Academic mobility is usually perceived and discussed as a positive phenomenon — as a prerequisite for building a competitive and successful economy and quality science. Academic mobility has now become essential to building a successful academic career in many research domains. On the policy level the negative impact of academic mobility on researchers’ lives and especially women’s is usually overlooked and marginalized. In my paper I focus on academic mobility in the context of academics’ relationships and family lives. I ask (...) two research questions: What is the impact of mobility on researchers’ relationships? How does mobility affect the lives of the partners of mobile researchers? The analysis is based on i) 16 in-depth interviews with academics from various fields of research about their experiences of long-term fellowships abroad in the early stages of their academic path and on ii) 16 in-depth joint interviews with Czech dualcareer academic couples. The analysis shows that academic mobility has a great and significant impact on the family and partnership lives of migrating researchers. For many, especially the partners of migrating researchers, mobility means they have to make many concessions in their private and family lives. I conclude that the impact of academic mobility on people’s partnership lives is highly gendered because couples’ work and family lives are closely intertwined. (shrink)

Contemporary republicanism is characterized by three main ideas: free persons, who are not subject to the arbitrary power of others; free states, which try to protect their citizens from such power without exercising it themselves; and vigilant citizenship, as a means to limit states to their protective role. This book advances an economic model of such republicanism that is ideologically centre-left. It demands an exit-oriented state interventionism, one that would require an activist government to enhance competition and resource exit from (...) dominating relationships within markets of all types, be they marital, labour, or residential. The substantial intervention and redistribution necessitated by such an approach make it leftist, while its tendency to work with rather than against the grain of markets makes it centrist. It is, in short, a contribution to progressive republican political thought, but one that is less social-democratic than market-democratic in character. (shrink)

Cooperation is rife in the microbial world, yet our best current theories of the evolution of cooperation were developed with multicellular animals in mind. Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is an important case in point: applying the theory in a microbial setting is far from straightforward, as social evolution in microbes has a number of distinctive features that the theory was never intended to capture. In this article, I focus on the conceptual challenges posed by the project of extending Hamilton’s (...) theory to accommodate the effects of gene mobility. I begin by outlining the basics of the theory of inclusive fitness, emphasizing the role that the concept of relatedness is intended to play. I then provide a brief history of this concept, showing how, over the past fifty years, it has departed from the intuitive notion of genealogical kinship to encompass a range of generalized measures of genetic similarity. I proceed to argue that gene mobility forces a further revision of the concept. The reason in short is that, when the genes implicated in producing social behaviour are mobile, we cannot talk of an organism’s genotype simpliciter; we can talk only of an organism’s genotype at a particular stage in its life cycle. We must therefore ask: with respect to which stage(s) in the life cycle should relatedness be evaluated? For instance: is it genetic similarity at the time of social interaction that matters to the evolution of social behaviour, or is it genetic similarity at the time of reproduction? I argue that, strictly speaking, it is neither of these: what really matters to the evolution of social behaviour is diachronic genetic similarity between the producers of fitness benefits at the time they produce them and the recipients of those benefits at the end of their life-cycle. I close by discussing the implications of this result. The main payoff is that it makes room for a possible new mechanism for the evolution of altruism in microbes that does not require correlated interaction among bearers of the genes for altruism. The importance of this mechanism in nature remains an open empirical question. (shrink)

"A climate crisis and other pressures on planetary ecology are causing profound anxieties. Climate change threatens to trap hundreds of millions of people in dire poverty and to separate further an already deeply divided world. However, a new generation of activists is offering inspiration, serving as a hope-maker. This book offers an accessible and empirically informed philosophical discussion of climate change, global poverty, justice, and the importance of political responses, both internationally and domestically, that offer hope. There are reasons enough (...) to worry that the era of pervasive human planetary impact, the Anthropocene, could produce terrible global injustices and massive environmental destruction. But that need not be so. Since the Industrial Revolution growth in productive capacity and the egalitarian struggles to share its benefits widely have made another world possible. We still have reason to hope for a world in which international cooperation to manage Earth systems sustainably prevails, in which the natural treasures of the Earth are valued, in which a vision of prosperity is realized and the scourges of disease, ignorance, and poverty are overcome, in which powerful lobbies defending private interests that threaten sustainability are minimized and contained, and in which democratic politics responding to the values of an educated public prevail. The work of bringing about such a world is the work of mobilizing hope"--. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relationship between internationalisation, mobility, quality and equality in the context of recent developments in research policy in the European Research Area (ERA). Although these developments are specifically concerned with the growth of research capacity at European level, the issues raised have much broader relevance to those concerned with research policy and highly skilled mobility. The paper draws on a wealth of recent research examining the relationship between mobility and career progression with particular reference to a recently (...) completed empirical study of doctoral mobility in the social sciences (Ackers et al. Doctoral Mobility in the Social Sciences. Report to the NORFACE ERA-Network, 2007). The paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces recent policy developments including the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers and the European Commission’s Green Paper on the ERA. The discussion focuses on concerns around the definition of ‘mobility’ and the tendency (in both policy circles and academic research) to conflate different forms of mobility and to equate these with notions of excellence or quality. Scientific mobility is shaped as much by ‘push’ factors (limited opportunity) as it is by the ‘draw’ of excellence. Scientists are exercising a degree of ‘choice’ within a specific and individualised framework of constraints. The following sections consider some of the ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ factors shaping scientific mobility and the influence that these have on the relationship between mobility, internationalisation and excellence. The paper concludes that mobility is not an outcome in its own right and must not be treated as such (as an implicit indicator of internationalisation). To do so contributes to differential opportunity in scientific labour markets reducing both efficiency and equality. (shrink)

