Reluctant mobilism: Forced displacement

Introduction

Ten years ago, for the first-ever issue of Mobile Media & Communication, I suggested the concept of mediated mobilism as one way to take our (not clearly lineated) field into the future (Hartmann, 2013). One can easily see that this concept has not “taken off.” In the following, I would like to return to some of these ideas, though, because the basic questions behind the concept, I claim, have not disappeared—instead, they have become more important. It is the idea of forced (im)mobilities, which I would like to suggest as a necessary framework for our future work, pairing our work on mobile media and communication with an understanding of mobilities and immobilities. I will begin these thoughts with a brief return to my 2013 contribution and its understanding of mediated mobilism before turning to the question of forced (im)mobilities today.

(Mediated) mobilism ten years after

When I suggested the concept of mediated mobilism, I was primarily trying to push my own thinking. It had seemed somewhat absurd that mobilities were not featuring more prominently in mobile media and communication research. This was particularly odd since they were widely discussed in sociology and geography as core concepts of our times (and not just concepts but social phenomena) (see, e.g., Cresswell, 2006; Sheller & Urry, 2006, 2016; Urry, 2007). Mobilism served as a new concept in this context, which took its inspiration from several sources (a designer, a media researcher’s work in Japan, but also geotectonics—all of which had used (or developed) the term—see Hartmann, 2013). Next to combining mobile media with mobilities, the approaches each offered additional aspects that I found useful (none of which was fully developed, though—they were all rather sketchy in their use of the mobilism term). One additional quality of the concept is the idea that developments (of mobilities and mobile media) are—just like tectonic plates—moving in sometimes opposing directions, thereby causing friction. An all-too-linear approach to the idea of progress is not supported here. ¹ The other mobilism conceptualizations (Adigard, 2006; Fujimoto, 2006) offered an additional emphasis on mobilization (which is very important but leads too far away from my current concern with forced (im)mobilities), momentum (another important emphasis, but equally too far away from my concerns here), and malleability and fluctuation. All the above underline the dynamic nature of developments and the need to consider them within social contexts.

There is one aspect of the original mobilism framework (beyond the question of mobilities, which I will turn to below) that I would like to re-emphasize as important. It takes its inspiration from Kenichi Fujimoto’s use of the term mobilism (he adds “nagara” to the overall concept, i.e., “nagara mobilism”—see Fujimoto, 2006), which implies the cultural embeddedness of multitasking-in-movement. While Fujimoto was concerned with (young) people engaging with their smartphones while walking, I would like to use this as a reminder that we always need to consider the contexts of mobility in which mobile media usage takes place. How then do these contexts shape use and vice versa?

These thoughts lead me, finally, to my core concern: that of (im)mobilities. When I was first introduced to the mobilism framework, one main concern was the general lack of engagement with questions of mobility in mobile media and communication research. This has, however, changed somewhat in the last ten years, not least in work on mobile socialities (see Hill et al., 2021). There have also been related articles, for example, about how smartphones give mobility to traditional media as seen in their distribution and use in public spaces (Fortunati & Taipale, 2017) or about questions around privileged mobilities (Polson, 2016). Hildebrand (2017), on the other hand, offers a combination of media ecology and mobilities research, making her case for a combined modal medium theory. The closest to my original concern about the lack of a mobilities framework in mobile media research, however, has been Emily Keightley and Anna Reading’s article on mediated mobilities, which they define as “the broad emergent cluster of ways in which different kinds of mobilities … are themselves experienced and articulated through particular historically situated media ecologies” (Keightley & Reading, 2014, p. 286). Their emphasis is on methodological concerns and two key features of mediated forms of mobility, that is, multimodality and multi-scalarity (Keightley & Reading, 2014, p. 300). Similarly, David Morley’s work has constantly asked for similar extensions, especially concerning transport studies feeding into media studies, thereby tracing other aspects of media and mobilities (e.g., Morley, 2017).

Following this thread, mobility appears several hundred times when one searches the content of the Mobile Media and Communication journal over its first nine years. One can see that, for example, Jordan Frith and Didem Özkul argue not only “for a broad definition that accounts for all the various mobile technologies that mediate among people and/or things and their experience with space and with each other,” but they also emphasize that the question of mobility is key to their concerns, since,

“… mobile media … will … shape experiences of mobility. In other words, mobile media are things that mediate between people and space and reconfigure experiences of how we move through those spaces” (Frith & Özkul, 2019, p. 295). ²

If we take John Urry’s mobilities concept seriously, communication is key to mobilities (Urry, 2007). Or, as Tim Cresswell outlined, mobilities themselves are deeply entrenched in processes of meaning-making: “Movement is rarely just movement; it carries with it the burden of meaning, and it is this meaning that jumps scales” (Cresswell, 2006, pp. 6–7). It seems, however, that Cresswell was not acknowledged enough at the time within geography.

