Corporate Mobilities Regimes. Mobility, Power and the Socio-geographical Structurations of Mobile Work

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of mobility regimes and points out three discursive dimensions: the normalization, rationalization and time-space-compression of mobility. It concentrates on corporate mobility, business travel and mobile work, and gives a focused overview on current developments in research. Sociology has largely neglected the topic of spatial mobility. Dealings with distance and travel, however, are driving forces for the modernization of modern societies. Economic activity is based on mobility and companies deploy sophisticated mobility regimes to be present in markets. The increase in mobile work brings new issues centre stage such as the control of mobile workers, social cohesion and the spatial complexity of corporate activities. The author theorizes mobile work and business travel as signifiers for social change in the organization of work. He presents theoretical reflections based on empirical work conducted among mobile workers in the IT, mechanical and the chemical industries.

Key Words:

• Mobility
• Mobile risk society
• Sociology of work
• Mobility regimes
• Space
• Ambivalence
• Power
• Control
• Discipline
• Blurring of boundaries

Acknowledgement

This article is based on two research projects funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation (Hans Böckler Stiftung). I thank the foundation for supporting ‘Corporate Mobilities Regimes’ from 2007 to 2009 and the ongoing project ‘Mobility all around the work: on mobility capital and social inequality’. This research was conducted with Gerlinde Vogl, and with Katrin Roller from 2012.

Notes

1. German original translated by the author.

2. ECaTT stands for Electronic Commerce and Telework Trends and stems from the final report of an EU project that addressed new working methods and the potentials of e-commerce (http://www.ecatt.com/). Therefore, this widely spread definition emphasizes the aspect of online data transfer and sees mobile workers as ‘those who work at least 10 h per week away from home and from their main place of work, e.g. on business trips, in the field, travelling or on customers’ premises, and use online computer connections when doing so’ (Pearn Kandola 2007, 6).

3. See http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/internal_market/living_and_working_in_the_internal_market/c11333_en.htm (last checked on February 03, 2013).

4. Between 2005 and 2009, the mean costs per business trip dropped from 335 to 312 euros in Germany (VDR 2010, 6).

5. These aspects play an important role in the debate on the blurring of boundaries and the development of competences to manage the requirements and burdens of private and professional life. See the recent publications by Huchler (2013) and Kesselring and Vogl (2010) on mobility competences and the social costs of corporate mobility.

6. German original translated by the author.

7. Already in 1993, Ulrich Beck described the traffic jam as the form of meditation of the reflexive modern age. Eric Laurier’s papers impressively document that car rides can be moments of highest intimacy and emotional closeness. Traffic jams are often used to discuss problematic topics, also because the intensity can be broken at any time to concentrate on traffic. At the 6th Cosmobilities Conference in Aalborg (Denmark), Laurier presented a hermeneutic analysis of video-documented drives. The conversations ‘on the move’ show an emotional density which in his opinion is due to the special transitoriness of the drive. Cf. also the discussion on ‘mobile methods’ and Laurier’s further papers (Laurier 2005; Büscher, Urry, and Witchger 2010).

8. The data basis is population surveys from the years 2002 and 2003 carried out in EU member states (www.sibis-eu.org).

9. Ambivalence plays a prominent role in mobilities research. In literature as well as in music, arts and philosophy, the fields of conflict between the modern promise of freedom due to mobility and the constraints, or rather the limits, of mobility are discussed extensively (cf. Leed 1991; Bauman 2000; Cresswell 2006; Kesselring and Vogl 2008). The empirical surveys of the ‘structural stories approach’ (Freudendal-Pedersen 2009) show that the ambiguous relationship between modernity and mobility is mirrored in the everyday practices of individuals and is central to policies and the understanding of mobility actions.

10. German original translated by the author.

11. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, for example, showed how the failure of mobility can become a global endurance test. Cf. the special issue volume 6, no. 1 of the magazine Mobilities (Birtchnell and Büscher 2011).

12. German original translated by the author.