Mobilising Poverty?: Mobile Phone Use and Everyday Spatial Mobility Among Low-Income Families in Santiago, Chile

Abstract

In the last few decades physical mobility has become one of the key elements of contemporary societies. This centrality of mobility also means the development of a new kind of social exclusion caused by the problems of living in a social context in which one has to be increasingly “on the move” to access goods and services. In this article, based on fieldwork conducted with 20 low-income family inhabitants of the city of Santiago, Chile, we study the role that mobile phone usage has in relation to physical mobility in the everyday lives of these individuals. Through an analysis of the pattern of usage and mobility of these devices, we arrive at the conclusion that rather than giving rise to an experience of constant mobility and “anytime–anywhere” availability, the individuals studied face limitations and exclusions that profoundly constrict the potential “mobility” afforded by these devices.

Keywords:

• everyday spatial mobility
• mobile phones
• poverty
• social exclusion
• time-space

Notes

1. Like Brazilian favelas or Argentinean villas miseria, campamentos are neighborhoods made of low-quality housing, characterized by an illegal occupancy of land, and commonly located, but not always, in the outskirts of cities.

2. Such as less available money to spend on public transport, little access to car and other means of private mobility, a location in areas with little access to the networks of transport, little integration of women to the labor market, etc.

3. That means that the mobile subscriber does not pay for incoming calls, just for the ones that he/she made.

4. One interesting point to make here is the almost inexistence of text messaging in the communicative practices of the individuals under study. Only two people mentioned text messaging as something that they usually do, while most of the people didn't even mention this practice when they were asked about how they deal with the costs involved in using the telephone. There are many possible causes for this lack of use (literacy limitations, antiquity of the devices, etc.), but it is interesting to note the difference with more developed societies or other developing societies, like the Philippines (Pertierra et al., 2002), in which text messaging is by far the most popular option to avoid the high expenses of using mobile phones.