Mobile health is rapidly being implemented and changing our ways of doing, understanding and organising healthcare. mHealth includes wearable devices as well as apps that track fitness, offer wellness programmes or provide tools to manage chronic conditions. According to industry and policy makers, these systems offer efficient and cost-effective solutions for disease prevention and self-management. While this development raises many ethically relevant questions, so far mHealth has received only little attention in medical ethics. This paper provides an overview of bioethical (...) issues raised by mHealth and aims to draw scholarly attention to the ethical significance of its promises and challenges. We show that the overly positive promises of mHealth need to be nuanced and their desirability critically assessed. Finally, we offer suggestions to bioethicists to engage with this emerging trend in healthcare to develop mHealth to its best potential in a morally sound way. (shrink)

Technological and societal changes have made downward social and economic mobility a pressing issue in real-world politics. This article argues that a Rawlsian society would not provide any special protection against downward mobility, and would act rightly in declining to provide such protection. Special treatment for the downwardly mobile can be grounded neither in Rawls’s core principles—the basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle—nor in other aspects of Rawls’s theory. Instead, a Rawlsian society is willing to sacrifice (...) particular individuals’ ambitions and plans for the achievement of justice, and offers those who lose out from justified change no special solicitude over and above the general solicitude extended to all. Rather than guaranteeing the maintenance of any particular individual or group’s economic position, it provides all of its members—the upwardly mobile, the downwardly mobile, and the immobile—a form of security that is at once more generous and more limited: that they will receive the liberties, opportunities, and resources promised by the principles of justice. (shrink)

Editor's introduction to special issue of Essays in Philosophy: Migration and Mobility.

Studies of protests against mobile phone masts typically concentrate on the potential health risks associated with mobile phones and their masts. Beck’s Risk Society has been particularly influential in informing this debate. This focus on health, however, has merely served to limit the discussion to those concerns legitimated by science conveniently ignoring other disputed issues. In contrast, this article contends that it is necessary to use a wider notion of risk to understand fully how the current political emphasis on active (...) citizenship may have contributed to the protests. It examines how neoliberal governmentality and the move to empower people are in contention with one another. The study draws upon case material from a small village protest group in United Kingdom and argues that much of the tension arises from the encouragement of the public on one hand to become active citizens but on the other to be passive consumers. (shrink)

The present study investigated the impacts of mobile assisted vocabulary learning via digital flashcards. The data were collected from 44 adult English as Foreign Language learners in three intact classes in a private language teaching institute in Iran, randomly assigned to experimental and control learning conditions. The experimental group used a freely available DF application to learn items from a recently developed corpus-based word list for high-frequency vocabulary in English. The treatment was implemented as out-of-the-classroom learning activities where the EFL (...) learners used DFs to augment their vocabulary knowledge, and their learning gains were compared to the control group that received regular English language education. The participants’ vocabulary knowledge was tested in pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests, and the findings indicated that using DFs for outside the classroom vocabulary learning contributed significantly to short- and long-term improvements in the knowledge of high-frequency words. The study provided empirical evidence for the affordances of mobile assisted vocabulary learning for learning a considerable proportion of core vocabulary and has some implications for addressing the vocabulary learning needs of EFL learners. (shrink)

In this paper, we discussed how Digital Panopticon appears to be a chain of monitoring and control in modern society. Bentham presented the concept and design of the Panopticon in the sense that prisoners who feel the attention of invisible monitors are better enlightened. Michel Foucault saw the concept of Bentham’s Panopticon as a modern society in which everyone watched without a monitor. The modern society can now be called a "digital Panopticon" where individuals are controlled by high-tech IT. Many (...) advances in information and technology have accumulated since modern times. Not looking perfect with the advent of cameras, omnipotent eye control seems to be liberating Panopticism from architectural form. However, with the advent of new IT technologies, ‘Lens Phobia' is spreading, and massive information power is evolving in a new and more powerful way in monitoring and power. If the Panopticon is a device that can explain modern power very well, digital is a new way of exercising power that is different from the past. (shrink)

