Comparative mobilities in an unequal world: researching intersections of gender and generation

Abstract

Mobilities are shaped by social inequalities and spatial unevenness as demonstrated in a range of existing studies across disciplines. These inequalities are manifest at different scales, from the very local spaces of everyday life to global spaces of accelerated mobilities. Mobile spaces, however distant, are connected through common everyday practices and the sociocultural contexts in which they are produced. In this paper, we argue that researching these interconnectivities and commonalities requires a particular methodological approach that accounts for the situatedness of experience. Our focus is on the ways in which inequalities according to gender and generation are generated through urban designed spaces. We suggest that drawing in to a shared material and ‘border’ object, the urban bench, provides a point of reflection on these distant yet parallel expressions of mobile inequality.

Keywords:

• Gender
• generation
• urban borders
• bench study
• comparative mobilities

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada who funded the project ‘Ageing, communication, technologies (ACT): experiencing a digital world in later life’. The comparative study ‘Mediated street spaces: intergenerational interactions, technologies and design’ was then funded through ACT.