Young People’s Urban Im/Mobilities: Relationality and Identity Formation

Abstract

There is a mobility turn in the social sciences affecting how we scrutinise, research and represent the city. In recent scholarship on mobilities, global human mobilities have been identified as predominant. Nevertheless there have been calls for research that focuses on issues relating to everyday transportation, materialities and the spatial contexts of im/mobilities. This article is a response to those calls with a specific focus on young people’s local experiences of urban im/mobilities. It is also a challenge to the lack of attention afforded young people by urban studies. Young urbanites are of an age where personal physical mobility to take advantage of all the resources, recreation and sociality offered by an urban landscape is an important part of ‘growing up’ and identity formation. Utilising two of mobility studies’ conceptualisations, relationality and identity formation, this article examines young Aucklanders’ im/mobilities through urban space.

Introduction

Interviewer:

What do you like about Auckland?

Lance:

Well I feel that it is known to be culturally diverse, and it is, I admire it because of that … Also I like it how the name ‘city’ means it is the centre. It’s got the main centres in it and how it’s also culturally diverse. I mean there’s many different cultures in different areas of Auckland, you know specific groups in different areas. But I just love how such a massive city can be … but you know .. have all these nice areas, you’ve got West Auckland which is green and lush, and you’ve got the commercial stuff in the south and on the east you’ve got the harbour in the city, and north you’ve got the beach its just an aspect of everything which I really like.

Interviewer:

What don’t you like about Auckland?

Lance:

The traffic! It’s far too much for the population in Auckland. The roads need to be reworked and the public transport so that you can go to more … areas. But also maybe the … like the cultural clusters around Auckland I mean … it’d be nice if they could just be mixed and blended in as one, rather than to say Polynesians in the south of Auckland, and White people, Asians and South Africans in the North Shore. It’s very split and I think it’d be nicer and maybe stop racism if they could just be more mixed together (European descent, 17, Bayview College, West Auckland).

In response to two simple questions, Lance outlines key aspects that are central to what this article aims to do. He values the city for its size, its ‘cityness’, the cultural diversity and the diversity of landscapes. However, he hates the dense traffic, the poor infrastructure and the separateness of different cultural groups. He is anxious about racism. At the age of 17, Lance’s localised knowledge of Auckland blends together the city, transport, accessibility and cultural relations. Without stating the actual words he is talking about urban mobilities, relationality and social identities; these are the foci of this paper.

The mobility turn in the social sciences affects how we scrutinise, research and represent the city. Places, particularly urban places, are seen “as travelling” by Sheller and Urry (2006, p. 214). They place emphasis on the dynamism of cities, the sense in which they are perceived to be moving forwards or backwards, as static or changing, and always in relation to “peoples, materials, images, and the systems of difference that they perform” (Sheller and Urry, 2006, p. 214). Within the ‘new’ paradigm of mobilities,¹ there is a call for a focus on more

local concerns about everyday transportation, material cultures, and spatial relations of mobility and immobility (Sheller and Urry, 2006, p. 212).

Additionally, within geography and urban studies, there are calls to return our attention to the “actual, everyday materiality of the places in which people actually dwell” (Latham and McCormack, 2004, p. 702). This article is in part a response to those calls. It focuses on young people’s everyday and occasional mobilities into, through and out of the city where they were born and brought up. This focus facilitates an exploration of the spatial and social relations and formations of urban mobility and immobility. The article is also a challenge to the lack of attention afforded young people by urban studies as it places young Aucklanders’ urban experiences central.

This intervention argues that explorations of young people’s mobilities and immobilities provide a valuable insight for examinations of the city. Jensen (2009, p. 149) has called for critical enquiry into the diverse experiences of urban dwellers ‘being-on-the-move’. Urban transport and mobility are under investigation (see Barker, 2009; Bissell, 2010; Featherstone et al., 2004; Merriman, 2009a; Thrift, 2004; see also Theory, Culture and Society, 2004). The notion that the city is constituted at the street level through footsteps means that pedestrians play a significant role in writing the city (de Certeau, 2000; cited by Hubbard, 2006, p. 98). Young people and children experience geography and spatialities differently from adults, and differentially within the range of these youngerage-groups (Aitken et al., 2008; Freeman and Tranter, 2011; Holloway and Valentine, 2000; Jones, 2008; Jeffrey and Dyson, 2008; Katz, 2004; Matthews et al., 2000; Skelton, 2009; Skelton and Valentine, 1998). Hence it is inevitable that young people will experience urban im/mobilities differently too; even if they use the same means of transport as adults—cars, buses, trains, cycling, walking—they will experience it in distinctive (but sometimes similar) ways.

