7th new zealand/aotearoa mobilities symposium ‘transport ... · 7th new zealand/aotearoa...
TRANSCRIPT
7th New Zealand/Aotearoa Mobilities Symposium –
‘Transport and People-Centred Mobilities’ 9 – 10 June, 2016, Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland
Associate Professor Imran Muhammad, [email protected]
Dr Maria Borovnik, [email protected]
School of People, Environment and Planning
Programme
Schedule
Thursday 9th June, 2016
Massey Business School, Building 10, Room 1.21, Albany Campus, Auckland
1:00-1:30 Registration and Welcome
1:30- 2:30 Keynote 1: #BigRainDN: Urban mobilities and risk society Martha Bell, Independent Sociologist Chair: Maria Borovnik
2:30-3:00 Introductory Panel: Mobilities, Transport, People and Risk Martha Bell, Imran Muhammad, Jago Dodson, Tara Duncan, Helen Fitt Chair: Maria Borovnik
3:00-3:30 Afternoon tea break
3:00-5:30 Plenary 1: Experiences of ‘being on the move’ Chair: David Scott
Academic Mobilities: Junctures between the personal and the professional Tara Duncan, University of Otago
Long distance passenger mobilities in New Zealand: trends and
opportunities
Christine Cheyne, Massey University
Road Maintenance – filling a gap in the Mobilities/Roading Research; a Case study of the Longbeach Roads Board, Canterbury, NZ, 1927-1938 Michael Roche, Massey University
Buildings as dangerous spaces: mobilities of emotion and affect in relocation from the Christchurch earthquakes Gail Adams-Hutcheson, University of Waikato
Transforming Wellawaya: A grassroots initiative shifting risks of active travel for people with disabilities and older people in Sri Lanka Shanthi Ameratunga, University of Auckland
6:00-7:30 Getting Together over Pizza
7:30-9:00 Keynote and Panel Discussion: Mobility and the Cosmopolitan Perspective: Re-thinking the socio-material networks of the mobile risk Sven Kesselring, Nuertingen-Geislingen University Chair: Maria Borovnik
Friday 10th June, 2016
9:00-11:00 Plenary 2: People Centred Mobilities and Development Chair: Tara Duncan
Floating workplace: seafarers’ emotional and embodied experiences in risk situations Maria Borovnik
“Passing messages”: public vehicles and the mobility of relationships in Port Vila, Vanuatu Benedicta Rousseau, University of Waikato and John Taylor, La Trobe University
The driving morality of informality within the Jamaican public transport system Sharayne Bennett, University of Waikato
Labour mobility in Davao City: Risk management and survival strategies Amie Townsend, Massey University
11:00-11:30 Morning tea break
11:30-12:30 Keynote3: The resilience of car-dependence in Auckland Jago Dodson, RMIT University Chair: Imran Muhammad
12:30-1:30 Lunch break
1:00-2:30 Plenary 3: Transport, institutions and society Chair: Michael Roche
Changing personal mobilities: The contribution of recreational cycling to cycling for transport Megan Smith, University of Waikato
Cars are status symbols, but what is status? Helen Fitt, University of Canterbury
2:30-3:30 Panel Presentation: Institutional change, path dependence and public transport planning in Auckland: Findings of a research project Imran Muhammad, Massey University Chair: Martha Bell
3:30 Notes of Thanks: Close of Symposium and afternoon tea break
Abstracts and Bios
KEYNOTE PRESENTER
Martha Bell
#BigRainDN: Urban Mobilities and Risk Society
Amidst a resurgence of attention to planning for managed urban change, there is also a need to attend to events which confront local government with forced change. In June 2015 in Dunedin, the convergence of heavy weather, poor pipework and pump failure produced a crisis resulting in almost 2,500 insurance payouts for flood damage. This case study examines the flood event in low-lying South Dunedin as a crisis of distributed mobility. Affected residents expected a circulation of information, communication and transportation that did not eventuate as resource flows which could have offered vital support for those exposed to greater risk were not activated. Improving infrastructure capacity and asset management are now the focus of the city council, while stranding and neglect are the focus of a new citizens’ action group. In this presentation, I will trace the (im)mobilities of local authorities governing risk and those in ‘social risk positions,’ drawing on Beck’s Risk Society, during and after the 24-hour rainfall and identify what is at stake over the loss of homes.