Mobile Health (m-health) technologies, such as wearables, apps, and smartwatches, are increasingly viewed as tools for improving health and well-being. In particular, such technologies are conceptualized as means for laypersons to master their own health, by becoming “engaged” and “empowered” “managers” of their bodies and minds. One notion that is especially prevalent in the discussions around m-health technology is that of empowerment. In this paper, I analyze the notion of empowerment at play in the m-health arena, identifying five elements that (...) are required for empowerment. These are (1) knowledge, (2) control, (3) responsibility, (4) the availability of good choices, and (5) healthy desires. I argue that at least sometimes, these features are not present in the use of these technologies. I then argue that instead of empowerment, it is plausible that m-health technology merely facilitates a feeling of empowerment. I suggest this may be problematic, as it risks placing the burden of health and behavior change solely on the shoulders of individuals who may not be in a position to affect such change. (shrink)

While recent discussions of contextualism have mostly focused on other issues, some influential early statements of the view emphasized the possibility of its providing an alternative to both coherentism and traditional versions of foundationalism. In this essay, I will pick up on this strand of contextualist thought, and argue that contextualist versions of foundationalism promise to solve some problems that their non-contextualist cousins cannot. In particular, I will argue that adopting contextualist versions of foundationalism can let us reconcile Bayesian accounts (...) of belief updating with a version of the holist claim that all beliefs are defeasible. (shrink)

Meaning of place is usually approached as slow social cognitive construction. However, grounded on the theory of affordances, it may also stem from direct perception-action processes, which enable the formation of immediate perceived functional, social or symbolic meaning of place (Raymond, Kyttä, & Stedman, 2017). In the present study, affordances of places, which are perceived by a specific perceiver in a specific place, were mapped using a web-map survey. Each place offers opportunities for interaction, behavior, use, feeling or meaning, which (...) is directly perceived and actualized there. This paper aims at identifying the degree of youth-friendliness of urban neighborhoods using the hypothetical intertwined model of independent mobility and actualized affordances (Kyttä, 2004) combined with place use and meaning (Broberg, Kyttä, & Fagerholm, 2013). SoftGISchildren methodology (Broberg, Kyttä, et al., 2013) was adopted to carry out a cross-sectional research, involving 145 sixth to ninth graders of the Great Lisbon area. SoftGIS integrates Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), enabling collection and place mapping of daily subjective environmental experiences in the physical environment, consequently allowing for individuals to be actively engaged in public processes of participation (Brown & Kyttä,2014). A place based web survey called “Ideal City: a game of graphic imagination” was adopted. Participants were asked to map their home place, select and mark social, functional, leisure and emotional place transactions, and report actual and ideal mobility to these places. Findings on mobility showed that shorter distances to meaningful affordances of places promote active and independent travel; ideally, youths would like to be more frequently active and more frequently autonomous. As for meaningful places, a total of 1632 affordances were localized, with a higher number on social category. Neighborhood area (500 meters around home place) was assessed as youth-friendly, where active and independent travel occurred more frequently, and social affordances were the most expressive type. Relational and affectional experience in the neighborhood places was meaningful for youth. Municipalities should consider these features when planning, designing and managing residential areas aiming for the well-being and health of young citizens; and include youths as specialists of space (spatialists) in planning participatory processes (PPGIS). (shrink)

This paper uses the figure of the inbred laboratory mouse to reflect upon the management and mobilization of biological difference in the contemporary biosciences. Working through the concept of shifting experimental systems, the paper seeks to connect practices concerned with standardization and control in contemporary research with the emergent and stochastic qualities of biological life. Specifically, it reviews the importance of historical narratives of standardization in experimental systems based around model organisms, before identifying a tension in contemporary accounts of the (...) reproduction and differentiation of inbred mouse strains within them. Firstly, narratives of new strain development, foregrounding personal biography and chance discovery, attest to the contingency and situatedness of apparently universal biotechnological production. Secondly, discoveries of unexpected animal litters challenge efforts to standardize mouse phenotypes and control the reproduction of murine strains over space. The co-existence of these two narratives draws attention to the importance of and interplay between both chance and control, determination and emergence, and the making and moving of experimental life in biomedical research. The reception or denial of such biological excess reflects the distribution of agencies and the emerging spatialities of the global infrastructures of biotechnological development, with implications for future relations between animal lives and human becomings in experimental practices. (shrink)

