Moving stories: using mobile methods to explore the everyday lives of young people in public care

In this article we explore the ways in which mobile research methods can be utilised to create enabling research environments, encounters and exchanges, generating time and space for participants and researchers to co-generate and communicate meaningful understandings of everyday lives. The article focuses on the use of two mobile methods, ‘guided’ walks and car journey interactions, and the productiveness of these methods in contributing to the substantive and methodological aims of the (Extra)ordinary Lives project, an ethnographic and participatory research study that explored the everyday lives and relationship cultures of a group of young people in public care. Through this account we discuss the possibilities that mobile research encounters offer for the exploration of sensitive topics, as contexts through which intimacies can be interwoven within narratives of the mundane ordinariness of the everyday.