Young urbanites² are of an age where their personal physical mobility to take advantage of all the resources, recreation and sociality offered by an urban landscape is an important part of ‘growing up’ and identity formation (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003). Young people can have ambivalent experiences and understandings of the city, but their ability to move into, through and out of urban spaces is an important element of their independent geographies (Benwell, 2009; Gough, 2008). For young people, safe, efficient and affordable public transport, secure pathways for walking and use of their own vehicles (cars, motorcycles, bikes) are important priorities for gathering urban experiences. The city can be a sensuous place; a space where feelings of danger and excitement, anticipation and dread, desire and disgust, hopefulness and disappointment can mingle together in a single day or night-out in the urban centre. Young people feel that reducing dependence on ‘parent taxis’ is an important step in personal freedom, but this can bring personal risk. As demonstrated through the research project on which this article is based (outlined later), for many Auckland youngsters, access to a car is perceived to be extremely important for independent mobility. This is largely because public transport in the city is described as ‘shockingly bad’, ‘unreliable’, ‘poorly networked’ and ‘relatively expensive’; the city is very much geared towards car use³. Hence young Aucklanders face different kinds of restrictions to, or possibilities for, their urban mobilities that can be based on their gender, ethnicity, age and socioeconomic status. This paper focuses on the ways in which young people aged 16 to 23 who have been born and brought up in Auckland, New Zealand, articulate their negotiations of mobility as part of their urban geographical experiences of everyday life and the city.

In the following section, I draw upon theoretical debates about the complexities of the mobilities paradigm developed by Sheller and Urry (2006). I explore two specific concepts from this paradigm: relationality and identity formation⁴ within an urban context. I also weave through, where appropriate, existing geographical work that examines young people’s and children’s im/mobilities. The third section outlines the project and its methodological approaches. The final substantive section draws upon young people’s own narratives of their urban im/mobilities. These are framed within the concepts of relationality and identity formation in order to elucidate the relevance of young people’s mobilities to broader urban and mobility studies.

Mobilities: Relationality, Identity Formation and Young People

Mobility has been described as ubiquitous. We are told that mobility is how we live and that it has become an ordinary, everyday part of life (Adey, 2010). However, to date, relatively little work on mobilities has recognised the roles of young people as actors and agents of the mobile world. There are notable exceptions (Barker et al., 2009; Gough, 2008; Gough and Franch, 2005; Holt and Costello, 2011; Skelton, 2009; Winton, 2005). However, generally theorisations of mobility (Adey, 2010; Canzler et al., 2008; Cresswell, 2010; Sheller and Urry, 2006) make limited mention of children and young people. Yet younger people are mobile in all sorts of ways either independently or in the presence of others, which Adey (2010, p. 23) reminds us, is “mobility as a social activity”. If we accept that space is a product of social relations and always in process (Massey, 2005); that places and spaces are “dynamic, practiced and performed through the movements of all manner of things” (Merriman, 2009b, p. 134), then young people and their mobilities actively participate in the persistent production, creation and alteration of spaces and places; in this case, the city of Auckland. Consequently, this article is not adding young people into the mobilities debate as another case study of actors, but rather demonstrating that analysis of young people’s mobilities can provide important ways of understanding further the complexities of the “politics of mobility” (Cresswell, 2010) and offer a “nuanced understanding of the production and consumption of different mobilities” (Hubbard, 2006, p. 171).

Mobility in the past has not been seen as the norm, but this has shifted to a recognition that mobility/movement is not a rupture but part of normal/everyday life (Gough, 2008, p. 244). Hubbard argues that everyday life in cities cannot always be predictable or fully prepared for. Even the more “banal and routine aspects of urban life (for instance the way we walk, talk, drive and generally negotiate our way through the city streets)” (Hubbard, 2006, p. 95) mean that adaptation and shift are part of moving through urban space (see also Chatterton and Hollands, 2003, for an analysis or urban everynight life). Hannam et al. (2006) state that the focus of mobilities research has to take account of the local processes, daily transport and movements of everyday life as well as the larger movements of people, objects, capital and information. Cresswell (2010) welcomes the fact that mobility studies have begun to take the actual fact of movement seriously. I would argue that immobility must also be taken seriously in any ‘politics of mobility’ (Harker, 2009). How and where young people can/cannot move with speed or slowly, with freedom or constraint, are important features of deepening our understandings of the complex relationality of mobility and its connection with identity formation.

Relationality

Adey (2010) argues that it is important to understand mobility relationally because it is integrated with, and underlies, all kinds of processes. Mobilities are positioned in relation to someone or something

Mobilities and immobilities are the ‘special effects’ of a relation: they are an outcome or an accomplishment (Adey, 2010, pp. 17–18).

