Search results

This paper aims to explore the types of learning engendered by internal mobility (IM) by referring to the principles elaborated by Bateson (1972).

A qualitative methodology is followed with interviews among 50 professionals working at four large French firms.

A system of classification for IM is proposed, namely, replication, adaptation, innovation and revolution.

The identification of these categories invites human resource managers to reconsider the traditional career paths.

This paper brings a new perspective on the possible link between learning and IM and questions what employees really learn thanks to their moves.

This study aims to unravel the tensions and convergences between market-oriented neoliberal education and state-serving transnational higher education (TNHE) practices through an infrastructural lens within the broad context of post-pandemic geopolitics.

The study utilizes a case study approach, with a diverse array of data collection methods, including observations, interviews and review of material/online documents issued by the TNHE-related institutions and the Chinese Ministry of Education.

The study identifies three findings: (1) Re-articulation of transnational infrastructures, valuing ‘glocal' education and casting immobility as advantageous yet quasi-mobile; (2) Infrastructural tensions arising from stakeholder contests over program control and (3) Infrastructural dialectics, illustrating how promised (im)mobility becomes a tightly regulated academic journey due to institutional constraints and conflicts.

The findings elucidate the dynamic interplay between international education and TNHE amidst neoliberal pedagogical trends and pandemic-driven geopolitical shifts in China. While the interplay showcased a notable effect on Chinese students' (im)mobility during the pandemic, more empirical research is needed to understand international student (im)mobility issues in the post-pandemic era.

This study explores the infrastructural intersections between international and transnational education during the unprecedented Covid-19. Findings may provide a reference for policymakers and practitioners to strategize the “glocal” approach to international/transnational education in China after the pandemic.

This chapter focusses on the use of immobility policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific nations of East and South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand to respond to COVID-19 across 2020–2021. Concepts from the field of mobilities studies are adopted for analysis. Transport system managers in the region have increasingly played roles either limiting movement, adjusting transport supply, creating proscribed ‘mobilities passageways’ for travellers that present COVID-risk, and encouraging or mandating passenger compliance with other pandemic measures. The series of immobility policies and practices used at the international, intra-national and local scales are analysed. Transport agency responses differed greatly including whether to retain levels of public transport supply or reduce them in line with falling patronage. A summary of known travel behaviour impacts is then discussed, using available data from government travel portals, and, for Shanghai, Brisbane and Hong Kong, a range of road volumes, public transport boardings, micro-mobility, bicycle and pedestrian counts. There are indications that a series of socio-technical transitions have occurred, such as increased work-from-home, new social practices around walking, increased demands for roads to provide place functions (as opposed to movement functions) and the role of cycling and micro-mobility as liberating technologies in a world of increased control and fear of contagion. Transport agencies have harnessed some of these changes in attitudes and societal needs, using radical institutional responses such as pop-up bike lane trials and other ‘tactical urbanism’ approaches, to adapt their cities to life during and after the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the idea of the immobile immigrant worker, trapped in the bottom segments of the labour market, by exploring how immigrants and their descendants (sometimes designated second generation immigrants) develop re‐emigration strategies in their first country of settlement in Europe when faced with structural or conjunctural barriers to the advancement of their socio‐economic situation.

Empirical evidence was collected through structured interviews aimed at capturing labour market and residential trajectories of workers of African origin and their descendants in Portugal, with a particular emphasis on the period between 1998 and 2006.

Findings suggest that in some cases, immigrants draw on social networks available to them to engage in processes of continued intra‐European mobility. International re‐emigration emerges as a work‐space mobility strategy for migrant workers and their descendants when there was no significant social mobility in the first destination. Similarly, international geographical mobility may constitute a self‐perpetuating strategy across generations to escape structural immobility faced by certain immigrant groups in destination contexts.

Experiences reported are situated, so cannot be taken to represent those of all workers of African origin in Portugal.

Findings presented in the paper highlight potential consequences of perpetuating geographical mobility throughout time, namely in terms of labour market conditions and family dynamics. They also highlight the need to look at socio‐economic mobility trajectories within Europe as integrated space and not just within national borders.

The paper proposes an encompassing view of migrants’ (im)mobilities over time, to include the conditions of their labour market incorporation and its links to further spatial, international, mobility.

This chapter explores the potential for involving the public in planning healthy urban mobility using a case study of two neighbourhoods in Oxford, UK. We draw specifically on lessons learned from the UK case of a large-scale international study entitled Healthy Urban Mobility (HUM). The HUM project was based on the need to address health inequalities within urban areas by implementing new approaches to planning and health that use novel research methods to encourage active dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders. The two principal objectives of the research were firstly, to understand the impact of everyday (im)mobility on health and wellbeing within different social groups, and secondly, to explore the potential for participatory mobilities planning with local communities to support and develop solutions for healthy urban mobility.

The chapter is organised into six parts. Following the introduction, we highlight the theories behind the need for public participation in urban mobility planning and calls for active dialogue and mutual learning between practitioners and communities for effective action on improving urban health. Then in the third and fourth parts, we provide an overview of the approach to participatory mobilities planning with local communities in the UK as part of the HUM project. In the fifth part, we report the outcomes of the project and critically reflect on the overall approach and lessons learned that may be of use to practitioners and communities. Finally, we conclude with the significance of the study and implications for public participation in planning healthy urban mobility. The research demonstrates the significant potential of participatory methods in transport infrastructure project but also highlights the complexities of public engagement and points to the need for a continual, long-term process to build trust between partners.