Dr Martha Bell is an independent sociologist working in a research consultancy in Dunedin, Media Associates. She has several interdisciplinary team projects underway in the areas of seniors' mobilities and people with learning disability and mobilities, among others. She is also currently completing a book on risk and the extreme mobilities of adventure racing. She has served as the Network Leader for the Mobilities Network for Aotearoa New Zealand since 2010. The network acknowledges the original seed funding of a SSSRI (Supporting Social Sciences Research Initiatives) grant awarded by BRCSS II (Building Research Capability in the Social Sciences) and the support of eSocSci. The network’s webpage is http://www.esocsci.org.nz/networks-connect/mobilities/ .
Email: [email protected]
NOTES
KEYNOTE PRESENTER
Jago Dodson
The resilience of car-dependence in Auckland
This paper examines the recent developments in Auckland’s transport planning in the context of a longer term history of entrenched automobile dependence. The analysis draws on new developments in the mobilities literature, including ideas about peak car, to assess the notion of a mobility transition in Auckland and its prospects. Auckland is an interesting case with which to view this literature because of its deliberate decision to become car dependent from the 1950s onwards. Consequently Auckland became one of the most automobile reliant cities outside of the USA. Car dependence also brought a new political economy to the city, which has proven highly resilient to recent transition efforts. Although Auckland has made some progress in the past two decades in re-orienting its strategic transport planning towards more use of public transport, walking and cycling this transition is impeded by the city’s late-20th Century legacy. In part this impedance stems from the political economy of car-dependent Auckland and the inability of recent governance changes to overcome this alignment. The paper concludes by considering whether recent shifts may signal a change in the political economy of Auckland’s transport, that in turn allows a mobility transition to accelerate within the city.
Jago Dodson is a Professor of Urban Policy and Director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Melbourne. Professor Dodson has an extensive record of research into transport, urban planning, infrastructure, and urban governance problems. He has contributed extensively to scholarly and public debates about Australian cities and has advised national and international agencies on urban policy questions. His research investigated transport questions including important interventions into transport policy debates in New Zealand and provided new insights into transport disadvantage in Australian cities. His most recent co-edited book is Australian Environmental Planning (2014) won the Planning Institute of Australia National Award for Cutting Edge Research. Jago's research record includes more than 70 publications, including 3 books, 18 book chapters, 26 refereed journal articles, and 30 refereed conference papers. Before taking his current role at RMIT, Jago held positions at Griffith University, as a Research Fellow from 2004–2014 and as Director of Griffith’s Urban Research Program from 2011–2014.
Email: [email protected]
NOTES
KEYNOTE PRESENTER
Sven Kesselring
Mobility and the Cosmopolitan Perspective:
Re-thinking the socio-material networks of the mobile risk
society
In 2004, a workshop in Munich, entitled as ‘Mobility and the Cosmopolitan Perspective’, was the beginning of the global Cosmobilities Network. Together with John Urry and Ulrich Beck we discussed the future of social science based mobility research, the new mobilities paradigm, the mobile risk society and reflexive modernization. Today, more than a decade later, the world looks quite different. Not only, we recently lost these two great thinkers, who gave so much inspiration and knowledge to the scientific community. A new research field and transdisciplinary theoretical orientation has been fairly institutionalized with scholarships, research centers and networks and with two academic journals (Mobilities and Applied Mobilities).
This key note takes the opportunity to explore the debates that started in 2004 and tries to understand where mobilities research is standing, today, and what has happened with the ideas and goals we formulated at this time. It analyzes the ‘normalization’ of mobilities and its consequences for social networks, the organization of work, social interaction across space and distance and the everyday mobilization of life. It takes aeromobilities into account as a phenomenon of ‘banal cosmopolitanzation’ (Ulrich Beck) which shows the ambivalences of the modern mobility project.
