On The Move: Reflections on Using Mobile Methods in Rural Areas of China and India

Using Mobile Methods with University Students from Rural Backgrounds in China

The first author looks at the experiences of underprivileged students from rural backgrounds at lower-tier higher education institutions in China. The research explores how students make sense of the self by navigating mobility and structural challenges in relation to their past, present, and future. The research adopts a narrative inquiry, placing participants’ narratives of lived experiences at the centre of the research. One of the key rationales behind using mobile methods was to gain a better understanding of students’ sociocultural backgrounds and life trajectories across time and space. This included observing, feeling, and documenting spatiotemporal aspects throughout their mobility history of growing up in remote rural villages and attending higher education in cities.

Mobile methods were initially planned in the original research design, but with a narrower definition of walking interviews, namely interviewing student participants while walking around spaces (Kusenbach, 2003). The aim was to understand how students make sense of their higher education experiences and spaces. However, after piloting the method, the first author found the process of walking interviews challenging. Daily routines in limited and structured spaces such as dormitories, cafeterias, classrooms, and libraries did not seem exciting for the students. Hence, they were less interested in taking the author around the campus dotted with these spaces. This approach also exposed a certain inflexibility, as participants appeared compelled to derive meaning from higher education spaces and were prompted to do so.

Following the unsatisfactory outcomes of walking interviews conducted on college campuses, the first author modified the method and visited the participants’ residences across different provinces in rural China. During these home visits, the author engaged more deeply with participants in their rural environments and mobility journeys, leading to a richer understanding of their life trajectories. The insights gained from these field-based mobile trips far exceeded what was possible through the more limited and rigid campus-based walking interviews. The visits gave the first author a richer perspective on the participants’ social relations beyond the confines of higher education. This approach allowed for a more nuanced understanding of their identity formations, their roles outside university life, and the complex social networks they navigated beyond the academic environment. This experience was further elevated with a vivid retrospective display of their lived experiences of migrating across various places, from rural villages to urban cities, from primary schools to universities.

Mobile methods were employed during travels to the participants’ rural residences, visits to their schools in the town, and workplaces in the county. These visits also included meetings with participants and their families around the home fireplace, along countryside roads, at their schools, while walking in the fields, and during participation in family gatherings and festive celebrations. The choice of participants for these journeys depended on their willingness to have the author visit their rural homes, considerations related to travel expenses, as well as the rapport and trust already built between the author and participants. The author conducted six mobile trips between February and July 2023, collecting data by using mobile and sit-in interviews, observations, and field notes while moving across the fieldwork sites.

Using Mobile Methods at the Refugee Rehabilitation Settlement in Rural India

The second author’s research has a historical context of refugees displaced from East Bengal after the Partition of India in 1947 and their rehabilitation in the rural hinterlands by the government of India. The research explores how refugees utilised their spatial existence as a form of resistance to become mainstream citizens and create intergenerational identities. The research used ethnographically oriented methods, including interviews, observations, field notes and archives. The research adopted a memory-based narrative approach and material methods using ordinary things/objects to explicate the spatiotemporal transition of identities. Most of the participants in the study were former teachers, former students, and community members from different generations involved primarily in agricultural activities. Mobile methods were included in the original research design as transect walks. However, its scope became broader when the initial phase of the fieldwork pointed at methodological possibilities for using (and performing) different forms of mobilities. During a sit-in interview, the participants would offer the author to walk along with them and observe the spatiotemporal transition of their surroundings. Mobile methods helped unlock participants’ memories when rehabilitation settlements, including schools, had bare minimum facilities.

From November 2023 to August 2024, the second author conducted immersive ethnographic fieldwork in two phases, making extensive use of mobile methods. The fieldwork was in the economically disadvantaged rural hinterlands of central India, known for dense forest cover. The government schools offering primary education in the Bengali language were one of the key sites during the fieldwork. With the absence of historical records and archives, oral narratives and objects/things acted as a mnemonic link to understand the spatiotemporal transition of rehabilitation settlements and schools.

The second author also had to organise interviews around participants’ daily chores and work activities. It means joining participants in the early morning as they marched to their fields, riding on a two-wheeler as they rushed somewhere, using crowded local transport they would use for visiting nearby small towns and meeting at local tea stalls as part of the Bengali custom of ‘Cha khete khete golpo kora jak’, meaning ‘let us chat over a cup of tea’. Thus, the application of mobile methods had elements of both planned and extemporaneous strategies, guided by the priorities and preferences of the participants during the fieldwork.

