Mobility Justice in the Context of Disaster

Abstract

This article contributes to the critical mobilities literature by developing the concept of mobility justice in relation to its social justice referent. To meet this objective, we draw on two resources. Theoretically, we deploy Iris Marion Young’s theory of social justice that includes relations of institutional domination, alongside those of material distribution, as key aspects of just social relations. Empirically, we focus on the Attabad landslide, which destroyed a large section of the arterial roadway in the Gojal district of northern Pakistan, stranding those living north of the landslide. Our analysis of this mobility crisis demonstrates that state domination is an important mobility justice issue, which tends to be overlooked in studies of mobility exclusions that implicitly privilege relations of distribution. State disaster management strategies enact domination, but also render visible preexisting relations of domination that were established in the context of road infrastructure development and the region’s political liminality, and that have organized and shaped an unjust mobility regime overtime. Achieving mobility justice in post-disaster Gojal requires democratic institutional change at the state level, which will be particularly difficult to realize by this politically peripheral jurisdiction.

Key Words:

• Mobility justice
• Social justice
• Road infrastructure
• Disaster
• Demobilization
• Pakistan

Acknowledgment

We wish to thank our research assistants and participants, as well as the staff at Pamir Times, for their contributions to the execution of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) under a Standard Research Grant [grant number 410 2009 0579], and by Brock University Council for Research in the Social Sciences.