Sven Kesselring holds a research professorship in ‘Automotive Management: Sustainable Mobilities’ at Nuertingen-Geislingen University, Germany. He has been a visiting professor at Aalborg University (department of planning), Denmark, since 2011 and is co-editor of the new Taylor & Francis journal ‘Applied Mobilities’ and the Cosmobilities book series at Routledge (both together with Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Kevin Hannam). Sven studied sociology, political science and psychology and holds a PhD in sociology from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a doctoral degree (habilitation) from Technische Universität München. Professor Kesselring was a research fellow of Hans Böckler Foundation, Erich Becker Foundation (Fraport) and in 2003 he received a research grant from the German Research Association. Since 2004 he is the director of the international Cosmobilities Network (www.cosmobilities.net) and vice-president of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M) since 2014. From 1999 to 2006 he was member of the Reflexive Modernisation Research Centre in Munich. His research focuses on mobilities theory, social change and reflexive modernization, corporate mobilities regimes, urban sociology, aeromobilities, and future research. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Gail Adams-Hutcheson Buildings as dangerous spaces: mobilities of emotion and affect in relocation from the Christchurch earthquakes This paper addresses a series of changing relationships between bodies and buildings. It focuses on people who relocated out of the city of Christchurch, New Zealand which was made discordant and arrhythmic through seismic instability. Emotion and affect signal the impact that rhythm has on bodies and the ways in which the spatiality and temporality of emotions coalesce around and within particular places. A sustained focus on the embodied interactions among people, places and buildings can highlight the unconscious sensitivities that remain within the body, sometimes changing the rhythm and balance of everyday life. Fear of buildings and the collapse of concrete structures draws attention to the complex embodied experience of architecture. Fear affects not only the border between self and other, but also the relation between people and objects which are often shaped through historical associations that stick. Feeling insecure, vulnerable, panicked, (im)mobilised and/or fearful in shopping malls, cinemas, underground car-parks and so on, is partly place-specific but also feelings are translocal permeating multiple porous borders and boundaries. By discussing participants’ vibration sensitivity, and incorporating how cities too are a hum of activity, the role of bodily rhythm in constituting the social world and the co-constitution of ‘flesh’ and ‘stone’ take central precedence. Keywords: mobilities; earthquakes; materiality; buildings; corporeality Dr Gail Adams-Hutcheson is currently a Teaching Fellow of Geography at the University of Waikato. She is con-currently an editorial assistant to Professor Lynda Johnston for Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. Gail is also involved with the New Zealand Mobilities Study and Research Group, and is an executive member of New Zealand Geographical Society and New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Shanti Ameratunga, R Wickremasinghe, V Tennakoon, Shanti Attanayake, L Daskon, R
Peiris-John, S Bandara Transforming Wellawaya: A grassroots initiative shifting risks of active travel for people with disabilities and older people in Sri Lanka Impelled by a host of unmet needs in the relatively impoverished Wellawaya province, the regional council is leading a grassroots campaign to make this Sri Lanka’s first age- and disability-friendly district. The aims of this paper are to explore perceptions and aspirations regarding mobility, and the barriers and facilitators experienced by community-dwelling older people and people with disability in the Wellawaya province As part of a larger project drawing on principles consistent with community-based participatory research, we conducted a random survey of the communities of interest. These were complemented with focus groups that sought the perceptions of older people and people with disability on issues of particular salience to their lived experiences, sources of resilience, and aspirations for mobility, community participation, health and wellbeing. Findings: Survey data and the qualitative research undertaken provided rich profiles of mobility and transportation options used, issues facilitating or challenging aspirations for mobility in these communities, and common transport-related barriers to wellbeing and social participation. Interactive meetings involving community members, researchers, policy makers, transport planners, and other stakeholders generated a robust platform of policy-relevant evidence and narratives of lived experience that have stimulated transformative changes in the built environment and streetscapes of the district. While the impact and sustainability of changes in the health, wellbeing, mobility and resilience of communities require further evaluation, this project highlights the significant potential of partnerships between communities, local champions, researchers, transport professionals and policymakers to advocate for and achieve incremental progress even in countries challenged by scarce resources. Keywords: low- and middle-income countries; transportation; people with disability; ageing
Shanthi Ameratunga is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Auckland.
Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Sharayne Bennett The driving morality of informality within the Jamaican public transport system Public transport is a major aspect of the social and economic life of Jamaican people. With a population of 2.7 million and only 188 per thousand vehicles, many people have come to rely on public transport. Public travel within the Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR) in Jamaica is possible via six modes which range from very informal to rigidly regulated. There is the Government owned and operated bus system (JUTC). There are then four modes (coasters, hackneys, minibuses, route taxis) which are regulated by the government but operate across formal and informal lines. Then there is the famous Jamaican “robot” which exists outside of the regulatory framework and protection of the government. One journey may involve use of a single or multiple modes depending on various factors. My research is a reflexive examination of the Jamaican public transport system as an aspect of the informal economy. Humphrey (1996: 25) argues that, for Mongolians, morality is not about rigid definitions of wrong and right but rather, “evaluation of conduct in relation to a range of esteemed or despised qualities”. Wanner (2005) suggests that within a group multiple moralities can co-exist. I suggest that, rather than acting simply as descriptors – applied to modes of transport, or economic practices – informality and formality are moralities. Both are relevant in the public transport system, sometimes coexisting and sometimes in tension. I investigate how exploring the tensions between formality and informality within public transport can open up our understanding of the moral dimensions of Jamaican national identity. Keywords: Jamaica, public transport, informal economy, morality, identity Sharayne Bennett is a graduate student of anthropology at the University of Waikato. She completed her undergrad degree in anthropology and social psychology at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. Her research interests are currently in mobility and national moralities. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Maria Borovnik Floating workplace: seafarers’ emotional and embodied experiences in risk situation This paper emphasises the embodied experiences of seafarers when interacting with the seascape surrounding them while working aboard containerships. Drawing on narratives from merchant seafarers, this paper will explore the material and emotional interactions between people, the ocean environment and the experience of flow between each. Focusing specifically on risk situations at sea, I will draw on Tim Ingold’s notions of landscape and emplacement and will investigate how seafarers and their environment interact with each other and create or re-create the sea as a floating workplace. This paper will argue that seascape is mobilised and performed in a continuous weaving of senses, elements and materials in which actors make the ongoing loops of merchant activities possible.
Keywords: mobilities and work, seafarers, seascape, affect, meshwork
Maria Borovnik is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at Massey University. Her research focuses on the intersection of mobilities, migration and development with a specific angle on mobile livelihoods of Pacific seafarers. Her publications have focused on transnational aspects of labour circulation, identity, health and well-being of seafarers, and how the actual experience of work on cargo ships changes perceptions of self, ship-, port-, and home-communities. Maria is one of the co-founders of the Mobilities Network for Aotearoa New Zealand, currently hosts the network’s email list and is co-editor of the network’s working paper series. She is also the Book Review Editor of the ‘New Zealand Geographer’.
Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Christine Cheyne Long distance passenger mobilities in New Zealand: trends and opportunities Long distance passenger transport sector potentially plays a key role in a sustainable multi-modal transport system. In New Zealand the long-distance transport sector is poorly understood and largely overlooked yet it is very closely connected to urban public transport (bus and rail) and also aviation and ferries. As well, sector’s potential is of growing importance to sustainable tourism, and is likely to experience growth in demand from an ageing population and as a result of changing travel behaviour by younger cohorts. This paper provides an overview of long distance bus passenger transport in New Zealand and discusses technology and policy changes that can assist this sector to be more effectively integrated with the wider transport system. Keywords: long distance passenger transport, disruptive transport technology, public transport, travel behaviour Associate Professor Christine Cheyne is a programme coordinator Resource and Environmental Planning Programme at Massey University. She has research interests in sustainable transport policy and planning. Her current work focuses on active transport, long distance passenger transport and smart urban mobility. With Associate Professor Imran Muhammad she has undertaken research on transport resilience, shared transport and barriers to active transport. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Tara Duncan, Caroline Orchiston, Debbie Hopkins, James Higham Academic Mobilities: Junctures between the personal and the professional Academics are increasingly mobile. Encouraged by their institutions, research funders, government leaders and others, academics are travelling more – locally, regionally and globally, than ever before. However, whilst academic travel has been considered, what are often neglected are the intersections of this work travel with personal travel aspirations. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with academics from the University of Otago, based in the South Island of New Zealand and begins to explore how professional and personal travel intersects. Through a mobilities lens, the paper explores the perspectives of academics from four academic divisions (Commerce, Humanities, Health Science and Sciences) and highlights the expectations, challenges and juxtapositions that academics discuss when considering if and how they combine (international) work and personal travel. The paper reflects on the presumed hyper-mobility of many academics and concludes by suggesting that the intersections of work and personal travel is a highly contentious issue – both personally and professionally - for many academics. Keywords: academic travel, hyper-mobility, occupational mobility Dr Tara Duncan is a geographer with a speciality in tourism and lectures at the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago, Dunedin. She also is the Associate Editor and Book Review Editor for ‘Annals of Leisure Research’ and on the Editorial Advisory Board for ‘Social and Cultural Geography’. Tara has been actively involved with the Mobilities Network for Aotearoa New Zealand since 2010. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Helen Fitt Cars are status symbols, but what is status? Cars are widely described as status symbols, indeed status is probably the most commonly raised social meaning relating to transport. It is, however, rare to find status defined or described in any detail. This omission is important in a context in which understandings change over time. Understandings of status have changed over the history of personal motorised transport from those that were based on class distinctions, to wealth and profession, and more recently perhaps to understandings that incorporate a diverse range of statuses, including environmental status and the status of a boy racer. In contemporary New Zealand society, status clearly also means different things to different groups of people. This presentation will consider several different kinds of driving status, how these interact with other personal and social characteristics of drivers, and even how status can interact with the embodied sensation of driving. The presentation challenges a simplistic, taken-for-granted notion of cars as status symbols, and asks what driving status is and how it works. Keywords: cars, driving, status Dr Helen Fitt recently completed her PhD investigating the influences of social meanings on everyday transport practices. She is now contracting, looking for a job, and finding life even busier than it was while writing her thesis. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Imran Muhammad Institutional change, path dependence and public transport planning in Auckland: Findings of a research project This research investigates the contradictions and uncertainties that have characterised
transport planning in Auckland to answer fundamental questions concerning how a smooth
institutional transformation towards sustainable transport can be achieved. The research
finds that Auckland’s dependence on cars is the product of path-dependent pro-road
policies extending back to the 1950s. Fuelled by neo-liberal, free-market ideology, Auckland
has aggressively pursued motorway-led development. This has not only created car-
oriented norms, values and beliefs, but also established formidable political and institutional
barriers, as evidenced by inequitable funding allocation, biased technical rationality, shallow
consultation processes and the economic efficiency rhetoric often invoked by government
to justify road projects in preference to public transport.
The research finds that a new and sustainable ‘critical juncture’ has been emerging since the
2000s, between the complex interactions of central and local government and the long-
standing traditions of road-based transport planning. The policy path emerged from new
critical juncture is weak and does not guarantee a sustainable future for transport,
especially in the presence of existing path-dependent policies, the absence of institutional
mechanisms for alternative policies, and a reluctant political will to fund public transport
projects. Clearly institutional change is not going to be easy or smooth as the Auckland
Council/Transport tries to reconcile gaps in transport funding with somewhat contradictory
priorities at central government level.
In order to make stable and sustainable progress, Auckland Council/Transport needs to
refocus on the everyday experiences of local communities in defining transport problems
and their solutions, especially those communities that have traditionally been marginalised
because of transport planning processes. The strengthened political leadership vested in the
Council and Mayor of Auckland needs to be reinforced by allowing autonomy in transport
funding, which demands greater accountability to empowered local communities and
businesses. Only by effectively incorporating community needs and aspirations into
transport decision-making, developing civic and professional leadership, and strengthening
alternative discourse around transport planning, can the critical juncture be harnessed to
help Auckland Council and its Mayor negotiate, with central government, a smooth
transition to a low-carbon future for Auckland.