This paper offers responses to the challenges and questions rasied by the comments of John M. Meyer, Gwen Ottinger, Mark Reiff, and Steve Vanderheiden to my book Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change and Global Poverty. Their concerns are insightful, many, and varied. My reply focuses on the following themes: The relationship between moral concern about climate change and moral concern abut global poverty, the role of hope in responding to climate change, the problem of plutocratic influences in democratic politics and international (...) negotiations, the role of technology in responding to climate change, and the value presuppostion of the book. I cannot do justice to all of the interesting points the commentators make, but I hope at least to have mustered decent replies in these areas. (shrink)

The paper looks into prospects of using mobile applications in the regional information market. It reviews global trends in their introduction rates, based on development of mobile devices and new information technologies. Mobile applications are classified, their most popular types for business and community described. The author provides rationale for some directions of market expansion owing to a growing share of smartphones in the total number of mobile phones and an increase in the number of Internet users. Some specific features (...) of the regional information market performance and its main participants are identified. The paper presents economic performances of companies by regions of Ukraine as a critical economic factor in using mobile applications. The banking sector and trade are defined as the most favorable lines of activity. The following bottlenecks in the use of mobile applications by domestic banks are identified as compared to those in Europe, specifically in Poland: a low rate of activity in this field and insufficient number of Internet users. The author analyzes functional capabilities of active software in the most successful banks of Ukraine. Services of the most popular mobile applications offered by major companies with regional representatives are examined. There are some factors identified, which adversely affect the shaping of community demand for mobile applications, such as regional disproportions in the flow of income as well as high purchase costs of food commodities and extremely low purchase costs of household appliances. The author gives some positive examples of promoting mobile applications in local information markets in the field of public transport. It is established that prospects of further use of mobile applications in the regional information market depend on enhancement of financial stability of economic entities and an increase of the income level of the population. (shrink)

BRISKIN L. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 285–296 Resistance, mobilization and militancy: nurses on strikeDrawing on nurses’ strikes in many countries, this paper explores nurse militancy with reference to professionalism and the commitment to service; patriarchal practices and gendered subordination; and proletarianization and the confrontation with healthcare restructuring. These deeply entangled trajectories have had a significant impact on the work, consciousness and militancy of nurses and have shaped occupation‐specific forms of resistance. They have produced a pattern of overlapping solidarities – occupational (...) solidarity, gendered alliances and coalitions around healthcare restructuring – which have supported, indeed promoted, militancy among nurses, despite the multiple forces arrayed against them. The professional commitments of nurses to the provision of care have confronted healthcare restructuring, nursing shortages, intensification of work, precarious employment and gendered hierarchies with a militant discourse around the public interest, and a reconstitution and reclamation of ‘caring’, what I call the politicisation of caring. In fact, nurses’ dedication to caring work in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries may encourage rather than dissuade them from going on strike. This paper uses a trans‐disciplinary methodology, qualitative material in the form of strike narratives constructed from newspaper archives, and references to the popular and scholarly literature on nursing militancy. (shrink)

Leibniz is committed to a form of cosmic eternity, on account of his natural theology and foundations for dynamics. However, his views on perpetuum mobiles entail that a particularly attractive type of cosmic eternity is out of reach for Leibniz.

Mhealth technology is mushrooming world-wide and, in a variety of forms, reaches increasing numbers of users in ever-widening contexts and virtually independent from standard medical evidence assessment. Yet, debate on the broader societal impact including in particular mapping and classification of ethical issues raised has been limited. This article, as part of an ongoing empirically informed ethical research project, provides an overview of ethical issues of mhealth applications with a specific focus on implications on autonomy as a key notion in (...) the debate. A multi-stage model of references to the potential of mhealth use for strengthening some or other form of self-determination will be proposed as a descriptive tool. It illustrates an assumed continuum of enhanced autonomy via mhealth broadly conceived: from patient to user autonomy, to improved health literacy, and finally to the vision of supra-individual empowerment and democratised, participatory health and medicine as a whole. On closer examination, however, these references are frequently ambivalent or vague, perpetuating the at times uncritical use of established autonomy concepts in medical ethics. The article suggests zooming in on the range of autonomy-related aspects against the backdrop of digital innovation and datafied health more generally, and on this basis add to existing frameworks for the ethical evaluation of mhealth more specifically. (shrink)

Across a wide variety of cultural settings, kin have been shown to play an important role in promoting women’s reproductive success. Patrilocal postmarital residence is a potential hindrance to maintaining these support networks, raising the question: how do women preserve and foster relationships with their natal kin when propinquity is disrupted? Using census and interview data from the Himba, a group of semi-nomadic African pastoralists, I first show that although women have reduced kin propinquity after marriage, more than half of (...) married women are visiting with their kin at a given time. Mobility recall data further show that married women travel more than unmarried women, and that women consistently return to stay with kin around the time of giving birth. Divorce and death of a spouse also trigger a return to living with kin, leading to a cumulative pattern of kin coresidence across the lifespan. These data suggest that patrilocality may be less of a constraint on female kin support than has been previously assumed. (shrink)

