Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The beauty of speed or the cross of mobility? Introductory reflections on the aesth/ethics of space, justice and motion
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- 8 Mobility: discourses from the non-Western immigrant groups in Norway
- 9 Inclusive mobility: participation, physical barriers and the concept of universal design
- 10 Freedom as mobility: implications of the distinction between actual and potential travelling
- Index
10 - Freedom as mobility: implications of the distinction between actual and potential travelling
from Part III
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The beauty of speed or the cross of mobility? Introductory reflections on the aesth/ethics of space, justice and motion
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- 8 Mobility: discourses from the non-Western immigrant groups in Norway
- 9 Inclusive mobility: participation, physical barriers and the concept of universal design
- 10 Freedom as mobility: implications of the distinction between actual and potential travelling
- Index
Summary
Modern conceptions of the self … have profoundly been about the mattering of mobility – of freedoms conceived in terms of a complicated conjunction of social and physical bodies in space and in motion.
(Hay & Packer 2004: 212–13)Introduction
This essay defines mobility as the potential transport of humans and explores the mobility aspect of freedom. Freedom as mobility is composed both of opportunities to travel when and where one pleases and of the feasibility of the choice not to travel. The essay further analyses the implications of distinguishing between actual and potential travel for the idea of freedom as mobility. It is also shown how mobility as a right is challenged by a central feature of democracy, namely, respect for unanimity, and how tracks left by travellers can be exploited for surveillance and control. Moreover, mobility leads to a potential absence and thus uncertainty. The paper evaluates how alternative responses to this problem have widely different consequences for the experience of freedom as mobility.
The links between mobility, freedom and rights have long been recognized and are well established. The first paragraph of Article 13 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 declares that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state’. The idea of mobility as a right is consistently found in important policy documents, such as the policy guidelines of the EU's White Paper on European transport policy, which state: ‘Personal mobility, which increased from 17 km a day in 1970 to 35 km in 1998, is now more 244 or less seen as an acquired right’ (European Commission 2001: 11).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spaces of MobilityThe Planning, Ethics, Engineering and Religion of Human Motion, pp. 243 - 268Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008