In this chapter, the authors contribute to the scholarly discourse on poverty, inequality, and economic mobility within low-income families who have children with disabilities. Few extant studies have addressed issues of socioeconomic mobility relative to families with children who have disabilities. Accordingly, we employed analyses of secondary longitudinal ethnographic data from the Three-City Study to explore socioeconomic mobility among 31 mothers of children with disabilities in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio. The authors examined two central issues that emerged in our ethnographic data: (1) mothers’ aspirations regarding their socioeconomic mobility, and (2) the barriers which make it difficult for them to reach their mobility aspirations. The authors also considered the role of family comorbidity and cumulative disadvantage in this inquiry. Through our analyses of mothers’ talks regarding socioeconomic mobility, we identified three domains of their aspirations – work and career, education, and intergenerational. We also identified three “barrier bundles” – pragmatic needs, relationship and social liabilities, and socio-emotional concerns – which compromised mothers’ abilities to be upwardly mobile. In essence, we found that mothers’ aspirations were not aligned with the barriers that precluded them reaching their goals. The authors conclude with a discussion on the implications of this research for future studies.

Prior studies of academics’ career migration patterns typically focused on middle- and upper-class faculty. The “push/pull” or “hard/soft” factors relevant to faculty from more privileged groups emerged from those analyses. This phenomenological study used qualitative interviews with 12 faculty members from lower social-class backgrounds to discover variables unique to this group. Due to lifelong differences in basic resources and limited access to educational opportunities, as well as adherence to class-based values, faculty from lower social-class backgrounds made career decisions based primarily on financial and family needs rather than the variables found in earlier studies. In order to paint a complete picture of factors that enter into the career-decision-making process, studies examining the mobility of academics must consider inclusion of faculty from lower social-class origins.

Canada's rural economy today is a dynamic source of economic growth and jobs are available in the natural resource extraction, manufacturing, agri-food and service sectors, yet despite this relatively favourable outlook, a profound socio-economic transformation is taking place. Within Ontario, the nation's largest and most economically diversified province and the focus of this study, the agri-food sector seeks new ways to deal with heightened competitive pressures and unstable commodity prices, in part by securing a relatively inexpensive and reliable labour force, while transnational auto-parts firms have looked increasingly to small town Ontario as fertile ground to transplant new ‘flexible’, niche manufacturing facilities. This multifaceted process has had a distinct impact on the regional economy, migratory labour flows and community social dynamics. As Harvey (1996) makes note, the effects of capital's re-spatialization have been uneven, and the state's role in this process contradictory, simultaneously facilitating capital mobility while regulating labour's (im)mobility (see also, Peck, 1996; Antonio & Bonanno, 2000). This chapter presents research findings and examines the impact of capital/labour flows on the changing character of three small communities in the heart of rural south-western Ontario – Bradford, Strathroy and Tillsonburg – with a particular focus on the conditions under which migrants and immigrants are socially included and excluded from the communities where they work. Based on these case studies, I argue that while small town Canada has managed to benefit partially from opportunities linked to a globalizing economy, the formal and informal means of socially incorporating this new transnationalized labour force is lagging significantly behind, reflecting in fact a regressive turn in Canadian labour-market regulation, while the concern for sustainable community development is largely ignored.

The paper aims to discuss the business issues surrounding the choice between the end‐to‐end internet architecture, in particular peer‐to‐peer networks, versus managed telecommunications architectures, in particular IMS, for the migration towards a next‐generation mobile system.

The paper organises the arguments available in the literature and technical field along four critical business design dimensions, providing a balanced overview of both sides of the argument.

The paper discriminates between weak and strong arguments on both sides, and introduces a number of recommendations towards actors that will implement IMS.

The arguments collected from the literature and industry are not exhaustive but selected on their relevancy for business repercussions.

While most position papers on IMS or P2P are written from an opinionated perspective, this paper offers a trade‐off view of both side's advantages and disadvantages. It reframes the dispute as a number of design trade‐offs to be made on various levels.

Freight and logistics are central to everyday life. These sectors depend on a variety of workers, and the types of work have changed rapidly with shifts towards e-commerce and changes to urban logistics. Yet a particular form of masculinity dominates imaginaries of the sector, especially freight transport. Such imaginaries rest on ideas of freight drivers requiring (physical) strength, toughness, flexibility, mobility and driving competencies, as well as being unencumbered by caring responsibilities. In the UK, and elsewhere, the freight sector, and particularly driving-related freight jobs, are heavily reliant on male workers. The freight driver shortage crisis in the UK has been referred to as a ‘ticking timebomb’, emerging from a reliance on white male workers, the majority of whom are over the age of 50. A ‘diversifying’ agenda has been the primary response to this crisis, which has largely focussed on increasing the number of female drivers. At the same time, however, little has been done to address issues associated with pay and conditions for freight workers. In this chapter, the authors examine gendered freight work across three themes: changing mobilities of work, ‘flexibilisation’ of freight working practice and automation of freight vehicles.