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Humankind has long aspired to belong to the heavens, after having roamed the land and the seas as part of their usual existence. Indeed, the possibility of ruling the sky has always captured the imagination of cultures throughout history. In this issue, we aim to examine the varied "aspirations of flight" that populate our world today. At the same time, we hope to inhere a more contested sense of the term, by contemplating three cognate concepts that can help to nuance how aspirations take flight. These are namely grandeur, competition and nostalgia. As an endeavour to challenge gravity and the impossible, flight is a special act already predisposed to promoting itself and sketching positive visions for the future, but it also carries with it its own particular baggage and politics.

In this essay, I aim to trace connections between aspiration and mobility to argue how aspirations are mobilised through their connection to elsewhere(s). Taking root from Latin ad spirare (to breathe towards), aspirations not only call for an inward drawing of breath, but also a pause before the inevitable expiration. This paper considers both the metaphor and physical act of breathing in the context of mobilities of flight, amongst others. I invoke the metaphor through ethnographic vignettes of both flying and terrestrial mobilities in African and North American contexts, drawing a parallel between the breath which sustains us and the aspirations that drive us, providing a generative lesson for our affective futures. Through these vignettes, I argue that mobilities driven by the presence of elsewhere(s) are key to understanding how aspiration is mobilised.

Spaceflight calibrates its purview and scope as governments and private companies set out to envelop bodies of planets, moons and asteroids in the techno-industrial processes of production, extraction and destruction. The increasing departures of flights from Earth propel a range of beings and things, ideas and agendas across the Solar System and beyond, heralding the imperial drive of high-tech powers towards bountiful frontiers and magnifying the centrality of infrastructure for aspirations and attempts to grasp them. The enterprise of spaceflight invites us to consider the evolving arena of inquiry into "new geographies of flying" in its space age, bringing into sharp relief the accumulation and investments of "infrastructural capital" that sustain the off-Earth pursuits of power, knowledge and wealth. Attending to the changing aspirations and capacities of spaceflight as it enters a new developmental stage, I outline its key features and itineraries. I explore the striving and struggles involved in movements of infrastructural capital at the space frontier, an evolving off-Earth geography where mobility becomes a vector of power amidst extreme precarity. Such dynamics suggest the central role of spaceflight in upholding aspirations to take the trials of conquest and control outside the globe.

This article examines how civil aviation infrastructure operates as both a catalyst for development and a geopolitical instrument, using Nepal's Pokhara International Airport (PIA) as a case study. Rather than generalising from Nepal to a universal model of small-state behaviour, the article uses Nepal as a strategically situated case to analyse how regional asymmetries shape small-state agency. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis, it shows how Nepal used PIA to project sovereignty and diversify diplomatic ties while revealing persistent dependencies. From a Nepali perspective, three dynamics emerge: airports function as sites of geopolitical negotiation rather than merely technical facilities; small states enact agency through symbolic diaplomacy and selective engagement; and infrastructural ambitions remain embedded in asymmetric regional power relations. By foregrounding aviation, an often-overlooked sector in South Asian infrastructure debates, the article develops an analytical framework that bridges Science and Technology Studies, small-state theory, and geopolitics to show how infrastructure projects embody both material and symbolic power.

This article examines the aerotropolis as a globally circulating geoeconomic model that links aviation infrastructure to supply chains and speculative aspirations of growth. It shows that while aerotropolis imaginaries build upon early ideas of ascendencce associated with flight and fantastical visions of aerial futures, aerotropolis realities often also rehash tired supply chains of logistics, freight and defence that rely on global ecological extractions. While the aerotropolis form is highly contextual, it is at once generic and repetitive. Focusing on three case studies-Dallas Fort Worth, Zhengzhou and Incheon-the article critically analyses how the aerotropolis has been taken up and reworked across distinct geopolitical and institutional contexts. It considers the specific aspirations that have shaped each project, including efforts to establish new urban centres, reconfigure economic regions, and position cites within global logistical networks. In doing so, the article explores the evolving aeropolitics of airport development and considers how the aerotropolis is transformative as both a spatial concept and a vehicle for imagining new geoeconomic forms.

This paper examines the sociotechnical imaginaries underpinning the "smart airport," showing how visions of seamless, data-driven dfficiency obscure the laborious human practices that sustain them. Through a discourse analysis of aviation industry marketing materials, contrasted with observations at "SmartAirport," the study reveals how datafication-the conversion of social, material, and environmental processes into machine-readable data-reconfigures labour, power, and mobility within technocapitalist frameworks. While industry narratives frame data as a panacea for operational challenges-depicting it as an omniscient, predictive force promising autonomous, frictionless perations via centralised dashboards and digital twins-this paper exposes the tedium and contingency of datafication in practice. These systems rely on constant human intervention, including calibrating sensors, correcting algorithmic errors, filling data gaps, and maintaining complex infrastructures. By contrasting the aspirational discourse with on-the-ground realities, the paper highlights the paradoxes of datafication: While it promises supra-human efficiency, it intensifies and redistributes labour rather than eliminating it. The study contributes to critical geographies of automation and datafication by emphasising the indispensable role of human work in supposedly autonomous systems and challenging deterministic narratives of technological progress.

