Presenting a comparative examination of five major voluntary global movements: commodities, people, capital, information and technology, this book traces and develops discussions of globalization and spatial mobility. The book further covers the means and media used for these mobilities: ports and ships, airports and airplanes, international banking electronic media, and the Internet, telephony and TV. Two concluding chapters focus on the mobile globe, highlighting present and future global mobility in general, and the relationships among the five global mobilities, in particular.

This book opens up the debate on the interrelations between space and mobilities with regard to different dimensions of social inequality. Based on the premise that the dynamics caused by modernization, globalization, migration and social change affect the structuring of the social fabric, the focus of the book is to illuminate these processes of social and spatial re-structurings. A leading team of contributors from the Cosmobilities network highlight different aspects of inequality in relation to mobilities, such as gender, supplying transport infrastructure, job-related relocations, multi-locality, social network geography, and socio-spatial development.

Discussing the concept of mobility at large and that of spatial mobilities in particular, this book makes the case for daily spatial mobilities as a distinct type of mobility and explores this concept from a variety of perspectives. Daily mobilities, such as for commuting, shopping, social ties, information, banking, news, studies, business meetings, etc. are typified by their being two-way mobilities, frequently performed, constituting a major element of our daily routine lives, and inclusive of both corporeal and/or virtual mobilities. Outlining his argument for daily spatial mobility, author Aharon Kellerman focuses on needs and triggers for daily mobilities, on levels of personal mobility and personal autonomy in daily mobilities and on potential mobilities leading to practiced ones. The concept is further explored using three major types of daily mobility, terrestrial, virtual and aerial and three major spatial elements; urban spatial reorganization in the information age, mobility terminals, namely bus, metro, and railway stations as well as airports, and global opportunities through daily mobilities, notably for users of the Internet.

Much of the literature on globalization has centered on the large, macro-level forces that influence the ways ideas, people, and various forms of capital move around the world. From this vantage point, discussions about the progressive feminization of migration, in particular the feminization of out-migration from rural areas, indicate an intriguing trend. Simultaneously, the local experience of global forces is an important way of exploring how macro-level processes are navigated by social actors on the ground. This provides added texture to our understanding of why and how people make decisions about their lives within an increasingly interconnected social, economic, and political environment. This volume explores whether concurrent patterns in identity development, social relations, and youth behaviors on the micro-level might help explain similarities observable at the macro-level. Through a triangulated approach that balances between statistical backdrops, extant quantitative research, and in-depth qualitative interviews, this book theorizes about shifts in gender normativity, efforts towards social mobility, and the possible effects of an increasingly globalized society. To do this, it examines the decision-making processes employed by high-achieving young women from rural areas in Vermont and Leinster, Ireland as they figured out who they wanted to become as adults and where they wanted to be those people. Remaining mindful of structural constraints and using the lens of the “psychic landscape” (Reay 2005) to view class as a reflexive practice, this book peers into the ways certain types of identity evident among blue-collar students seem to be carving out some potential for social and spatial mobility amidst both global and local trends.

Everyday Globalization is a micro-sociological study of immigrant neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Paris. Global flows of people bring together cultural practices from distant places and urban dwellers in global cities interpret the signs of collective identity in ascribing particular places as "immigrant neighborhoods." This book examines the spatial semiotics of identity in urban public space that make this possible. Unlike other studies of globalization and cities, this work brings together research on the social psychology of groups, linguistic landscapes, and quotidian mobility to explain how urban dwellers encounter cultural differences. Signs of social identity are always interpreted in the context of group boundaries and the appropriation of public space. The breadth of this analysis contributes to the literature in human geography on the meaningfulness of places. This book will also be of interest to scholars and students in visual sociology. In addition, this research demonstrates an innovative method for studying everyday urban experience.

This book argues that COVID-19 revives a much deeper climate of terror which was instilled by terrorism and the War on Terror originally declared by Bush's administration in 2001. It discusses critically not only the consequences of COVID-19 on our daily lives but also “the end of hospitality”, at least as we know it. Since COVID-19 started spreading across the globe, it affected not only the tourism industry but also ground global trade to a halt. Governments adopted restrictive measures to stop the spread of the virus, including the closure of borders, and airspace, the introduction of strict lockdowns and social distancing, much of which led to large-scale cancellations of international and domestic flights. This book explores how global tourists, who were largely considered ambassadors of democratic and prosperous societies in the pre-pandemic days, have suddenly become undesired guests.

What role does ‘place’ have in a world marked by increased mobility on a global scale? What strategies are there for representing ‘place’ in the age of globalization? What is the relationship between ‘place’ and the varied mobilities of migrancy, tourism, travel and nomadism? These are some of the questions that run through the ten essays in this collection. The combined effect of these essays is to participate in the contemporary project of subjecting the links between place, mobility, identity, representation and practice to critical interdisciplinary scrutiny. Such notions are not the property of particular disciplines. In the era of globalization, transnationalism and readily acknowledged cultural hybridity these links are more important than ever. They are important because of the taken-for-grantedness of: the universal impact of globalization; the receding importance of place and the centrality of mobile identities. This taken-for-grantedness masks the ways place continues to be important and ways in which mobility is differentiated by race, gender, ethnicity, nationality and many other social markers. This book is a concerted attempt to stop taking for granted these themes of the age. Material discussed in the essays include the creation of cultural routes in Europe, the video’s of Fiona Tan, artistic and literary representations of the North African desert, the production of indigenous videos in Mexico, mobile forms of ethnography, the film Existenz, Jamaica Kincaid’s writing on gardens, the video representation of sex tourism and ways of imagining the global. Authors include: Tim Cresswell, Ginette Verstraete, Ernst van Alphen, Ursula Biemann, Laurel C. Smith, Nick Couldry, Isabel Hoving, Renée van de Vall, Inge E. Boer and Kevin Hetherington.