Associate Professor Imran Muhammad teaches transport and urban planning at Massey University. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Michael Roche Road Maintenance – filling a gap in the mobilities/roading research: A case study of the Longbeach Roads Board, Canterbury, New Zealand, 1927-1938 A cursory examination of the mobilities literature with respect to roads throws up several lines of research; Campbell (2012) writes of the material and figurative road in Amazonia, Kernaghan (2012) on the frontier road in Peru, and Harvey and Knox (2012) on what they term the enchantment of infrastructure. These enquiries entwine sophisticated theoretical insights with rich strands of empirical research. Case studies and ethnographical inquiry have their place in this work However, arguably there are some gaps that remain to be filled, in that the existing work seems to be situated either in the developing world or in Europe, to be futurist in orientation or at least very ‘presentist’ in orientation and to be concerned with state/globalisation. In contrast this paper offers from historical geography, (1) an historical approach is offered (for the period 1927 to 1938) to suggest that mobilities insights are not restricted to the present or future, (2) a microscale analysis (Roads Board as rare subcountry administrative unit) – subnation and in a white settler Dominion, and (3) most importantly it focuses on the upkeep of the road network whereas most of the existing work is on the creation and extension of roads as part of a state building project (realised or unrealised). Road maintenance, in a material sense, is itself a highly mobile activity shaped by economic and environmental rhythms. This extension of the scope of mobilities/roading research is explored through a case study based primarily on documentary and pictorial sources in order to reconstruct of the work of one of the Longbeach Roads Board roadmen from 1927 to 1938. Keywords: New Zealand, road maintenance, historical Michael Roche is Professor of Geography in the School of People Environment and Planning, Massey University, Palmerston North. An historical geographer, he has published on agricultural and forestry topics (including imperial forestry networks). Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Benedicta Rousseau and John Taylor
“Passing messages”: public vehicles and the mobility of relationships in Port Vila, Vanuatu This paper investigates the “publicity” of vehicles in Port Vila, Vanuatu. In global terms, Vanuatu has low vehicle ownership rates (54 per 1000 people – although this places it around mid-point in terms of the Pacific island region), and many registered vehicles are either for public transport (mini-van buses, taxis or trucks) or government-owned (“G-cars”). As such, use and ownership of vehicles is not directly correlated, and existing assessments of automobility and identity (eg: Dant 2004; Miller 2001) do not easily fit this context. Addressing this gap, we offer preliminary insights into the importance of vehicles in Vanuatu as instantiations of social networks and events. We consider vehicles as a form of “public property”, enmeshed in relationships grounded in kinship, gender, labour, politics and economics. Their mobility is the visible circulation of these relationships, passing messages that are incorporated by ni-Vanuatu into broader considerations of morality and identity. Keywords: Melanesia, public transport, mobility, relationality, automobility Dr Benedicta Rousseau works currently at the University of Waikato. She is a social anthropologist, trained at the University of Auckland and University of Cambridge. Her current research interests include mobility, tourism, governance, disaster management, infrastructural development, and leadership, with an ethnographic focus on Vanuatu. Dr John Taylor's work as an anthropologist is influenced by critical theory, and guided by the capacity of ethnography to directly engage the struggles of everyday life and reveal deep understandings of ourselves in relation to others. He is currently exploring the intersection of spirituality and healthcare seeking practices in the Western Pacific. He also researches and writes on human mobility, religion, photography and tourism including at home in New Zealand. John Taylor is based at La Trobe University of Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Megan Smith Changing personal mobilities: The contribution of recreational cycling to cycling for transport Discourse analysis has demonstrated the privilege afforded to the private motor vehicle in New Zealand transport policy (Smith, 2016), resulting in the marginalisation of cycling as a mode of transport. The dominance of motorised vehicles as the primary means of mobility has been equally evident on New Zealand roads, with persistently low numbers of utility cyclists. In 2015, however, cycling for transport received a significant increase in investment through the creation of the Urban Cycleways Programme. Through this unexpected opportunity a variety of actors and approaches are contributing to regional responses. This paper gives initial consideration to the contribution of recreational cycling to the development of cycling for transport in New Zealand. In doing so it explores the place of recreational cycling in transport policy, the involvement of sporting and other organisations as policy actors, and the potential of recreational cycling as a lever for behaviour change. Keywords: Cycling, policy actors, transport planning, modal change Smith, M. (2016). Cycling on the verge: The discursive marginalisation of cycling in contemporary New Zealand transport policy. Energy Research & Social Science doi:10.1016/j.erss.2016.02.002
Megan Smith is a doctoral student of public policy, with research interests in sustainability, mobility, social justice and education. She comes from a mixed public sector background, having worked in education (teacher), health and local government (business analyst), and her own business working with individuals, and the education and social development sectors (career consultant). Email: [email protected]
NOTES
Amie Townsend Labour mobility in Davao City: risk management and survival strategies The Philippines is one of the biggest labour exporting countries in the world, and its economy depends on the remittances from overseas workers supporting families at home. Drawing on my experiences during the five months I spent conducting fieldwork in the Philippines, I explore some of the processes at work in domestic and international migration in Davao city. Migration is commonly seen as a positive strategy to access greater opportunities and diversify family income sources. However, my research was focused on human trafficking and exploitation, and from this angle any point of mobility also appears as a significant point of vulnerability to deception and abuse. A migrant as a ‘mobile subject’ is highly strategic in their often multiple migrant journeys, and the processes of conceptualising and managing multiple risks reveal complex factors at work in the lived experiences of labour mobility in Davao. This will be briefly explored through one of my participants’ story, and the ways that she worked through the risks inherent to each of the various options available to her including migration.