The changing conditions for the accumulation and transmission of knowledge in the age of multimedia networks make it inevitable that old philosophical problems become formulated in a new light. Above all, the problem of the unity of knowledge is once again a topical issue. The situation-dependent acquisition of knowledge that is made possible by mobile learning transcends the boundaries of traditional disciplines, linking the domains of text, diagram, and picture. Database integration and multimedia search become central problems in the epistemology (...) of the 21st century, while handheld devices are emerging as vital technologies for supporting collaborative learning. -- Kristóf Nyíri has published widely on Wittgenstein, Austrian intellectual history, and the philosophy of communication. He directs the interdisciplinary research program COMMUNICATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY, conducted jointly by the Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Westel Mobile Telecommunications, Budapest. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the mobilities turn and its studies of the performativity of everyday (im)mobilities enable new forms of sociological inquiry, explanation and engagement. New kinds of researchable entities arise, opening up a new or rediscovered realm of the empirical, and new avenues for critique. The mobilities paradigm not only remedies the academic neglect of various movements, of people, objects, information and ideas. It also gathers new empirical sensitivities, analytical orientations, methods and motivations to examine important social (...) and material phenomena and fold social science insight into responses. After an outline of the mobilities paradigm, this article provides a wide-ranging review of emergent `mobile methods' of studying (im)mobilities. We discuss some of the new researchable entities they engender and explore important implications for the relationship between the empirical, theory, critique, and engagement. (shrink)

Grounded in scholarly analysis and personal reflection, and drawing on a multi-sited and multi-method research design, Momentous Mobilities disentangles the meanings attached to temporary travels and stays abroad and offers empirical evidence as well as novel theoretical arguments to develop an anthropology of mobility. Both focusing specifically on how various societies and cultures imagine and value boundary-crossing mobilities “elsewhere” and drawing heavily on his own European lifeworld, the author examines momentous travels abroad in the context of education, work, and spiritual (...) quests and the search for a better quality of life. (shrink)

Most conceptions of public and private life within political and social theory do not adequately consider the networks or fluidities involved in contemporary social relations. The distinction of public and private is often conceived of as statically `regional' in character. This article, following an extensive analysis of the multiple meanings of the `public' and `private', criticizes such a static conception and maintains that massive changes are occurring in the nature of both public and private life and especially of the relations (...) between them. We consider flows and networks that enable mobility between and across apparent publics and privates. These mobilities are both physical and informational. We consider the transformations of public and private life that have arisen from `complex' configurations of place and space: the dominant system of car-centred automobility whose spatial fluidities are simultaneously private and public; and various globalizations through the exposure of `private' lives on public screens and the public screening of mediatized events. These mobile, machinic examples demonstrate the limitations of the static, regional conceptualizations of public and private life developed within much social and political theory, and suggest that this divide may need relegation to the dustbin of history. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate how different modes of urban transportation shape our experience of the urban environment. My goal is to argue that how we move through a space is not merely a question of convenience or efficiency. Rather, our transportation technologies can fundamentally shift how we experience where we are. I propose a framework for considering mobility from the standpoint of phenomenological everyday aesthetics considering the social, somatic, temporal-epistemic, and affective characteristics of experience. I then suggest a typology (...) of different forms of urban mobility distinguishing between private and public forms of transportation as well as between faster and slower modes. I next suggest a trio of factors—speed, ability to survey one’s surroundings, and ease of interruption—that play into how we experience an urban environment while discovering it by means of mobility. By applying the framework of experience and the trio of factors to the typology of transportation modes I show how each of them can foster or hinder an aesthetic experience of the urban environment. I conclude by reflecting on some further issues for investigation including the role of power in urban space, questions concerning mobility and difference (class, race, dis/ability, etc.), the place of technological mediation in urban mobility, and the role of spatial planning. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate how different modes of urban transportation shape our experience of the urban environment. My goal is to argue that how we move through a space is not merely a question of convenience or efficiency. Rather, our transportation technologies can fundamentally shift how we experience where we are. I propose a framework for considering mobility from the standpoint of phenomenological everyday aesthetics considering the social, somatic, temporal-epistemic, and affective characteristics of experience. I then suggest a typology (...) of different forms of urban mobility distinguishing between private and public forms of transportation as well as between faster and slower modes. I next suggest a trio of factors—speed, ability to survey one’s surroundings, and ease of interruption—that play into how we experience an urban environment while discovering it by means of mobility. By applying the framework of experience and the trio of factors to the typology of transportation modes I show how each of them can foster or hinder an aesthetic experience of the urban environment. I conclude by reflecting on some further issues for investigation including the role of power in urban space, questions concerning mobility and difference, the place of technological mediation in urban mobility, and the role of spatial planning. (shrink)