The Organicity and Relevance of Mobile Methods to Rural Life

The socio-spatial distinctness of rural geographies required an approach that would complement the uniqueness of life, space and time of the rural context, such as routines and ethos revolving around daylight, livestock, agricultural fields and peculiarities of weather. The nature, vitality of agriculture and a lifestyle recalcitrant to modernisation and industrialisation are distinct characteristics of rural life in China and India. The daily rhythm of rural life, governed by daylight and spartan living, is distinctly different from urban life, regulated by the spatiality of massive infrastructure for the round-the-clock mobility of millions of city dwellers. It would be natural for the participants in the urban university to give an interview in a café in the evening after their classes. However, this notion of ‘flexibility’ does not align with the realities of participants living in villages whose daily lives are structured by the natural rhythms of daylight, from sunrise to sunset, and shaped by the demands of agricultural work.

In the second author’s study, participants from lower castes often expressed their disappointment at not receiving caste-based reservations (affirmative action policies) in higher education due to their political marginalisation in the state. Once, a participant expressed his lament about how the younger generation is stuck in the backbreaking agricultural work despite having talent for higher studies. He cited the case of his nephew, who, despite scoring high grades, couldn’t gain admission into a medical institute. The second author walked to another village to meet his nephew and located him immersed in digging a trench on his farm in the sweltering sun. After waiting for some time, the second author decided not to disturb his immersive farm work and left. On the surface, the walking efforts by the second author may appear futile as they did not yield the desired result. However, observing the backbreaking work of the nephew in the scorching sun added to the experiential understanding of local issues, particularly hardships in agriculture. Rural areas selected for the studies in China and India are dotted with mountains, thick vegetation, agricultural fields and modest civic facilities such as schools and health centres. Small landholdings among farmers are also a consistent pattern of a subsistence-based agrarian economy, which is still a structural global reality for rural farmers (Lowder et al., 2021). The spatial outlook of these rural habitats is starkly different from the dense agglomeration of assorted structures found in heavily populated urban areas of China and India. The rural landscape with a sparse population offers a relatively relaxed rhythm and unbridled mobility in everyday life, where ‘walking miles’ is a realistic and organic possibility. The rural participants were primarily from agricultural families with a strong emotional connection with their land and the natural landscape. Walks are an integral part of their daily and quotidian lives. Participants’ family members would often walk to their neighbours’ houses to discuss the modalities of harvesting local crops. Casual meetings at local tea stalls and community centres for conversations are a routine social activity in these villages. Aligned with this daily rhythm, mobile methods were appropriate for the quotidian rural life and contextual way of engaging with participants. Mobile methods also created opportunities to understand relations between participants and their natural surroundings and even observe the intra-community social relations of participants:

Once, the second author was chatting with a septuagenarian participant at a local shop cum tea stall about the community’s post-rehabilitation development. Some youngsters joined the conversation and disagreed with the participant’s claims about the development. After a while, the participant walked away, perhaps realising the futility of a debate. While walking, the participant remarked about the youngsters’ lack of historical understanding of the hardships and deprivation endured by first-generation refugees. It was sunset time. The soft chirping of birds and the sun’s departing rays offered meditative calmness to the serene rural landscape. The participant’s poignant remarks about the generational chasm appeared profound in the twilight-filled rural settings.

Close-knit social networks, common ethnolinguistic culture, and intergenerational kinships play important roles in shaping people’s everyday lives in rural regions, especially in China (Fei, 1992). Social relations, power dynamics, and culture carry different implications and connotations in rural settings that cannot be decontextualised from the spatiotemporal facets of their surroundings (Das, 2001). Walking with the participants also allowed the authors to appreciate the deeper role of these kinships and social networks in the participants’ lives. For example:

The first author visited a participant in rural China during the grand annual celebration of his ethnic minority community – the torch festival. The participant took the author for a walk in the village, explaining the rituals and traditions of this important festival for his community. After dinner, the participant made torches from tree branches and toured around the village with his friends. Later in the evening, he lit another torch and walked around the house to pray for luck and fortune for his family. Knowing this festival in the month of its celebration in the village provided a much deeper and broader understanding of the role of ethnic identity formations in the participants’ lives.

Understanding Rural Spaces with Mobile Methods

The natural landscape and sociocultural ethos shape both tangible and intangible contours of rural life and weave intricate patterns of its spatial existence. Agricultural practices have also gone through the transformative discourse of development, which has changed the traditional ethos of the agricultural environment and the socio-cultural relations of rural people (Springer, 2000). Mobile methods enabled the authors to observe the physical environment and experience the social relations and the structural reality peculiar to rural geographies in the Global South. It also allowed the authors to observe and reflect on the socioeconomic transitions within rural areas, the politics surrounding spatial issues, the dichotomy between rural and urban spaces, and the broader concerns of marginalisation and inequality.

