ABSTRACT
Travel is a form of work. Derivative of the French travail, the word “travel” connotes planning, action, focused effort, and the solving of problems related to movement. Travel is about making “passages:” the way-finding through temporal periods and places, and thus the making of fragile, negotiated, and heterogenous spatiotemporal orders (Peters 2006:69). The work that travel requires is evident to anyone who engages in it, regardless of destination, mode of transport, or availability of financial resources. It is precisely because of the amount of technical expertise and practical and abstract knowledge it requires that travel is regulated by various social norms, expectations, and socialization processes that prevent unrestricted access. For instance, we obtain a driver’s licenses only after passing an exam, we master skills like walking (Edensor 2000; Urry 2000) and bicycle-riding (e.g. see Horton, Rosen, and Cox 2007) after learning motor and sensory skills and rules of the road, and we only feel comfortable navigating transit after acquiring the ability to comprehend schedules and spatial arrangements (Flamm and Kaufmann 2006). We are reminded of the laborious aspects of travel any time we make our passage through a foreign bus or train station for the first time.
