Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Anxiety

265 Pages·2018·2.26 MB·English

by  Mimi Sheller

Mobility Justice
Mobility Justice
The Politics of Movement
in an Age of Extremes
Mimi Sheller
First published by Verso 2018
© Mimi Sheller 2018
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873092-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873095-2 (HBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873093-8 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78873094-5 (US EBK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data
Names: Sheller, Mimi, author.
Title: Mobility justice : the politics of movement in the age of extremes / Mimi Sheller.
Description: London ; Brooklyn, NY : Verso, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018017911 | ISBN 9781788730921 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781788730952 (hbk) | ISBN
9781788730938 (UK ebk) | ISBN 9781788730945 (US ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Emigration and
immigration—Social aspects. | Rural-urban migration—Social aspects. | Transportation—Social
aspects. | Social justice. | Environmental justice.
Classification: LCC JV6225 .S54 2018 | DDC 303.48/32—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017911
Typeset in Minion Pro by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed by CPI Mackays, UK
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: The Triple Crisis
Chapter 1: What Is Mobility Justice?
Chapter 2: Bodily Moves and Racial Justice
Chapter 3: Beyond Automobility and Transport Justice
Chapter 4: Smart Cities and Infrastructural Justice
Chapter 5: Mobile Borders and Migrant Justice
Chapter 6: Planetary Ecologies and Climate Justice
Conclusion: The Mobile Commons
Principles of Mobility Justice
Glossary
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
I first want to dedicate this book to the late John Urry, who was my inspiration
and mentor in so many ways, and with whom I worked, wrote, edited, and co-
founded the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University in 2003, and
the journal Mobilities in 2006. He was a model of academic commitment,
collegiality, productivity, good humor, and humility. I want to thank my many
friends and colleagues who continue to work on those projects, as well as those
in the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic, and
Mobility (T2M), and in the Cosmobilities Network and the many other
mobilities research networks around the world with whom I have shared
inspiring conferences, workshops, and vital exchanges of ideas.
I first started thinking about a book on the concept of mobility justice after
my experience of working in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake, where I
joined in National Science Foundation–funded research with my Drexel
University colleagues Franco Montalto, Patrick Gurian, and Michael Piasecki. I
want to thank them, along with Jen Britton, Lavaud Vernet, Jean de Vernet, and
Yves Rebecca, for our travels in Haiti in 2010. I also thank Michael Piasecki for
facilitating my inclusion in another NSF project on climate change in Haiti and
the Dominican Republic in 2012, with special thanks to Principal Investigator
Jorge Gonzalez from City College of New York, and collaborator Yolanda Leon
from the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo. My reflections on this work
are gathered together in my forthcoming book Island Futures: Global Mobilities
and Caribbean Survival (Duke University Press, 2019), which is a more
empirically grounded companion volume to this one.
Building on this initial line of thought about post-disaster uneven mobilities,
I gave the Distinguished Lecture entitled “Sustainable Mobility and Mobility
Justice” at the University of Delaware’s Transportation Center in 2011, and
contributed chapters on that topic to the books Mobile/Immobile: Quels choix,
quels droits pour 2030? edited by Christophe Gay, Vincent Kaufmann, Sylvie
Landrieve, and Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin (Editions de l’Aube, 2011); and
Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society, edited by Margaret
Grieco and John Urry (Ashgate, 2012). In 2013 I gave a talk entitled “Mobility
Capability: Social Justice and Counter-Geographies of Movement,” at the
“Differential Mobilities” Conference of the Pan-American Mobilities Network at
Concordia University in Montreal, hosted by Kim Sawchuk and colleagues,
where I began to see the significance of critical disabilities studies through the
work of Laurence Parent; and I was invited by Inderpal Grewal to give a talk
entitled “Towards Transnational Mobility Justice” for the Yale University series
“Transnational feminist research and its theoretical paradigms.” I thank all these
hosts and audiences for the chance to grapple with these ideas and share this
evolving work.
When the 2015 refugee crises associated with war in Syria, as well as the
impacts of violence across North Africa, Central America, and Mexico, drove so
many people to meet death while seeking safety, I began to see the need for a
more general book addressing a wider global theory of mobility justice. I was
also influenced by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the growing
protests by Indigenous people’s movements against mining, hydroelectric dams,
and largescale infrastructure projects around the world. I would not know about
many of these mobilizations if it were not for my wonderful network of activist
colleagues and, yes, thank you, Facebook friends. I also want to thank bicycling
justice advocate Adonia E. Lugo, founder of the Bicicultures Network and
member of the Untokening project, and Olatunji Oboi Reed, co-founder of the
Slow Roll Chicago Bicycle Movement and the mobility justice advocacy group
Equiticity, for introducing me to these grassroots multiracial mobility justice
movements and sharing their insights and experience.
Esther Figueroa, my brilliant collaborator on Fly Me to the Moon, a
documentary film about bauxite mining and aluminum, has also been a constant
source of inspiration and encouragement in thinking about global resource
extraction, human rights, and planetary ecologies. I also take inspiration from the
work of Deborah Cowen, Stephen Graham, Lisa Parks, and others working so
creatively on infrastructure, with special thanks to Stephen for the introduction
to Verso. I want to thank Diane Davis, Neil Brenner, and Gareth Doherty at
Harvard University Graduate School of Design for invitations to speak there
about aluminum, infrastructure, and mobilities.
Thanks to Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Joergen Ole Baerenholdt, I was
greatly honored to be awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa from Roskilde
University, Denmark, in 2015, where in my honorary address I first described
the different scales of justice that became the structure of this book (and