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This special issue traces back to the 2021 Global Mobility Humanities Conference (GMHC), organised online by the Academy of Mobility Humanities, Konkuk University, on Oct. 29 and 30, 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the physically restricted mobilities experienced globally at the time brought to attention the relevance of the conference, “moveo, ergo sum,” that was previously used to address the topic of “human identity” (Bergmann 21) or the idea of “becoming through mobility” (Salazar 8). Unlike René Descartes, who had to travel abroad to seek a fixed axiom, “Cogito, ergo sum,” the conference participants, crossing arts, cultural and literary studies, geography, philosophy, sociology, and urban design, discussed mobilities whilst acknowledging their forced immobility, critically revisiting the specific “mobilitarian ideology” (Mincke 27) that prioritises mobility over immobility.

In this paper, I outline some of the different conceptual approaches to mobility and immobility/fixity that have emerged in mobility studies over the past few decades, connecting this work to broader philosophical and methodological debates in the humanities and social sciences. I discuss writings which have distinguished between mobility and moorings, mobility and motility, and nomadic and sedentary metaphysics, before focussing upon studies which either approach mobility-fixity as a continuum, or highlight the many qualities, events and experiences which traverse or cut across this binary. In the final section I outline Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theoretical approach to movement, affect and becoming, in which they distinguish between molar and molecular becomings and movements. By adopting a processual and non-representational approach to mobility and stasis I argue that the problem is not one of understanding when and why things move or are still, but of tracing when and how movements become perceptible and imperceptible.

This paper develops an outline for conceptualising the ontology of automobility. It does so not through engaging with traditional metaphysical ontological discourses but by focusing on the politics of ontology construction. That which goes by the name “automobility” is a political order, it is argued, that may be described as an ontocracy. Spatially, automobility circumscribes an ontosphere. The science through which automobility represents, constitutes and reproduces itself is ontology. The practitioners and personnel of this science may be described as ontologists, the agents who perform the routine work of sustaining what we call “the ontos of automobility.” Ontography is the work of reality inscription, of écriture, by which the political ontology of automobility is constituted and sustained. All the above are intertwined with, components of, made possible through, the exercise of ontopower, a form of constitutive power. Collectively, these terms allow for the identification of the ontopolitical activities and practices, agencies and properties, through which the automobility ontos is constituted, of which they are each reflexively components. The political ontology of automobility that is outlined in this paper is not unique to automobility, but is one example of, manifestation of, constituent element of, something larger, the political ontology of the lateAnthropocene. The concluding section of the paper contrasts the political ontology that is outlined here with the claim that the ontology we inhabit is a “mobilities ontology.”

This paper presents the outline of a modest assembling of diverse ideas within mobilities research we might term “material pragmatism.” It does so with reference to empirical cases of “dark design” (i.e., social exclusion of homeless people by means of leaning benches, spikes, sprinklers, barbed wire, etc.). Such interventions create zones of “go and no-go areas” in the city, and thereby facilitate complex mobility patterns for socially vulnerable groups. From the perspective of material pragmatism, it can be shown that dark design contributes to an “atmosphere of rejection,” as well as having a physical impact on vulnerable human bodies. The installations of material artefacts work by a mechanism of “material interpellation” in which subjects are “addressed” by the leaning benches, spikes etc. Material pragmatism is sensitive to such material assemblages of human and non-human entities, and a pragmatic exploration of the movements and actions afforded (or prevented) by such interventions. The paper presents material pragmatism as a way of connecting different thinkers and scholars engaging actual practice and its material components

The field of mobilities research has critically examined many aspects of high mobility societies and the mobile lives of the kinetic elite. Yet many students, researchers, and academics engage in much global travel as part of their education and career progression. This article will consider the ethics of global educational travel today, applying a mobility justice lens to consider the ends and purposes for which we value academic travel. What kinds of educational and academic mobilities should be encouraged, and what kinds limited? What are the principles that should guide ethical academic travel today? And how can a mobility justice lens help academic institutions evaluate and create guidance around ethical academic travel? As the new Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, USA, I examine our own practice of interdisciplinary project-based global learning as a case study to develop best practices and new policies.