A restricted-use mobile device policy for introductory philosophy classrooms is presented and defended. The policy allows students to use devices only during open periods announced by the professor and is based on recent empirical findings on the effects of in-class mobile device use. These results suggest devices are generally detrimental to student learning, though they have targeted benefits for specific tasks. The policy is defended via a discussion of the ethical considerations surrounding device use, a discussion of the policy’s benefits, (...) and responses to potential objections. Avenues for future research are suggested at the conclusion of the discussion. (shrink)

Ambient Intelligence provides the potential for vast and varied applications, bringing with it both promise and peril. The development of Ambient Intelligence applications poses a number of ethical and legal concerns. Mobile devices are increasingly evolving into tools to orientate in and interact with the environment, thus introducing a user-centric approach to Ambient Intelligence. The MINAmI (Micro-Nano integrated platform for transverse Ambient Intelligence applications) FP6 research project aims at creating core technologies for mobile device based Ambient Intelligence services. In this (...) paper we assess five scenarios that demonstrate forthcoming MINAmI-based applications focusing on healthcare, assistive technology, homecare, and everyday life in general. A legal and ethical analysis of the scenarios is conducted, which reveals various conflicting interests. The paper concludes with some thoughts on drafting ethical guidelines for Ambient Intelligence applications. (shrink)

Our world is mobile. People move, either within the state or from one state to another, to access opportunities, to improve their living conditions, or to start afresh. Yet, we usually assume that migration is an exceptional activity that leads to permanent settlement. In this paper, I invite us to reconsider this assumption. First, I analyse several ways in which people experience mobility in contemporary societies. Then, I turn to migration, as a specific form of mobility. I distinguish between a (...) legal/administrative, a social, and a self-identification-based approach to migration, demonstrating that they lead to divergent definitions of who is a migrant. I proceed by introducing the concept of mobile migration and by developing a typology of mobile migrants. I conclude that, in order to devise migration policies that treat migrants fairly, a careful consideration of the claims and interests of the different types of mobile migrants is necessary. (shrink)

Employee mobility is a phenomenon that challenges workplace ethics. This paper argues that despite on‐going attempts by management and consultants to build and install employee loyalty, and despite the complexity of relationships between employees and their organization, employee mobility remains a common phenomenon in today’s market. Courts, at least Israeli courts, perceive the employee–employer relationship as almost purely contractual and thus strive to protect workers first, often ignoring deeper commitments such as loyalty. This results in a certain dissonance in the (...) relationships between employees and employers. (shrink)

Employee mobility is a phenomenon that challenges workplace ethics. This paper argues that despite on‐going attempts by management and consultants to build and install employee loyalty, and despite the complexity of relationships between employees and their organization, employee mobility remains a common phenomenon in today’s market. Courts, at least Israeli courts, perceive the employee–employer relationship as almost purely contractual and thus strive to protect workers first, often ignoring deeper commitments such as loyalty. This results in a certain dissonance in the (...) relationships between employees and employers. (shrink)

This article investigates elite young people’s transitions from the Leysin American School in Switzerland, an elite secondary school, to international higher education. These young people often moved to the UK or the US for higher education – locations associated with global status in the education market. However, I argue, new configurations of race and racism in those spaces may challenge some students’ elite status, despite their wealth. This article demonstrates that to navigate such issues in their transition to higher education, (...) these young people leaned on their diasporic networks. By doing so, they strategically and pre-emptively ascertained whether their power and privilege would travel with them when they became mobile. Significantly, then, this article attends to the differential experiences of members of the transnational elite and highlights the racial discrimination that they may face in mobility. It thereby complicates the notion of mobility as an effective strategy for elite status maintenance. (shrink)

This study investigated the use of mobile telephones by males and females in a public bar frequented by professional people. We found that, unlike women, men who possess mobile telephones more often publicly display them, and that these displays were related to the number of men in a social group, but not the number of women. This result was not due simply to a greater number of males who have telephones: we found an increase with male social group size in (...) the proportion of available telephones that were on display. Similarly, there was a positive relationship between the number of visible telephones and the ratio of males to females. Our results further show that the increased display of telephones in groups with more males is not due to the ostensive function of these devices (i.e., the making and receiving of calls), although single males tended to use their phones more. We interpret these results within the framework of male-male competition, with males in larger group sizes functioning in an increasingly competitive environment. This competitive environment is suggested to be akin to a lek mating system in which males aggregate and actively display their qualities to females who assess males on a number of dimensions. We suggest that mobile telephones might be used by males as an indicator of their status and wealth (sensu “cultural ornaments”). (shrink)