The following instance exemplifies how mobile methods facilitated an intersectional understanding of physical, social, and structural aspects of rural spaces:

The first author walked with her participant around the village, traversing fields, narrow alleys, and streets. During the walk, the participant met quite a few relatives and friends. It was noticeable that children and elders predominantly inhabited the village. The participant remarked about the decline of rural village life, noting a shortage of adult labour in the village due to the migration of young people to cities for employment. The participant then expressed concerns about the lack of job opportunities in his village, nearby towns, or counties, while discussing his limited choices regarding future employment prospects. Despite this, he remained hopeful that one day, he could return home to take better care of his parents.

The natural landscape interspersed with agricultural fields, thick vegetation, mountains, rivers and social places defined by courtyards, fireplaces at home, tearooms, and local tea stalls are integral parts of the everyday lives of rural people. Natural and social spaces act as a nexus for various social relations and diverse aspects of rural life. Walking or travelling through these spaces with the participants allowed the authors to engage with diverse socio-spatial environments embodying everyday rural life. It also provided an opportunity to observe and align with its rhythms, including the passage of time through sunrise and sunset, agricultural calendars, and seasonal climate variations. By consciously using mobile methods in these spaces, the authors could also discern the wider relations of participants with nature and their community. While walking or even riding on a two-wheeler, participants often met relatives or friends, resulting in impromptu chats about the weather, crops, husbandry, local news, politics, community developments and random events in villages. Meeting participants at social points such as the tearoom and local tea stalls allowed the authors to observe casual conversations, banter, camaraderie and even debates, shaping sociocultural mores of rural geographies.

The geographical remoteness- mountainous regions in China and forested hinterlands in India- makes rural spaces distinct in research studies. Walking through these spaces with the participants gave the authors a nuanced perspective on structural challenges faced by the communities in negotiating remote geographies in everyday life. By experiencing these firsthand, the authors gained valuable insights into the resilience, agency, and endurance of the rural community as they navigated rural terrains and complexities conferred by their spatiotemporal aspects.

For instance, the first author experienced that the long distance between home and school, combined with the unavailability of public transport, meant that rural children would spend hours walking to school. The first author’s journey from the nearby city to one participant’s rural home took an entire day, providing a tangible experience of the remoteness and structural barriers encountered by the participant in accessing higher education. Another participant expressed a strong desire to leave her rural home and pursue education, noting that women in her hometown often marry early if they do not continue their studies. Such movements from rural villages to cities are shaped by a complex interplay of aspiration and structural constraints. They are shaped by structural inequalities, social expectations, such as the cultural ideal of ‘walking out from the mountains’ often portrayed in educational narratives, and a deep personal desire for change and opportunity.

This mobile experience highlighted that mobility should not be understood as mere physical movement, but as an embodied, affective, and socially uneven process (Sheller & Urry, 2006), entangled with the flow of people, infrastructure, aspiration, and inequality. It emphasised the difference between knowing about spatial and infrastructural barriers as abstract facts and embodying them through lived, everyday experiences. It meant that while understanding these mobile trajectories, the authors had to reorient themselves with a different mindset than one conditioned by their lived experiences of the urban environment. It meant moving beyond an abstract understanding of rural-urban divides to a lived, affective experience of disconnection, delays, and marginality.

Temporality and Biographical Accounts through Mobility

Mobile methods provided spatiotemporal and emotive layers to the narratives of intergenerational transitions of rural habitats and the community. Mobile methods helped in (re)discovering various physical markers and objects linked to the past and lying in obscurity, carrying (auto)biographical and affective layers. Mobile methods are less explored with older people (Carder et al., 2023) and are a novel method to decipher the embodied memories of participants (Fathi, 2023). For the older participants, mobile methods served as a mnemonic device to evoke nostalgia and take a trip down memory lane (literally). The subtle interplay of space and time became a leitmotif in memory-based narratives and enriched understanding of participants’ intergenerational identity formations:

Once, a participant in the second author’s research lifted a rusted crowbar while walking on his farm. He explained that his father received it as farming aid from the government for the first-generation refugees. He recalled how it was a ‘prized possession’ for his father, who used it for tilling the uneven and rock-strewn land offered for resettlement. The crowbar was discarded after a few years and lay in obscurity in his field. While speaking, the septuagenarian participant caressed the crowbar with a surge of emotions.

The temporal narratives induced by mobile methods also provided a nuanced understanding of the participants’ (auto)biographical trajectories. The participants could also reflect on the past to describe the present reality and its impact on the community’s future:

Once, while walking in the evening with the second author, a participant recalled how he would spend evenings helping parents cook meals as a child. He also recalled that newly arrived refugees with no permanent home would often be at their homes for meals, and how it shaped his values as a welfare-driven person. He regretted that children from this generation are deprived of such communal bonding, with excessive school activities and even addiction to mobile phones.