As the (former) colonial centre and the mythical City of Light, Paris occupies a prominent position in the Francophone African literary imagination. While the alleged centrality of Paris has been challenged by critical readings of texts that provincialise, suburbanise, and move beyond the French national framework altogether, the present article focuses on the peripheralisation of Paris from the perspective of “mobile urban peripherality.” Adapting a mobility humanities perspective for use in a postcolonial literary analysis, the article concentrates on aeromobile portrayals of Paris as perceived by the figure of the newcomer-air traveller in a set of Francophone African literary texts dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present. The shift in viewing position enabled by the perspective of the newcomer in the context of aeromobility produces peripheralised representations of Paris, challenges romanticised ideas about the city, and underlines the role of mobility in making meaning out of urban spaces. My reading also extends aeromobility from its use in the air to the action on the ground. By focusing on African literary texts, the intention of the article is to contribute to enhancing dialogue between mobilities research and postcolonial literary studies.

It has been almost two decades since “a whole new kinetic paradigm" or “a new paradigm defined by motion,” mentioned in the epigraph quoted above, was brought to light in the name of the "new mobilities paradigm" (Sheller and Urry 207). This inauguration of the paradigm was arguably the result of "an almost/not quite ontology which is gradually gathering momentum around the key trope of 'mobility'" (Thrift 258). Needless to say, there has been no lack of criticism and resistance to this paradigm. For instance, critics discerned that "if mobility is everything," as is often assumed to be the case in this paradigm, "then it is nothing," since the difference between mobility and immobility and among diverse types of mobility cannot be discerned and, consequently, mobility has no explanatory power (Adey 75). More radically, it was criticised that every vocabulary of this research program's name, "new mobilities paradigm," qualifying it as “new,” focussing on “mobilities,” and designating it as a “paradigm,” was problematic (Cresswell, "Towards a Politics of Mobility" 18).

Thomas Nail is a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of numerous books, including The Figure of the Migrant, Theory of the Border, Marx in Motion, Theory of the Image, Theory of the Object, Theory of the Earth, Lucretius I, II, III, Returning to Revolution, and Being and Motion. His research focuses on the philosophy of movement.

Guided by Freire's idea of conscientisation, this article aims to find out if the 1.5 generation Filipinos in Japan are able to articulate their understanding and construction of their identities using media and other resources available to them. Specifically, it seeks to investigate if research participants can identify their historical and socio-cultural struggles, exercise agency in making identity and cultural choices, use transmedia to counter hegemonic representations, or create spaces for transforming their current realities. The study also questions the discourse on actively reframing hafu as daburu to refer to the biethnic 1.5 generation. Online surveys, field interviews, and focus group discussions were conducted in 2018, and archival research until mid 2022. Results reveal the following: individual contexts and resources are interconnected with global and social mobility; the process of labeling oneself indicates individual reasoning and agency in projecting the self and the culture/s of choice; identity performances and cultural expressions can be utilitarian or based on potential gains that the individual can derive from performing Filipinoness, Japaneseness, or biethnicity; critical consciousness is essential for emancipatory use of transmedia; and continuous use of transmedia for expressing multiethnic identities and cultures can open dialogues or activate engagement.

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions globally, but it has had particularly punishing impacts on the lives of internal migrants in India. Many internal migrants live on subsistence wages in metropolitan cities and relatively prosperous Indian provinces such as Maharashtra, Gujrat, Panjab and Delhi, earning barely enough to get by, and having no additional resources to support themselves during the lockdowns. Confronted with the harsh reality of a lockdown, shortage of food and job loss, millions of migrants started to leave their workplace for their native homes in the early days of the pandemic. Some governments tried to stop them from travelling during the lockdown, but failed to convince them. In a democratic society, including India, it is impossible to force people into compliance if they do not believe in the usefulness of a policy, feeling compelled to defy it. Recognising that the pandemic has brought untold suffering to poor migrants and vulnerable sections of society, I argue that policy makers must 1) take effective measures to provide adequate material and moral support to migrants, 2) making sure that their rights and well-being are respected, and 3) that going forward, development goals are reconceptualised ethically to strike a reasonable balance between economic activity and the rights of migrants.

In response to increasing worldwide interest in movement, access, and mobility justice, fed above all by recent experiences caused by Covid-19; this book is a valuable contribution to think about moving over the past century automobility discourse. Robert Braun and Richard Randell are both key scholars in the field of mobility studies. Their research interest stands at the intersection of STS, political philosophy, and mobility studies; where they raise democratic enquiry into decision making about the future of automobility and the forms of violence that automobility causes.