Mobilities are part of the process of how we engage with the world. Young urbanites practise mobile and urban relations, and they too constitute mobility as relational. Cities are increasingly being scrutinised through the lens of mobility and recognised as key sites of movement and flow, mobility and immobility (Simone, 2010). Cities have been described as ‘intransitive’, existing at multiple scales simultaneously, as pliable and fluid (Hubbard, 2006, p. 165). This multiscalar approach makes it imperative to try and understand all sorts of complexities about the subjective im/mobilities in the city, and this includes those of young people (see Ruddick, 1998, on Los Angeles; Gough, 2008, on Lusaka; Winton, 2005, on Guatemala City; Chatterton and Hollands, 2003, on a range of European cities; Benwell, 2009, on Cape Town; Harker, 2009, on Birzeit in Palestine). Further, mobility and immobility need to be examined through the notion of differential and relational mobilities and the interrelationships between them (Oswin and Yeoh, 2010; Harker, 2009). Age is a key social differentiation and a relational formation of identity. Young people are important social actors within the city and hence a thorough understanding of the mobile, relational city requires analysis of their mobility and immobility.

Wherever there are relations, then there are networks of power. Mobility, and its counterpart fixity, produce geographies and politics of power (Adey, 2010; Cresswell, 2010; Merriman, 2009b). Access to mobilities as a resource is very unequally distributed (Gough, 2008; Harker, 2009; Winton, 2005; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2008). Motility is described as the capacity of an actor to move socially and spatially; but it becomes mobility when there is an intention to move (Canzler et al., 2008, p. 3). Children, for example, may have motility but are unable to translate this into mobility because of parental controls of their movement based upon fear and/or to offer protection. Importantly, this conceptualisation allows us to make the distinction between the capacity to move and the intention and ability to become mobile (see Ansell and van Blerk, 2005; Dobson, 2009; Holt and Costello, 2011). Both motility and mobility, as elements of movement, are important factors of social differentiation and generators of new forms of inequality (Canzler et al., 2008, p. 5). Young people constitute, and are constituted by, social relations of difference and inequality based on factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and socioeconomic status. In the context of socioeconomic status this is not of their own making, but those of their families. This can depend on age and young people’s own status; the 16–23-year-old participants in this study were all still residing with adult family members, usually parents. Their socioeconomic status was therefore largely determined by familial household income. Hence, while people are young their mobility is effectively enabled or constrained by socioeconomic conditions beyond their own responsibility or control. The link between purchasing power and mobility is often hinted at or taken for granted in the mobilities literature. However, as we shall see through young people’s commentaries on their mobility in their everyday lives in Auckland, socioeconomic status can be a significant factor in the politics of access to mobility. Consequently, age, combined with socioeconomic status, are both key relational and in/equality factors in young people’s im/mobilities.

Identity Formation

Here, I outline emerging conceptualisations that connect movement and mobilities with the formation of subjectivities and identities (Adey, 2010; Easthope, 2009). This is a nascent area of mobilities work. Many young people in advanced capitalist economies, particularly those aged 16 to 23, are going through considerable changes and challenges in their lives. Such changes are usually encapsulated under the term ‘transitions’ (Punch, 2002; Skelton, 2002). Many of them (and all my research participants) are taking competitive examinations, making the shift from school to work or further studies, and exploring elements of their identities and what these mean in wider social and spatial contexts. A key aspect of transition is the growing expectation of, sense of responsibility about and desire for, independent mobility. Gough argues that, as young people grow up

Their mobility in and between spaces of the home, the neighbourhood, and their wider environment, changes, which is an important part of achieving independence, competence and maturity and sustaining social relations with their peers (Gough, 2008, p. 244).

Identity formation, particularly the project of independent identity formation, and its link to mobility, is an important feature for broader consideration within mobility studies.

For Oswin and Yeoh (2010), movement is linked to subjectivity and as movement takes place in spaces and places, then the politics of mobility are placed. Places, cities in particular, are networks of flows and are also where people’s im/mobilities collide with each other and create friction. As Auckland pupils aged 16–18 begin to drive themselves to school, they restrict the access of local transport and slow down other pupils’ journeys to and from school. When we focus on flows (as well as relations)

as embodied and contextual [this] forces consideration of the raced, classed, sexualised, gendered, aged etc. dynamics of movements into focus (Oswin and Yeoh, 2010, p. 170; emphasis added).

As Ruddick (1998, p. 345) states, “social subjects are created through the city”. Additionally, Adey asserts that

Identity is a process of continuous departure. The capacity for one to move in and out of different subject positions depends a great deal on the recognition of multiple identities and an ability to see from one’s perspective as well as others (Adey, 2010, p. 25).

