Evaluating ‘mobility violence’ and moving towards an (im)mobility violence
The content of this post has been adapted from a short essay that was originally submitted during my undergraduate studies.
Human geographers are making proactive efforts to engage with the concept of ‘mobility violence’, in line with renewed ways of conceptualising and studying mobility following the recent paradigm shift in scholarship (Sheller and Urry, 2006). Most notably, Gregg Culver’s (2018) pivotal work highlighting the relationship between automobility and violence was a significant turning point in provoking critical thought around this concept.
Despite observations that highlight the ways in which mobility violence perpetrated by the car has become a problematic normalisation disproportionately impacting vulnerable individuals within the mobility network of the urban city; this is often dismissed as a trade-off in celebration of the freedom and independence the automobile grants users (Culver, 2018).
Discussions around mobility violence have since been extended to consider violence and more-than-human agents within mobility networks such as Fishel’s (2019) attempt to make visible the violence inflicted upon animals and the environment, as well as scholars attending to increasing concerns with the shift towards automated vehicle technologies and the future of AI (Bissell, 2018; Pink, Fors and Glöss, 2018).
To evaluate the concept of mobility violence as a framework that highlights how violence is inextricably bound to mobility, this essay is structured to explore three different lines of thought. Firstly, it acknowledges that Culver’s (2018) original analysis of mobility violence was limited to violence produced by a mode of mobility. Instead, I emphasise how violence can be inflicted on modes of mobility — specifically, through the rise of hate crime on public transport in London. Section two will consider how this concept can be further studied to illustrate violence as a result of another actor’s movement, specifically through post-colonial scholarship and the Algerian War of Independence. The penultimate section will briefly outline what this essay terms (im)mobility violence and explore this in light of the current Covid-19 pandemic, before reaching the concluding statements.
Mobility violence on public transport
Foremost, this essay appreciates Culver’s (2018) thoughts on the challenges that come with defining what constitutes violence when studying mobility, as all agents within the mobility system possess the “potential for violence through their movement” (p147). With regards to the rise of hate crime on public transport, this section examines mobility violence in terms of the physical harm mobility users inflicted upon others. As Sheller (2016) notes, the practice and experience of mobility is considered a universal human right to all, yet movement within wider networks is an uneven and relational experience for different groups of people (Adey, 2006).
This was indeed the case for Melania and Chris in June 2019 — a lesbian couple riding a bus through London when they were aggressively attacked by a group of men for presenting as visibly queer (Noor and Busby, 2019). Unlike the unavoidable and unpredictable nature of violence that is produced through car accidents (Culver, 2018), this example of mobility violence was motivated by misogyny and homophobia.
In their study of the lesbian urban experience, Nash and Gorman-Murray (2015) emphasise how movement and its deeply entrenched politics is conducive of place-making and belonging. It could be argued that in addition to the bodily harm inflicted on the couple, this manifestation of mobility violence presents itself as an active attempt to destroy anything that challenges the heteronormativity of mobility networks.
Mobility violence enacted through colonial mobilities
This next section will examine the concept of mobility violence as demonstrated by the movement of European powers and their use of violence in place-making and colonisation. Accompanying the new mobility paradigm shift, Büscher, Sheller and Tyfield (2016) note that scholarship is increasingly making intersections across mobility studies and other fields of study, which this essay will now attempt to do with post-colonial scholarship.
While geographical study has attended to the power relations and colonial hierarchies that bolster exploration and settler-colonial mobilities (Merriman, 2017; Clarsen, 2015), mobility scholarship does not account for the inherently violent nature of colonial movements. This essay will not do justice to the pioneering work of revolutionary scholar and psychologist Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, who has written extensively on Algeria’s violent anti-colonial struggle with France, however his scholarship provides a useful entry point for exploring mobility violence in a colonial context.
Initial French encroachment in Algeria saw pillages and raids of villages in and around the capital city of Algiers, which sought to exercise power over native Algerians through violent methods of terrorism and intimidation (Welch, 2003). Fanon’s seminal text The Wretched of the Earth (1967) details the psychological violence inflicted upon Algerians in the constructed colonial system, as well as the rapid suppression of native culture and identity, as a result of French colonial mobility. While Algeria’s War of Independence is often described as one of the first — and perhaps most violent — anti-colonial struggles of the Third World in the 20th century (Foran, 2005); these prevailing conditions demonstrate that the first instances of violence in Algeria were perpetuated by the mobility violence of colonialism.
(Im)mobility violence during COVID-19
This penultimate section will now attempt to discuss what I have termed as (im)mobility violence. A renewed attention for the notion of immobility has accompanied the paradigm shift and continues to be studied in relation to mobility (Lin, 2013; Adey, 2006). This state of stillness has been examined in terms of moorings, or temporary immobility, facilitating movement within the wider network, as something that is forced upon someone, or something entirely voluntary (Hannam, Sheller and Urry, 2006).
Under the current circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is experiencing a “mobility shock” as a substantial flow of human movement has come to a sudden halt to follow strict social distancing measures and reduce the spread of the virus (Sheller, 2020; Turner, 2007). With this, there has been much attention to the types of violence that come with being immobile and still, namely the issue of domestic violence.
The number of domestic violence cases have surged exponentially with quarantine measures and charities and other non-governmental organisations are under immense strain to provide help and resources for victims, with additional efforts to making these services available online (Townsend, 2020). As it stands in the UK, government guidance allows for quarantine instructions to be suspended if people need to leave for their safety. Additionally, enforcing the ‘silent solution’ system where callers can press 55 on a 999 emergency call if they are unable to speak without alerting their abuser.
Concluding statements
Although this essay was not exhaustive in its evaluation, the concept of mobility violence of these examples demonstrates the uneven power geometries present within mobility networks (Massey, 1993 in Adey, 2006). In other words, the mobility of some takes precedence over others, which has been distinguished and achieved with violence.
Violence is indeed bound up with movement and an engagement with what I have termed (im)mobility violence will add another complexity to future scholarly discussions around mobility violence.