In this article, we query binaries of mobility and immobility in language studies via an empirical focus on language/social practices in a site that bridges the global North and global South. To do so, we work from a Southern praxis perspective to analyze discourses/knowledges informing the performance of accounts from Cambodian men, interviewed about transactional same-sex relationship practices between (ostensibly immobile) local men and (ostensibly mobile) male tourists to Cambodia from the global North. The analysis focuses on a process in (...) which participants’ chronotopic awareness of language shapes a negotiation of power, knowledge, and action with respect to these relationships. Encompassing the discursive positioning of selves and others through the deployment of relevant and affective chronotopes, the talk from these Cambodian men allows us to challenge assumptions about (im)mobility, awareness, agency, sexuality, and power, and demonstrate how these are accessed in multiple ways at this site of North/South contact. (shrink)

This chapter is to offer a critical study of what the human living condition would be like in a new era of hi-tech mobilization, especially the condition of self-government or autonomy, and how, in the Thai perspective, the condition affects culture. Habermas’ analysis of individuation through socialization and Heidegger’s question concerning technology and being are used in the study, and it is revealed that we are now confronted with a new technological condition of positioned individuals in the universe of communication (...) through mobile phones. This situation surely will be realized in a world highly mobilized by the phenomenon of connectedness. This means that we are concerning ourselves with our concrete individuality for our self-expression in that universe. I offer an interpretation that we would hold this kind of individuality to be valuable because of an effect from technological thinking. In addition, comparing this view on individuality with Buddhism, I found that the view offered here is not similar to the Buddhist concept of self as a construction. I offer an argument to show that these concepts are basically different for ethical reasons; while the Buddhist concept still preserves the nobility of the moral agent (Buddhism, after all, is a religion and needs to concern itself with morality), the concrete individuality discussed here is considered only as an instrumental value in a world of hi-tech mobilization. (shrink)

Wealthy individuals stand to gain materially from economic inequality and, moreover, have shaped many organizational and societal practices that perpetuate economic inequality. Thus, they are unlikely allies in the effort to remedy economic inequality. In this article, however, we study the mobilization of a small group of wealthy activists who join underprivileged allies to expose and contest the root causes of wealth consolidation; they offer an instructive alternative to “philanthrocapitalism,” whereby the wealthy give after extreme accumulation. Our study contributes to (...) the growing literature on inequality and organizations by recognizing how inequality is reproduced through organizations, cognizant that efforts to halt this reproduction will likely be contested by the wealthy. Our study examines how advocacy by the wealthy may be challenging, but it may garner attention because it is unexpected. We derive the concept of “privilege work” from our observations of an often awkward and fraught process that enables the wealthy to engage with their own privilege, use their insider knowledge of wealth accumulation as a lever for change, and work respectfully with underprivileged allies rather than invoking superior status. (shrink)

In this paper, we take a framing perspective to corporate environmental irresponsibility and focus it on the community of place as one among the most affected, yet rarely examined, stakeholders. In particular, we take a framing microprocess perspective, to study how interactions within a community of place affect a mobilization after corporate environmental irresponsibility. We elicit two framing microprocess, losses display and scale augmentation, and show how they significantly, though differently, affect a mobilization. In so doing, we enrich our understanding (...) of how communities of place mobilize, the types of, and venues, where interactions take place in a community of place—and how these affect a mobilization. (shrink)

The relationship between the international mobility of academic researchers and social capital is complex. On the one hand, the literature suggests that social capital facilitates the international mobility of academics which, in turn, promotes the accumulation of international social capital, enhances research productivity, and advances careers. On the other hand, international mobility can isolate researchers from the national social capital in their origin countries. In this paper, I present the results of 42 interviews in Canada and Germany to examine how (...) academics in both countries have experienced the connection between international mobility and social capital. In addition to revealing the complexity of this connection, the results show that social capital facilitates international mobility and that mobility sometimes creates social capital. However, mobility can also lead to the loss of national social capital that negatively affects early-career researchers in particular. (shrink)

This paper extends a stochastic theory for buffer fill distribution for multiple “on‘ and “off‘ sources to a mobile environment. Queue fill distribution is described by a set of differential equations assuming sources alternate asynchronously between exponentially distributed periods in “on‘ and “off‘ states. This paper includes the probabilities that mobile sources have links to a given queue. The sources represent mobile user nodes, and the queue represents the capacity of a switch. This paper presents a method of analysis which (...) uses mobile parameters such as speed, call rates per unit area, cell area, and call duration and determines queue fill distribution at the ATM cell level. The analytic results are compared with simulation results. (shrink)

Autonomous labor and its attendant values have now become familiar tools of neoliberal capitalism: work has become freelance, flexible, mobile, project-based, hybrid and temporary. If these conditions are novel to the general economy, this way of working is not new to artists, who began experiencing these precarious conditions long before Post-Fordism was a buzzword. The contributors to Mobile Autonomy, drawn from a variety of disciplines including art, political philosophy and sociology, examine the alternate working methods and economic models developed, in (...) theory and in practice, by artists and other creative professionals to make artistic work viable in contemporary social, economic and political conditions. (shrink)