Easthope emphasises that the social sciences increasingly recognise identity as mobile, dynamic, hybrid and relational. Based on her work with young migrants in Australia, she argues that “mobility and place are essential components of identity construction” (Easthope, 2009, p. 61). I argue that the actual ability (rather than just the motility) to move between places can provide the opportunities for social encounters that form part of the complex cultural and social matrix of identity formation. This connects with Leyshon’s (2011) analyses of the ways in which young people’s independent mobilities, through walking, in rural space play a significant role in their identity formation and senses of belonging. There are similar processes at play in the contemporary globalised city where mobility-facilitated encounters can enhance social mobility through the accoutrement of social and cultural capital, cosmopolitan perspectives and a confidence about difference and diversity (see Simone, 2010). Alternatively, such mobilities can also bring the ‘mobilee’ (a term I have coined to indicate the one who is mobile)⁵ into unwelcome encounters of confrontation, fear or danger; their social mobilities may be threatened, thwarted or transformed. However, through all mobility, they acquire “experiences and sensibilities forged from a more expansive exposure to the world” (Simone, 2010, p. 45)

Hence mobilities and the multiplicity of identities are strongly interconnected; which makes it all the more vital to focus on aspects of immobility for young people (see Harker, 2009). However, it is important to remember that, in a multicultural city such as Auckland, comprising indigenous Maori and migrants from all over the world (historically from Europe and, more recently, from the Pacific and Asia), young people do not have to be highly mobile to encounter difference and diversity. Hence, the ‘work’ of identity formation through such meetings can take place in everyday, localised contexts of relatively limited mobility such as schools, shops, workplaces, sports groups and neighbourhoods. As young people, in particular, are in the process of forming and forging their identities, their experiences can contribute to nuanced understandings of the city as a site of subjectivity and mobility.

The following section provides the context of the empirical research for this article. The final section provides an analysis of young Aucklanders’ narratives of their urban im/mobilities, organised within the article’s established framework of two selected mobility studies’ theorisations and conceptualisations, those of relationality and identity formation.

The Research Project: Context and Methodologies

The project, Young People, Citizenship and Global Futures, focused on young people’s experiences of, and identification with, their city and the ways in which these intersect with senses of place, citizenship, national and personal identities, alongside expectations of their own and their cities’ global futures. Two cities were the sites for the project; Auckland, New Zealand, and Singapore. Eighty-one semi-structured, qualitative interviews with Auckland participants aged 16 to 23 were collected, transcribed and analysed; in Singapore, 58 interviews were conducted. Participants were drawn from schools and universities. This article draws upon the Auckland interviews. The map of Auckland City (Figure 1) shows the areas of Auckland Central, West Auckland and South Auckland. The participating schools were located in these areas; those in West and South Auckland were located towards the city side of the areas, generally a 30–40-minute train or bus journey away from downtown central Auckland (Fig 1).

Figure 1.

Auckland, New Zealand.

Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand and has a population of 1.46 million (Statistics New Zealand, 2009), housing one-third of New Zealand’s population. All the young people in the project were born and brought up in Auckland. In 2006, 37 per cent of Auckland’s population was born overseas (Statistics New Zealand); hence it is a very dynamic city in relation to migration (Butcher, 2004; Collins, 2009; Friesen, 2008; Friesen et al., 2005; Murphy et al., 1999; Spoonley and Butcher, 2009). However, this project focused on young people who have not migrated, but did not exclude those with a family migration history. With the transnational and mobility ‘turns’ in geography, there has been neglect of people who ‘stay put’ but are nevertheless part of the socio-spatial dialectics of migration. Focusing on young born-and-bred Aucklanders was a way to examine their experiences as they grow up and move through a city of immigration. This enabled explorations, from the ‘host population’s’ perspective of multiculturalism, social and ethnic diversity, cosmopolitanism and urban mobilities, the latter being the key element in this article. Most of the young Aucklanders’ commentaries about everyday im/mobilities in the city focused on accessibility, reliability and experiences of transport.

