Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes

by Mimi Sheller

Overview

Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day

We are in the midst of a global climate crisis and experiencing the extreme challenges of urbanization. In Mobility Justice, Mimi Sheller makes a passionate argument for a new understanding of the contemporary crisis of movement.

Sheller shows how power and inequality inform the governance and control of movement. She connects the body, street, city, nation, and planet in one overarching theory of the modern, perpetually shifting world. Concepts of mobility are examined on a local level in the circulation of people, resources, and information, as well as on an urban scale, with questions of public transport and “the right to the city.” On the planetary level, she demands that we rethink the reality where tourists and other elites are able to roam freely, while migrants and those most in need are abandoned and imprisoned at the borders.

Mobility Justice is a new way to understand the deep flows of inequality and uneven accessibility in a world in which the mobility commons have been enclosed. It is a call for a new understanding of the politics of movement and a demand for justice for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788730921
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	09/25/2018
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.01(w) x 9.18(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University. She is the author of Democracy after Slavery, Consuming the Caribbean, Citizenship from Below, and Aluminum Dreams.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface xi

Introduction: The Triple Crisis 1

Chapter 1 What Is Mobility Justice? 20

Chapter 2 Bodily Moves and Racial Justice 45

Chapter 3 Beyond Automobility and Transport Justice 68

Chapter 4 Smart Cities and Infrastructural Justice 95

Chapter 5 Mobile Borders and Migrant Justice 115

Chapter 6 Planetary Ecologies and Climate Justice 137

Conclusion: The Mobile Commons 159

Principles of Mobility Justice 173

Glossary 175

Notes 179

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

In this wide-ranging book, Mimi Sheller provides a lucid map linking struggles on diverse spatial scales. Sheller shows how the fight for mobility justice can forge connections across scales and between social movements. Essential reading for anyone looking to build solidarities in our all too fragmented and crisis-ridden world.”
—Ashley Dawson, author of Extreme Cities

“How people and materials move around our globalised planet is central to our intensifying environmental crises, pollution crises and increasingly murderous refugee crises. And yet mobilities are still often partitioned off as the technical and depoliticised stuff of engineers. This brilliant book should change this once and for all. A brilliant and searing exposé of the politics of movement and mobility, Mobility Justice forces questions of social and racial justice to the heart of debates about migration, transportation, smart cities, militarising borders, and planetary ecology. A unique and pivotal book.”
—Stephen Graham, author of Vertical

“The essential field guide to the politics of mobility from the policing of racialized bodies to the impact of movement on climate change. Sheller articulates the urgency of both understanding, and acting on, the ways we move in order to imagine and articulate a better world.”
—Tim Cresswell, author of On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World

From the Publisher