Keywords: Philippines, trafficking, migration, mobile subject
Amie Townsend is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology, Massey University.
Email: [email protected]
NOTES
List of Participants
Name Affiliation Email Gail Adams-Hutcheson University of Waikato [email protected]
Shanthi Ameratunga University of Auckland [email protected]
Martha Bell Independent Sociologist [email protected]
Sharayne Bennett University of Waikato [email protected]
Maria Borovnik Massey University [email protected]
Christine Cheyne Massey University [email protected]
Jago Dodson RMIT [email protected]
Tara Duncan University of Otago [email protected]
Helen Fitt University of Canterbury [email protected]
Sven Kesselring Nuertingen-Geislingen University
Imran Muhammad Massey University [email protected]
Jane Pearce Massey University [email protected]
Michael Roche Massey University [email protected]
Benedicta Rousseau University of Waikato [email protected]
Megan Smith University of Waikato [email protected]
Amie Townsend Massey University [email protected]
Logistics
Venue & Transport The 7th New Zealand/Aotearoa Mobilities Symposium will be held at Massey University’s Albany Campus in Auckland from 9 – 10 June, starting at 1pm on the Thursday, including an evening session until 9pm, and closing at 3.30 pm on the Friday. The Symposium will be held at Room 1.21, Massey Business School (Building 10). For a campus map, transport (to and from airport or the CBD) and free parking facilities at campus, please visit: http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/student-life/maps-and-parking/albany/albany_maps_home.cfm https://at.govt.nz/bus-train-ferry/journey-planner/ Accommodation There is plenty of accommodation available around the Albany campus or in the North Shore. For information of some options, please see: http://exmss.org/services/accommodation-options/ http://www.tourism.net.nz/region/auckland/auckland---albany/accommodation/apartments http://www.questapartments.co.nz/Accommodation/438/New_Zealand/Auckland_Suburbs/Quest_Albany/Welcome.aspx http://www.jasons.co.nz/albany/motels-motor-lodges Food Participants will not have to pay a registration fee for the symposium, but we are asking that participates will look after their own food requirements. We will offer a free pizza event on the Thursday evening. The Student Café at Albany campus is open from early in the morning and has good coffee. It also has a range of hot and cold food all day. There is also a café in the library and near the Business School Building.
Internet Access
There are two ways the internet can be accessed at Massey:
The easiest may be to follow this link http://www.inspirefreewifi.co.nz/register.php to gain limited free access through a local provider.
Alternatively, please follow Massey University instructions for Staff and Students from other Universities on how to access the internet whilst at Massey, please go to http://www.massey.ac.nz/eduroam
Acknowledgements
School of People, Environment and Planning (PEP), Massey University Glenn Banks, who provided funding for refreshment during the Symposium. The School also provided funds to invite a Keynote Speaker, Dr Martha Bell.
Massey University Research Fund (MURF) MURF provided international visitor research grant to invite a Keynote Speaker, Professor Jago Dodson from RMIT University, Melbourne.
The Royal Society of New Zealand The Royal Society of New Zealand, Marsden Fast-Start Project No. MAU1208, provided funds to Imran Muhammad to conduct and disseminate research.
New Zealand Geographical Society (NZGS) NZGS provided funds for refreshment during Thursday evening Keynote Speech of Professor Seven Kesselring.
eSocScie Mobilities Network New Zealand The Mobilities Network provided funds for the technical support on Thursday evening Keynote Speech of Professor Seven Kesselring.