The project recruited young Aucklanders who reflected the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the city. In terms of ethnicity, 42 participants were of European descent, 20 were Pacific, 5 were Maori and 14 were Asian or mixed heritage (see Table 1). These are the recognised populations of New Zealand and the foundation of the initially bi-cultural (European/Pakeha and Maori) and increasingly multicultural (to recognise Pacific and Asian populations) socio-political discourses and policies. Available statistics show that in 2006 (the 2011 census was cancelled due to earthquakes in Christchurch), 64 per cent of Aucklanders identified themselves as part of the ‘European and other’ ethnicity, 11 per cent as Maori, 14 per cent as Pacific peoples and 18.9 per cent as Asians (Rudman, 2010). The respective percentages for this project are 52 per cent, 6 per cent, 25 per cent and 17 per cent for ‘Asian and others’ (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Summary details of all research participants (Auckland)

No.	Educational institution/False name	Geographical location in Auckland	Age range	Number of participants	Ethnicity				Gender
					European	Maori	Pasifika	Asian and other	Male	Female
1	Private boys’ school; girls admitted into 6th form; decile 10: Monarch College	South Auckland	16–18	11	11	0	0	0	9	2
2	Girls’ state school; decile 10: Elden School	Central Auckland	16–18	11	7	0	3	1 Malay-Chinese	0	11
3	Boys’ state school; decile 10: Aspen School	Central Auckland	16–18	10	5	1	2	1 White South African 1 Indian	10	0
4	Co-educational state school; decile 4: Mountview College	South-central Auckland	16–18	10	4 (female)	0	4 (2 female)	1 Japanese (male) 1 Indian (female)	3	7
5	Co-educational state school; decile 4: Bayview College	West Auckland	16–18	11	4 (2 male)	1 (female)	4 (1 male)	1 Chinese (male) 1 Filipina (female)	4	7
6	University of Auckland	Central Auckland, but participants from all parts of the city	19–23	13	10 (4 male)	1 (male)	0	1 Indian (female) 1 Korean (female)	5	8
7	Co-educational state school; decile 2: Rererangi College	South Auckland	16–18	15	1 (female)	2 (1 male, 1 female)	7 (3 male)	1 Eurasian 1 Euro-Arab 3 Euro-Pasifika (all female)	4	11
Summary totals				81(100 per cent)	42 (52 per cent)	5 (6 per cent)	20 (25 per cent)	14 (17 per cent)	35	46

In New Zealand, schools are rated according to the socioeconomic context of their catchment area; this is called a decile rating (officially ‘Socio-economic Decile Bands’).⁶ Those with the highest socioeconomic status in their catchment areas are scored at 10, the lowest at 1. More public funds are directed at the lower-decile schools. The few private schools in New Zealand are classed as decile 10 regardless of their geographical and socioeconomic location. Young Aucklanders (aged 16–18) were recruited in three decile-10 schools (two state schools and one private), two decile-4 schools and one decile-2 school. Young people aged 19–23 were recruited through the University of Auckland’s School of Environment; these 13 participants had attended Auckland schools ranging from deciles 1 to 10. Due to poorer resources (particularly in terms of free, quiet space for interviewing), it proved very difficult to gain access to decile-1 or decile-2 schools. However, once access was granted to a decile-2 school, students (predominantly of Pacific Island heritage) were very keen to volunteer and 15 young people participated in the project.

All interviews were conducted according to students’ choice, singly or in pairs. Single interviews were digtially voice recorded; paired or groups of three interviews were videoed to facilitate transcription and attribution of words to the correct speaker. All names of participants and their schools are false. Interviews went extremely well, with most participants talking for an hour or longer. Conducting interviews within several institutions allowed me to reach a greater range of young people in terms of geographical location within the city, socioeconomic status, age and ethnicity. I worked towards minimal disruption for the schools; interviews were conducted before or after the school day, during lunch breaks or students’ study periods. The project was designed to collect young people’s narratives in their own words; interviews were an effective and permitted methodology in both Auckland and Singaporean educational institutions.

The final section of the article draws upon the generic elements of the 81 interviews and provides a case study focus through 22 interviews with students at two schools (11 in each school), Bayview College (BC) (decile 4) and Monarch College (MC) (decile 10). These two schools were selected because of differences in socioeconomic and geographical settings, the diversity of young people’s experiences in terms of im/mobility and because all of them discussed transport in some way or another.

Young Aucklanders’ Mobilities: An Examination of Everyday Relationality and Identity Formation

There are a series of ways in which the city narratives of Auckland’s young urbanities can be examined through relational and identity lenses. Mostly, these young people’s mobilities are examples of the corporeal travel that makes up part of their everyday and social lives (Urry, 2008, p. 14). Their mobilities are both necessarily enforced (the journey to school) and also for social enjoyment and pleasure (transport to sporting activities, to see friends, to spend time away from home). Hence, these types of mobilities are relational in the sense of travelling from A to B for a specific purpose as a way of relating with their educational and pleasure/leisure/social worlds. They are also about identity formation as the journeys can serve as learning experiences as well as the habitual routine of performed identities (the school pupil, the sports player, the friend). As young mobilees, their mobility is determined in terms of direction and intention by the fixity of their homes, their schools and the spaces and places to which they wish to travel. For all of them, at this stage in their lives, they have the moorings (Urry, 2007) of family, homes, schools, neighbourhoods and friends. Their mobilities take them to and from, through and beyond, these moorings into familiar and new social relations. Immobility can limit young people’s possibilities of new social and cultural encounters, but does not mean that meetings do not take place. People moving into their neighbourhoods and schools bring an enforced encounter that may be complex in outcome but is certainly a new form of engagement.

