Introduction

In 1973, Dutch carpenter K. could not travel to his new job. For working people like him, the time and cost of getting to work are a crucial aspect of daily life. According to mobility historians, for most people, the opportunity to travel increased over the course of the twentieth century. This was not the case for everyone. International scholarship since the late 1960s has shown that the absence of affordable housing near work locations combined with a lack of safe, efficient, and affordable mobility options aggravate social exclusion for some. From this perspective, leading mobility researchers call for studying—but have yet to detail—how (uneven) power relations have historically enabled or inhibited people’s mobility. ¹ Historians have not followed up this call. While labor historians have a long tradition of analyzing power in relation to blue-collar workers’ physical movements within factories and affordable nearby company housing, they have not studied in-depth the everyday commute. No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job redresses these omissions by researching how workers’ mobility and job accessibility changed over time, and who contributed to this change in twentieth century Netherlands.