ABSTRACT
The last few years have seen the announcement of a ‘new mobilities paradigm’,1 the launch of the journal Mobilities and a number of key texts and edited collections devoted to mobility.2 Work inspired by the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ has informed a diverse array of work on particular forms and spaces of mobility ranging from driving and roads3 to flying and airports.4 This is not the place to review the work on mobility.5 Rather, the overall aim of the chapter is to move forward with some of the insights of the mobility turn, or new mobilities paradigm, and further develop some of the ideas that have been associated with it.6 In particular, this chapter develops the approach I utilized in On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. In that book I outlined the role of mobility in a number of case studies ranging in scale from the micro-movements of the body to the politics of global travel. But, for the most part, mobility remained a singular thing. There was no detailed accounting of various aspects of mobility that have the capacity to make it powerfully political. This chapter, then, is an attempt at outlining some key ideas for a meso-theoretical approach to the politics of mobility. Strategically, it uses ideas from other theorists and a variety of real world examples. It does not subscribe to a singular theoretical model but seeks to contribute to the development of a geographical theoretical approach to mobility. It is part of an ongoing process of meso-theoretical construction.