There are complex positionings of relationality and identity between and among these young mobilees. Such positionings could be analysed by gender, ethnicity and so forth, but for this article I consider the power relations of socioeconomic status as determined by their household purchasing power and the collective socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood/community vis-à-vis the school decile rating. This ‘politics of mobility’ (Cresswell, 2010) means that among the case study of 22 people there are substantial differences in their im/mobilities. Such a relational status of differentiation impacts upon their mobility, immobility and identity formation. First, we can view these relations through the journey to school as a close-up inspection of their everyday mobilities.

In New Zealand, as in many countries, education is legally compulsory for children aged 6 to 16 (they can leave at 15 with parental permission). They have the right to remain in education until they are 19 attending further education. Consequently, the journey to school is a mobility related to legal requirement and something that the vast majority of young people make on a daily basis. This legalistic feature of mobility is something that makes children and young people distinctive from adults. In this study the young people were 16 and above, so while no longer legally required to attend school they have made a commitment to complete their secondary education, leaving when they are 18. Hence, the notion of the journey to school is a leveller for the mobilees, they all have to do it. However, how that journey is made can be relationally very different.

Another key factor in relation to access to mobility relates to the legal process of being able to drive. At the time of interviews in New Zealand, young people could take the written test for a learner’s licence at 15 (in August 2011 it was raised to 16). After driving for a further 18 months (with a licensed driver), they could apply for a full licence. If they passed an advanced driver’s course, they could reduce the 18 months to 12. Hence, it was possible to begin driving independently, and to carry passengers, from the age of 16 years and 6 months (since 2011, this has risen to 17 years and 6 months). This emphasis on cars is not to imply that they are a panacea for some of the problems young people face in terms of mobility through the city, but in the context of Auckland cars are seen as important in terms of time saved for journeys and the flexibility of mobility. However, the cost of cars, fuel and parking are mitigating factors and prevent most young people from having their own car.

Monarch College (MC) is one of the few private fee-paying schools in Auckland; hence pupils can reside anywhere in the city and there are boarding facilities. Of the 11 youngsters who participated, 10 were day-students and so had the journey to school. Bayview College (BC) students mostly lived in the zone area for their school, but some had selected to attend from out of zone and had longer journeys. Their everyday mobilities emerged clearly as they responded to the question, ‘How do you get to school?’

Seven of the 11 MC students had their own car (one of them a girl), a clear indicator of their wealthy socioeconomic households; the remaining four all lived in households with cars but three of them could not yet drive. Once in year 12 (aged 16), pupils are allowed to park their cars in school grounds. Prior to driving themselves, interviewees took buses to connect with the train that passed the college. They all claimed that driving was “faster”, “easier” and “more convenient for parents” who no longer had to drive them to bus stops, train stations or to school. For some, it was the freedom of their own timetable to allow them to get to all their sporting activities (school- or club-based) and no longer having to rely on ‘parent taxis’. While the boys recognised that the train journeys to and from school were fun times to be with their friends, they remembered being anxious if they left school later after sporting activities and had to walk down to the train station when it was dark. The college is located in South Auckland which has a reputation for violent gang culture; being obviously rich outsiders made the boys feel vulnerable. Driving was something that now made them feel safer. Of course, in terms of road traffic accidents safety is not guaranteed

Seb:

When we were younger it was fun but after three years on the train you get a bit sick of it (European, 17, MC).

Paul:

Trains are fairly unreliable … they have got a bit better. In my first year, they used to come half an hour, an hour late. Especially if you have sports practices after school, it’s quite intimidating to be down at the station … and you’re by yourself (European, 16, MC).

Randal:

Or when it’s dark. I was at the train station once and it just wouldn’t come and so you start to wonder what to do and if you are safe there (European, 17, MC).

Only one of the interviewees mentioned car driving as a problem in relation to climate change problems, and showed the possible sociality created by sharing cars with friends; the loss of the train as a social relational space as more friends acquire cars was lamented. However, car mobility based on friendship effectively reinforces a kind of immobility within social class; wealthier car drivers share with their wealthier friends and so cushion them from a world of ‘others’ using public transport or walking; they also use their cars to traverse the city to visit friends, but remain in that same social milieu rather than experiencing some moments of connection and encounter

Isabelle:

Normally I catch the train, but if I have to come in early, mum will sometimes bring me and I can get rides home free [from friends]. The train’s okay, but it’s kind of annoying in seventh form, because most people drive. Not many of my friends catch it now; I miss having that time to talk with them. So I’m kind of raring to get a car, but I feel kind of bad with the whole climate crisis thing going on … I’m actually okay with catching the train (European, 17, MC).