A participant invited the first author for a walk in the village where he had grown up, visiting the various homes his family had moved between – from the mountain top, down to the mountainside, and eventually to the mountain’s base. This journey highlighted the family’s gradual mobility and the transformations in rural infrastructure, reflecting the family’s improving economic conditions as they moved from a remote, isolated location to a more accessible one nearer to the main road. This walk through the village intertwined the participant’s biography with his family’s story of mobility and changing circumstances.

Some participants would feel an irresistible urge to share the ‘story’ after encountering an object or marker connected to their past. On such occasions, a medley of bodily movements, gestures, the physicality of space, and ambient soundscape would evoke a visceral feeling of ‘I was here in the past’ (literally) in the participants. Mobile methods also provided material context to the memories associated with objects and their spatial surroundings:

While walking with the second author, an old participant recalled the ordeal of daily life due to the absence of electricity in the early days of rehabilitation. As we passed an electricity pole supplying steady electricity to the villages, he abruptly stopped and glanced at the pole. His act suggested as if he was silently reconciling with earlier ‘dark decades’ sans electricity.

At times, material surroundings and shared rural culture prompted a collective approach to memories. A participant narrated to the second author about his memories of agriculture in the region while sitting in his shop of agricultural goods. The participant spontaneously involved some customers to share their views on the topic as fellow farmers. Similarly, while waiting for a bus with the second author, a participant recalled painful memories of transport woes in his region. Some locals joined the conversation after overhearing it, and the topic was collectively debated with an aggrieved sense of injustice.

Bridging the Divide Between the Researcher and the Researched

The final reflection addresses the ethical considerations and practicalities of using mobile methods in rural settings. Mobile methods are also unique ways of building rapport with participants (Kusenbach, 2003) and understanding rural life in a holistic and compassionate manner. While conducting ethnography, mobile methods displayed the potential to subtly shift power dynamics from the researcher to the participants, the researched ones. Mobile methods also position participants as experts with far better awareness and understanding of local spaces and lived reality than researchers (Elwood & Martin, 2000). It also leads to a collaborative spirit by dissolving the traditional power dynamics between researchers and participants (Anderson, 2004, p. 58). Thus, approaching research with an egalitarian outlook (Sun & Zhu, 2024) and an inclusive approach (Kinney, 2021). Mobile methods with ‘unplanned’ walks without any expectations of ‘data collection’ acted as an incremental investment in building rapport with the participants. The rapport-building process also allowed participants to make an informed decision about their involvement in the research. It also signalled to the community that the authors are keen to understand intrinsic aspects of community life and are not in haste to ‘collect data’ for an extraneous purpose. Mobile methods also give autonomy to the participants to ‘chart a path’ for the interview, metaphorically and geographically (Fathi, 2023). Thus, generating a ‘triadic dialogue’ between researchers, participants and spaces (Evans & Jones, 2011, p. 850):

Once, a participant appeared perturbed over an unresolved matter with the local administration. The participant offered the second author to accompany him to the local administration’s office. The second author observed how the participant spent the entire day running from pillar to post to get his matter addressed at the overcrowded local administration office. Giving primacy to the participant’s existential concerns while ‘running around’ the office was a humbling experience for the second author.

The participants were initially perplexed by the presence of authors from an international institution with an ‘interest’ in their nondescript rural lives. Mobile methods helped ease out the skewed nature of these power dynamics as participants often led the way due to their topographical familiarity. From the research perspective, they would decide the ideal places or spots to visit and assume control over navigational matters. During the walks and visits, the participants would initiate impromptu topics drawn from their surroundings and enrich discussions. This approach shifted the autonomy of the research process from the authors to the participants, giving them more control and agency over the direction and nature of the interactions. In both research studies, participants chose various places for their walks, such as their homes in the village, the fields, the mountain path, the nearby market, religious and community sites, and schools, illustrating the diversity of rural life.

Walking around the villages and mingling with the community also helped the authors understand the adversities, challenges, and resilience of villagers. Most participants depended on agricultural activities for their livelihood and lived just above the subsistence level. Walks in their fields often led to conversations about the challenges of sustaining agriculture, which required empathetic listening. Thus, mobile methods allowed the authors to execute their research with a non-disruptive data collection approach, respecting the participants’ daily chores and everyday lives. Mobile methods were also unencumbered by time, space, and place constraints as they could be held in fields, shops, bus stops, quiet woodlands, social gatherings, mountains, or even on a motorbike or crowded public transport. Using mobile methods in the participants’ natural comfort zone helped put them at ease for conversations than a formal interview.