeuil and T. Ramadier. 2 : A multidisciplinary perspective

Research notes

In the second part of the round table held for the 16th edition of the MSFS symposium “Spatial Mobilities, Methodologies for Data Collection and Analysis,” Françoise Dureau, Pierre Lannoy, Jean-Pierre Orfeuil and Thierry Ramadier discussed, from the vantage point of their own specialty, how researchers from different scientific disciplines collaborate. What makes interdisciplinarity in mobilities research in France possible, and what are the obstacles?

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

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

Survey on the impacts of the lockdown on French people’s mobility and lifestyles

Finished research

The nationwide lockdown instated in France on March 17, 2020 to curb the rapid spread of Covid-19 has caused a restriction of people’s freedom that is unprecedented in peacetime, especially on their freedom to move and travel. At the Mobile Lives Forum, we wanted to assess the present and future social impacts on the lifestyles of French people. We found large disparities in individual practices, especially depending on age, but also that people have discovered novel lifestyles, some of which have bred a newfound desire to move and travel less after the end of the lockdown.

Keywords : enquête, confinement, covid-19, ralentissement, Lifestyles
Research participants : Mobile Lives Forum, L'Obsoco (Research and consulting compagny)

Free public transport

Research by theme

Free public transport is not a new idea, but it has gained traction recently with the announcement that two major transport networks were becoming free: those of the metropolitan area of Niort (100,000 inhabitants) and of the urban community of Dunkirk (200,000 inhabitants). The success of the Dunkirk experiment, which incorporates a larger urban development project and a renewal of transport services, has now led to heated debates even in France’s largest cities. Can free transport encourage a modal shift and limit the use of individual cars? Is it a measure of social justice or an economic utopia?

Keywords :
Research participants : Maxime Huré, Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux, Allan Alaküla

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

Ongoing research

In the run-up to the 2020 Paris municipal elections, many proposals and claims are being 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, turning it into green spaces, creating several dedicated lanes to promote different modes of transport, etc. The Mobile Lives Forum wanted to explore the option of totally removing it. What problems would its removal pose at the Parisian, metropolitan and regional level? Under what conditions could this removal be part of a transition towards more desirable and sustainable lifestyles? And therefore, what should we make of the proposals made in the municipal elections campaign?

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

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

Understanding the behaviour of hypermobile tourists

Ongoing research

International tourism has grown considerably in recent decades, partly as a result of the growth of low-cost airlines which have become an essential sector of the global economy and a regular feature in our way of life. And yet, the explosion of tourism and in particular of air travel raises some environmental concerns. Given that 5% of French people alone contributed in 2006 to 50% of greenhouse gas emissions from tourism, the Mobile Lives Forum wanted to explore the lifestyles of hypermobile tourists. Who are they? What is the environmental impact of their mobility? To what extent and under what conditions would they be willing to change their habits to reduce their carbon footprint?

Keywords : tourism; hypermobility; environment
Research participants : Isabelle Frochot, Véronique Mondou, Philippe Violier, Céline Pellerin, Samuel Bates

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

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