This article examines the Yogyakarta International Airport (YIA) aerotropolis as a political project of infrastructure mobility in contemporary Indonesia. Rather than just being a state project for the public interest, the YIA aerotropolis demonstrates how infrastructure is utilised to manifest political aspirations for modernity. Drawing on ethnographic research in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, I explore how bureaucratic infrastructures, planning and national development narratives converge to construct the aerotropolis as a symbol of national progress. However, these aspirations of a modern moment highlight contradictions between the state's rhetoric on infrastructural development and mobility and the socio-spatial realities of displacement and exclusion encountered by local communities. Through a critical analysis of planning documents and interviews with policymakers, planners, and regional stakeholders, the article contextualises the YIA aerotropolis within wider discussions about the promises of infrastructure and the politics of aeromobility in the Global South. The YIA aerotropolis embodies a performative vision of infrastructures where future-oriented rhetoric about connectivity legitimises expropriation and uneven development. This study contributes to our understanding of how infrastructures shape the conceptions of mobility, citizenship, and belonging that emerge under contemporary state-led infrastructure modernisation.

The field of aeromobilities has evolved into a multifaceted domain of research, shaped by diverse scales, contexts, and disciplinary approaches, most of which originate in the Global North. Seeking to contribute to a Southern perspective on airports' material aesthetics and airport geography, this study examines the building process and subsequent structure and interior design development of the new Mariscal Sucre International Airport (MSA) in Quito, Ecuador, between 2013 and 2024. The study first explores the historical, emotional, and social practices attached to the former airport. Second, it describes the aspirations and narratives articulated by state authorities and technical actors regarding the new airport. It finalises with an analysis of the current infrastructure and interior design. This analysis highlights a disjuncture between official imaginaries, the built environment and local dynamics. During the first phase (2013-2018), interior design largely followed global commercial and aesthetic norms, privileging international standards over local identity. In the second phase (2019-2024), however, the airport has undergone transformations, incorporating local elements to the space. Yet, despite its celebrated design, the MSA contrasts sharply with the uneven development and social exclusion of its surrounding territory.

This article addresses two central questions: how are atmospheres configured in the context of aeromobilities, and how can this context enrich the very concept of atmospheres? To pursue them, I draw on ethnographic research at Santiago International Airport, participation in aerospace fairs in Santiago, London and Lisbon, and the use of travel diaries and interviews with passengers and professionals. I develop the notion of aeromobile atmospheres to describe the politico-material interfaces in which infrastructures, bodies, regulations and imaginaries are entangled. Rather than understanding atmospheres as fleeting affective tonalities, the article shows how they emerge from material and sensory constellations and how they are staged, contested and reconfigured across scales. Three ethnographic cases orient the analysis: an incomplete journey that exposes the contingency of flight, the "ghost flights" of the pandemic that sustained systemic continuity, and aerospace fairs that project atmospheres of certainty. In bringing these cases into dialogue, the article argues that aeromobile atmospheres are simultaneously conditions of possibility and sites of friction, making visible inequalities of access, environmental contradictions and political disputes.

This introduction, following "An Interview with Brenda S.A. Yeoh," outlines her migration research trajectory over more than thirty years by focusing on three interrelated topics: Singapore as a mobile city, mobility and infrastructures, and the Asian context. First, Yeoh approaches Singapore as a mobile city in which multiple mobilities intersect, while criticising the ideology of the global city as an enclosed city-state often imagined or aspired to by Singaporean politicians seeking to consolidate the strength of a newly independent polity. Second, in dialogue with the new mobilities paradigm that foregrounds the politics of mobility, Yeoh understands migration as a form of mobility, paying particular attention to infrastructures that facilitate and/or disrupt mobilities yet are largely taken for granted. Lastly, Yeoh examines Asian migration as distinct from European and North American experiences by emphasising "the Asian context," while simultaneously challenging the prevailing conditions of knowledge production. In this sense, her research trajectory can be seen as actively infrastructuring migration studies in the Asian context, particularly through her practice of the methodology of "inter-referencing," which extends beyond infra-Asian comparison to encompass relations between Asia and non-Asia.

Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore (NUS). Having made important contributions to the field of migration and transnationalism studies, she was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize for outstanding achievements in Geography in 2021. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities and she also has considerable experience working on a wide range of migration research in Asia, including key themes such as cosmopolitanism and highly skilled talent migration; gender, social reproduction and care migration; migration, national identity and citizenship issues; globalising universities and international student mobilities; and cultural politics, family dynamics and international marriage migrants. She has published widely in these fields.

Urban Mobilities in Literature and Art Activism, edited by Patricia García and Anna-Leena Toivanen in 2024 as part of Palgrave Macmillan's Literary Urban Studies series, is a volume composed of 14 chapters(including a well-informed and informative "Introduction") authored by 14 different scholars. The book intends to contribute to the humanities turn in mobility studies by examining representations of "(im)mobilities in urban spaces ... in literary narratives as well as in other arts" (1). The result is a very well-structured, cohesive, and eclectic volume that not only benefits the increasing, but still underexplored, dialogue between literary and art studies, on the one hand, and mobility studies, on the other, but may also draw further attention to the relevance of literature and other arts in understanding movement.