We need to recognize that these machines mediate between people and space. We also need to acknowledge that the accompanying movements, and place-contextualized use, are deeply entrenched in meaning-making processes—and so is the range of (non)movement, for example, the stillstand and slowness of “being stuck” during a COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. This, again, is embedded in a range of non-uses of mobile communication technologies (see also Rosenberg & Vogleman-Natan, 2022). To be sure, paying attention to the communicative dimensions of mobility and dislocation as well as rootedness and forced immobility ask for our attention. This will be examined in the following section.

Reluctant and other forms of migration

Why, then, do I still insist that there is scope for more emphasis on mobility? Indeed, there might be a need for a declared focus on media and mobilities (whether it is labeled mobilism or not). The reason for that is based on the events of the last couple of years. The (often-cited) COVID-19 pandemic has underlined that immobility is possible—particularly for those privileged enough to have a digitally supported life. For many people in the Global North, the COVID-19 pandemic was bearable because we had all those mobile media (not just smartphones) that connected our homes to others. This made work and education possible at home and allowed many new digital socialities to emerge. But this kind of immobility of a physical sort was then again socially stratified. It was embedded, in complex ways, in societal needs (expressed, for example, in the declaration of which jobs required the physical presence of the worker—forcing these workers to keep moving). This was partly a question of class, but it was more complex than that. And while not all these questions were related to issues of digitalization and/or mobile media, many were.

Similarly, 2022 has brought forced migration to the forefront of our concerns again since the war in Ukraine began to escalate at the end of February. This is not the space to explore the complex relationships of this war to questions of either mobile media and communication or mobilities. It is, however, the space to emphasize the complex intertwined nature of (im)mobilities and mobile media that are fully visible here. We see this in the images of war that accompany us through our everyday movements. We also see it in the use of mobile phones as they document war crimes. We also see it in how people use the device to organize fleeing the war zone. Forced migration has increased in recent years and is likely to increase even further. Famine, conflicts, catastrophes, and other forms of disruptions–all lead to people fleeing their homelands. The current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Report on forced displacement, which did not include the Ukrainian situation, states that “above one percent of the world’s population—or 1 in 88 people—were forcibly displaced at the end of 2021. This compares with 1 in 167 at the end of 2012” (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2022, p. 5). While the exact numbers are debatable, the general trend is not.

I am not suggesting that we all turn to refugee studies, however, and produce work on mobile media use therein (there are already many good examples for such work, e.g., Dekker et al., 2018; Emmer et al., 2020; Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, 2020; also in this journal, as, e.g., Mendoza Pérez & Morgade Salgado, 2020). Rather, I would like to suggest that we acknowledge how the phenomena we tend to study (and theorize) are deeply embedded in these wider shifts, especially if we are studying something as (im)mobile as mobile media technology, used in highly (im)mobile situations.

I would like to briefly point to one (albeit rather obvious) example. Early on in our ongoing study on homelessness (or rather rooflessness) and media use, we had to acknowledge the shift in Berlin’s roofless population that had taken place in the years prior to our engagement. Many of the roofless people we encountered were Eastern-European (from Romania, Poland, Russia, and other countries). Their stories are deeply intertwined with the question of the expansion of the European Union, job restrictions (and unfulfilled job opportunities), and of (failed?) migration histories. Often, their main desire, and their main tension, is to stay connected with “home” while also being available for job contacts, while often failing to permanently keep a mobile phone.

In the context of debates around migration or displacement, one regularly finds a distinction between voluntary and forced migration. More recently, a third category has been suggested: “reluctant migration.” This is when people leave their place of residence preemptively. “Reluctant migration is a form of migration in which individuals are not forced to move but do so because of an unfavorable situation at their current location.” (Zhou, 2020). While this might not be a helpful category empirically, it emphasizes the emotional aspect, the question of time, and a hint of agency, albeit quite limited. Many forms of migration might involve some reluctance—carried over into new environments and experiences. Hence, I will finish these unfinished thoughts with the suggestion to more fully embrace the necessary combination of media and mobilities in our research while acknowledging the value of reluctance.

Acknowledging both the spatial and cultural situatedness of mobile communication, particularly when the lives of the communicants have been involuntarily disrupted, provides meaningful insight. It gives insight into how we construct our notion of home and how we weigh the importance of that against the reluctance of being forced from home to find a job or to seek security. Indeed, the idea of mediated mobilism, however phrased, still has promise.