"Mobile Lifeworlds illustrates how the imaginaries and ideals of Western travellers, especially those of untouched nature and spiritual enlightenment, are consistent with media representations of the Himalayan region, romanticism and modernity at large. Blending tourism and pilgrimage, travel across Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Northern India is often inspired and oriented by a search for authenticity, adventure and Otherness. Such valued ideals are shown, however, to be contested by the very forces and configurations that enable global mobility. The role ubiquitous media (...) and mobile technologies now play in framing travel experiences are explored, revealing a situation in which actors are neither here nor there, but increasingly are 'inter-placed' across planetary landscapes. Beyond institutionalised religious contexts and the visiting of sacred sites, the author shows how a secular religiosity manifests in practical, bodily encounters with foreign environments. This book is unique in that it draws on a dynamic and innovative set of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, especially phenomenology, the mobilities paradigm and philosophical anthropology. The volume breaks fresh ground in pilgrimage, tourism and travel studies by unfolding the complex relationships between the virtual, imaginary and corporeal dynamics of contemporary mobile lifeworlds"--From publisher's website. (shrink)

This paper considers the implications of precautionary restrictions against technologies, in the context of the potential for creating and sustaining rumours. It focuses on the restriction against mobile phone use at petrol stations, based on the rumour that a spark might cause an explosion. Rumours have been substantiated by precautionary usage warnings from mobile phone manufacturers, petrol station usage restrictions, and a general lack of technical understanding. Petrol station employees have themselves spread the rumour about alleged incidents, filling the information (...) gap about the basis for the restriction. (shrink)

John Urry was an extraordinary, generous and compelling force. As is evident in the hundreds of tributes and testimonials to his memory gathered already, his work influenced so many people through his talks at conferences, his published words in the pages of journals and his many books, and in conversations across viva examination tables, PhD juries and supervisory meetings. This essay remembers John’s contribution to the study of mobility and spatial theory more generally.

Conversation analytical methodology was used to specify the new opening practices in Finnish mobile call openings, which differ systematically from Finnish landline call openings. Since the responses to a mobile call orient to the summons identifying the caller, answers have changed and diversified. A known caller is greeted. The self-identification opening that was canonical in Finnish landline calls is mainly used for answering unknown callers, while channel-opener openings involve orientation to ongoing mutual business between the speakers. Some of these changes (...) reflect real-time coordination of the social action that the mobility of mobile phones enables. In all, the adoption of new ways of answering a call shows that people orient themselves to affordances that new technologies allow them. Mobile phone communication opens a salient new area both for the analysis of talk-ininteraction itself and also for understanding communicative behaviour in the era of ubiquitous information technology. (shrink)

The Mobile Phone Addiction Index is a short instrument to assess mobile phone addiction. The Chinese version of this scale has been widely used in Chinese students and shows promising psychometric characteristics. The present study tested the construct validity and measurement invariance of the MPAI by gender in middle school adolescents. The data were collected from 1,395 high school students. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple-group CFA for invariance tests were conducted on the MPAI model which consisted of 17 observed items (...) and 4 latent factors. Findings showed that the data fit the four-factor structure model well for both males and females. Furthermore, configural, metric, scalar, and residual invariance were established by gender. The results indicated that the MPAI has acceptable psychometric properties when used in adolescents. In addition, with the strict invariance requirements being satisfied, the underlying factor scores for MPAI can be meaningfully compared across genders. To our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to test the measurement invariance of the MPAI across male and female adolescents. Our results will support future research on mobile phone addiction in adolescents. (shrink)

This paper examines the causes of pupil mobility and good practice in schools to address mobility issues. Pupil mobility is defined as ?a child joining or leaving school at a point other than the normal age at which children start or finish their education at that school?. The first part draws upon evidence of a survey, which explores the views of headteachers on the nature and causes of pupil mobility in schools and the priority they give to addressing pupil mobility (...) issues in their schools. It examines the cause of mobility in schools in the context of mobile groups. This is followed by the challenges for managing mobility and strategies to address pupil mobility in schools. The second part of the paper outlines successful strategies that minimize the effects of mobility in schools. Evidence is drawn from case?study research and focuses on the school systems, pastoral care and access to learning which combine to support the induction, assessment and monitoring of newly arrived pupils in school and effective use of data for self?evaluation. Examples of flexible curriculum organization, innovative approaches to additional support and effective administrative procedures are drawn upon. Evidence reflects the views of a range of school staff, parents/carers and pupils in the case?study school, as well as the judgements of senior researchers. Policy implications for government and for all concerned with school performance are highlighted, as well as many practical suggestions for raising achievement of mobile pupils. (shrink)