In Bayview College, four pupils have their own cars (two boys, two girls), three of them are of European descent and one of Chinese descent. This demonstrates the relatively higher socioeconomic status of European and Chinese residents even in a decile-4 socioeconomic neighbourhood. Two people had no car in their household and four other pupils could not drive. Car drivers (Lance, Damien, Annette and Julie) cited the ease and speed of getting to and from school over using buses. Other students showed flexibility in their everyday school journeys; Raymond and Edith walk, Cheryl takes the bus

Chantelle:

I take the bus or drive, that is sometimes I get a lift in the car, a few times I can drive my mum’s car but mostly it’s the bus (Maori, 17, BC).

Maya:

Yea it’s pretty easy. I just walk which is not far because I stay like ten minutes away from school (Pasifka, 17, BC).

Jack:

I get dropped off or take the bus like everyone else (European, 17, BC).

For several pupils, there is the conception of the car as a favoured way to get to school and this is associated with the ability or desire to make a transition to independent mobility. It reflects the distinction between motility and mobility (Canzler et al., 2008). For Lance, the bus journey was “distasteful and overcrowded” and a waste of time; his access to a car saves him time and provides him with space for himself. For those who walked, went by train or caught the bus, the journey to school was just something to be done. However, in the wider research sample, several mobilees described their walking time as thinking time or time to “mess around and hang out” with their friends. This was mostly associated with the decile-2 Rererangi College.

Nancy (17, MC) expresses a tension between her concern about the environment and global warming, versus the excitement of her brother’s car and the reliability of her own Mazda. Her access to cars marks her out as rich in relation to her surfing friends who live in West Auckland which has a lower socioeconomic status than her own neighbourhood, Remuera, one of the wealthiest in Auckland. However, her ‘automobility’ and her love of surfing allow her a social mobility that she might otherwise not access. Nancy has very strong social ties with her surfing friends known as ‘Westies’, being from West Auckland. Westies were described to me by different students as ‘rednecks’, ‘White trash’ and ‘mullet heads’. They are not of the social and cultural class that Nancy would normally encounter through her neighbourhood or school, but her car and her surf-board take her into new social and spatial geographies. She comments that people don’t really “get Westies” but that they are some of the best friends she has.

Annette (17) and Julie (16) from Bayview College proudly describe themselves as ‘Westies’ but within the context of ‘west is best’. Their neighbourhood is an extremely important part of their identities. They each have their own cars and use them to drive to school. For them, the most important elements of their cars were the sense of escape and the change of environment to which driving transported them; the cars were their vehicles of social connection and enjoyment

Annette:

[When we want to meet up] what we usually do is we text or ring each other and just say “want to go to the beach, bro?” so it’s like “yea, I’ll see you down there, we’ll meet there” or something like that and then we’d sort out what beach and then we’ll follow one another in our cars. We just hang out together (European, 17, BC).

Julie:

We’ll have like a bonfire on the beach at night (European, 16, BC).

Annette:

Or picnic in the day.

For these girls at a relatively young age they are able to determine where they go, with whom they meet and what they do in their city. The car culture is part of their social and cultural transition towards increasing independence, but also a growing sense of responsibility. Janelle (17) is a student at the same college, but does not have access to a car; her family does not have one. She uses public transport and expresses a similar mobility in terms of friendship, enjoyment and independence

[In Auckland] there’s always something you can do and have fun. Like I’ve never been down to the wharf before. So my friend and I we’d trained into town got off at Britomart and we walked to the wharf. And that’s the first time we’d been there. Like we live in Auckland, we were born in Auckland, brought up in Auckland but we’ve never been to the wharf and it’s good having the buses and trains and stuff, yea (Janelle, Pasifika, 17, BC).

For Janelle and others, this is a time of exploring, learning about and engaging with their city. Some do this at the macro scale of the urban areas in cars or via public transport: Nancy heads to the West; Annette and Julie to different beaches; Jacob to any place he can sail; Janelle into the downtown area; Damien described the alternative environment of Karangahape Road. Others explore and learn their neighbourhoods and use the independence of walking to engage closer to home.

