Driving retirement: melancholic geographies of car immobility in an Australian suburban regional centre

Abstract

This article builds on Butlers’ concept of a ‘liveable life’ that pays attention to social power as constitutive of the psyche. I offer the concept of driving retirement melancholia to better understand why the future loss of a driving licence is often spoken of as living death. The article draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2019 with drivers aged 65 years of age and over in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. I argue that retirement from driving is a form of social melancholia or blocked grief. The argument is that families, medical practitioners and transport authorities in car dominated western societies need to better understand the imagined loss of driving as constituting an ungrieveable and unliveable life.

Keywords:

• Australia
• liveability
• mixed-qualitative methods
• politics of mourning
• vulnerability

Acknowledgements

Instrumental to enabling this project were my research partners Theresa Harada, Victoria Traynor, Karina Murray, Trish Munda, Melanie Randle, Nadine Veerhuis, Dimity Pond, Nicola Carey and John Carmody. Financial support for this research was received through the Global Challenges Program, University of Wollongong and from Transport New South Wales, Community Road Safety Grant. I thank all participants for sharing detailed insights to their driving experiences. I thank two anonymous referees from their constructive feedback on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gordon Waitt

Gordon Waitt is Associate Dean (Equity Diversity and Inclusion) and senior professor of the Australian Centre of Culture, Environment and Society, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Gordon’s research is focussed on everyday experiences as a lens through which to better understand inequalities.