Raymond (17, Pasifika) lives in West Auckland and attends Bayview College. His mother has a car, which is not very reliable; he does not drive. Raymond loves to walk in his neighbourhood and part of his sense of self and belonging to this part of the city is based on his micro knowledge of moving around and through his home territory. This knowledge has been relatively recent and forms part of his confidence in exploring further afield

Really I just got to know the area like, because for the first four years [of living there] I just stayed home. I just went to school … I didn’t really go round the area. But for like the last few years … once you know where to go … you know all the shortcuts and stuff and it’s much bigger than I thought you know! Yea, because I found new friends from this school, they live around New Windsor and you know we all walk back there and they show me the shortcuts and stuff (Raymond, Pasifika, 17, BC).

However, when asked whether he visits the city and how he would travel there, it is clear that Raymond’s sense of place and belonging do not yet extend to the wider city; for him, his identity does not fit. When asked if he would go to the city downtown area to hang out he responds thus

Nah, not really a place for me to hang out you see. It’s too far and it’s mostly cars there, we have to get there by train. It’s expensive (Raymond, Pasifika, 17, BC).

Hence, the cost of public transport prohibits his current movement further afield.

Maya (17), a Pasifika young woman at Bayview, had a stronger articulation of how the city was not a place for her. When asked if she went to the downtown city part of Auckland she replied firmly, “No, never, not me, my parents maybe, not me”. When asked ‘why’, she replied

If I go there I’d feel like, the odd one out. I’m not trying to be racist but I only see … there are a lot of White people there. You never, hardly ever see any islanders. And like where I’m from [local neighbourhood], I only see islanders (Maya, Pasifika, 17, BC).

Maya’s decision not to travel to the city is based on her identity as an ‘islander’, a Pasifika, and so, because of a sense of not being a part of—or even welcome in—the city, she actively limits her mobility. When I asked her where she had been in New Zealand, she replied, “no-where, just here and South Auckland”. It appeared therefore that the intersection of her socioeconomic status and her ethnicity combined to prevent her intentionally shifting her status as someone with motility to a ‘mobilee’. However, this Auckland immobility was in relation to her international mobility as she reported “I’ve been to Tonga, Aussie, States and me and my dad are going to New Caledonia next year”. While fear of tensions based around ethnicity disturb Maya’s proactive mobility within Auckland, she is confident about travel overseas and wants to pursue such mobilities in the future.

Conclusions

For some young Aucklanders, mobility can provide very strong senses of embodied independence, which encourages an outgoing approach to movement through the city and a sense of self. For young people at times of significant social and spatial transitions, identities and their formation are particularly complex, dynamic and fluid. All of these Aucklanders remain very strongly moored with their families, but are also keen to broaden their social networks and have new encounters. However, those with their own cars believe they have greater control over their time and can put their emerging independence into practice. They are able to form relational connections across neighbourhoods, reinforcing them through sporting and social activities, and practising their identities as emerging urbanites through the city spaces. For other young people without cars, their neighbourhoods are important sites of encounter, but also sites where they feel safe and knowledgeable and consequently they are not hampered in terms of social experiences through an apparent immobility. For example, Chantelle (17, BC) talks of the ease of wandering round to her Maori friends’ homes and treating their home as her own; this she claims is a distinctive part of Maori identity. The ‘carless’ were not rendered immobile even in a city which is strongly oriented towards the car but slowly expanding and improving its public transport system. These young people in an everyday context rely on buses, trains and walking to move around; but they do move around and can relate and learn from those mobility experiences. Im/mobility is also scalar; the apparently relatively immobile Maya has travelled more internationally than car-owning mobilees, Annette and Julie.

This examination of young people’s urban mobilities in Auckland has provided a distinctive focus on “everyday transportation … and spatial relations of mobility and immobility” (Sheller and Urry, 2006, p. 212) and an insight into “the everyday materiality … in which people actually dwell” (Latham and McCormack, 2004, p. 702). Through these young mobilees’ eyes, we gain an insight into the city and the expectations and anxieties about what the city can provide. Young people experience and are part of the ‘politics of mobility’ (Cresswell, 2010); they constitute and are constituted by relations of mobility and identity formation. Analysis of these everyday processes provides important ways of understanding further the complexities, fluidities and dynamism of urban mobilities and social identities. Young people and the mobilities that they practise make important contributions to the production, creation and alteration of city spaces. They are a distinctive kind of ‘mobilee’ and hence can broaden and strengthen theorisation and conceptualisation within mobility studies and of the city.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author’s deepest gratitude goes to all the young Aucklanders who volunteered for this study and to their tutors and teachers who steadfastly facilitated the project. Thanks also to colleagues and students in the Social and Cultural Geography group at the National University of Singapore.

Notes

Funding Statement

This research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Singapore (Reference R109000079112).

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