Travelling near and far: Placing children's mobile emotions

Emotion, Space and Society 9 (2013) 72e79

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Travelling near and far: Placing children’s mobile emotions Lesley Murray*, Kanwal Mand School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Mayfield House, Brighton BN1 9PH, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 27 March 2012 Received in revised form 5 February 2013 Accepted 10 February 2013

Dominant discourses of childhood and mobility lead to the social, spatial and temporal placing of children. Children are considered to transgress mobile space in a way that requires curtailment and restriction but is nevertheless considered a ‘right of passage’. In both playing out and challenging these discourses children exhibit an array of emotions that are contingent on mobile space. Mobility may be fleeting in both time and space, part of the everyday corporeal mobility of children, or it may be less so, a mobility that is experienced less frequently, is less everyday, and more immediately transformative. This article explores children’s emotional experiences of travel, both nearer and further, drawing from the ‘mobilities turn’ in social science and conceptualizations of childhood that illustrate how children are situated in relation to adult-centred hierarchies of power, and children’s contestation of these power differentials. It draws from two different aspects of children and young people’s mobilities: an ethnographic study of everyday mobilities with children travelling relatively short distances on a daily basis, using self-directed video and film-elicitation interviews; and a project that explored children’s mobile experiences of long distance travelling and particularly notions of belonging. Drawing from the intersections of these studies demonstrates how the emotional connection with space and place constructs childhoods and challenges notions of childhood, risk and spatial emotionalities. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Children’s emotions Children’s mobilities Everyday mobilities Transnational mobilities Imagined mobilities

Emotions are at the very heart of being mobile and being in a mobile world. This is reflected in the ‘emotional turn’ in geography, which contests ‘past presuppositions that emotions are not materially important’ (Davidson et al., 2005: 1). In parallel, the ‘mobilities turn’ (Cresswell, 2006; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011; Sheller, 2011; Urry, 2007) in social science seeks to challenge more static understandings of the social world and draws attention to the role of embodied mobilities in shaping society. Drawing from both shifts in thinking enables insights into discrete aspects of life, such as children’s emotional engagement with mobile space. This mobile space, a space in which mobility is practiced and constructed, produces a set of contingent emotional responses, which Sheller (2004) begins to unravel in her elaboration of automobile emotions. Similarly, children’s mobile experiences become dependent on the emotionality of particular spaces and the ways in which they are ‘placed’ within them.

Mobility is not only experiential; metaphors of a ‘journey’ through life abound, and are particularly pronounced in conceptualizing childhood, which is constructed as a specific stage in this journey through the lifecourse. Furthermore, childhood is considered inherently transitional, and therefore necessarily mobile. It is this discourse of ‘becoming’ as an inherent characteristic of early life that we seek to challenge in focussing both on children being children (James et al., 1998; Uprichard, 2008), and on the mobility and fluidity of the lifecourse. A useful point of departure, therefore, comes from Uprichard (2008: 307), who draws from Lee’s (2002) work in highlighting that we are all ‘interdependent beings’ who are always in a process of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. This allows a less linear focus on the temporal elements of childhood and a more fluid analysis of children’s relationship with the past and the future (Uprichard, 2008). We can then approach more critically the placing of children in space according to conventions of generational ordering (Alanen and Mayall, 2001; Punch, 2005). It is in this distinct ‘placing’ that children’s mobility becomes all the more difficult to disentangle. For, whilst children are active agents, they are nevertheless ‘placed’ and ‘emplaced’ in different and often contradictory ways. As Olwig and Gulløv (2003: 3) argue:

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44 01273 644558. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Murray), [email protected] (K. Mand).

Places for children, in other words, are defined by adult moral values about a cherished past and a desirable future, clothed in common sense notions about children’s best interests.

1. Introduction

1755-4586/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2013.02.005

L. Murray, K. Mand / Emotion, Space and Society 9 (2013) 72e79

In challenging these assumptions we consider children as mobile beings and this underpins our analysis. Here, therefore, we approach children’s mobility in the context of the life course with an emphasis on phases as opposed to stages, the latter emphasizing connectedness rather than disjuncture. Through adopting this life course approach, it is possible to visualize a complex accumulation of knowledge, experiences and emotions over a lifetime that are relevant to decisions and experiences in the present. Some of these experiences and emotions become embedded at different levels, within mobility histories (Murray, 2010), and are recalled through particular emotional responses (Slovic et al., 2004). Memories and recollections are ‘constructed by current ideological forces’ (Tierney, 2000) and, for children as well as others, represent an emotional store, a collection of mobile experiences to be called upon when encountering mobile space in the present and in the future. The emplacement of children, of course, also occurs in different ways at different spatial scales and in different social, economic and political contexts (see, for example, Katz, 2004). However, following on from the work of Holloway and Valentine (2000) and Ansell (2009) there is recognition of the interdependencies between these scales and the ways in which ‘all places are simultaneously both local and global’ (ibid., 196). Indeed, the term ‘near and far’ is used here critically, in its ‘reconfigured’ sense (Schwanen, 2007: 12). Although recognizing the corporeal movement between places that are nearer and more distant, it is acknowledged that travel also takes place virtually and imaginatively, so that scale becomes more fluid. Both children’s everyday mobility and their transnational mobility are dependent on wider geopolitical hierarchies of power. This may be more apparent when children are journeying across national boundaries and are involved in negotiating identities that, in turn, are related to wider economic contexts. However, as well as reinforcing global disparities of wealth, neoliberal global economies and their attendant global cultures construct mobility in a way that filters through to everyday mobile experiences (Holloway and Valentine, 2000). This wider geopolitical context is also influential in establishing wider constructions of childhood. As significantly, however, and within this array of adultist constructions of space at local and global levels, children exert their agency in different spaces. Mobile spaces are spaces of transformation within and through which, children shape childhood as they act out their version of everyday, or less everyday life, within wider social and geopolitical contexts (James et al., 1998; Porter et al., 2010). In this way mobile space and the journeys within it are ‘made’ as children inhabit and socio-culturally construct the space, the discourses surrounding it, and the social practices associated with it (Murray, 2009a). With reference to the interdependent themes of children’s mobile ‘being’, and multi-scalar landscapes of power, this article explores children’s emotional negotiations of mobile space. We build on a conceptual framework that encompasses: the relationality of time, space and emotions; the social and geopolitical context of children’s emotionalities; and children’s agency within these adultist contexts drawing from two different aspects of children’s mobilities. The first is an ethnographic study of everyday mobilities with children travelling relatively short distances on a daily basis. The second is a project that explored children’s mobile experiences of migration, particularly notions of belonging including long distance travel to visit relatives. These travels took place in a different temporal scale as they occurred less frequently, perhaps once a year. Nevertheless, it is important to indicate that being part of transnational families, and located within the diaspora, children are surrounded by images and practices of being ‘here’ and ‘there’. The studies show how emotional connection with space and place

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constructs childhood.1 Emotional responses to space and place, and to risky spaces in particular, were ubiquitous in both studies, with a range of highly emotional reactions to different aspects of mobility. 2. Children, motion and emotion Previous research on children’s emotions has tended to neglect the emotionality of mobile space. Although there has been some recent exploration of children’s mobilities (Barker et al., 2009; Murray, 2009a), their embodied experiences of mobility are still underexplored (Hopkins and Hill, 2008). This is a significant gap given the potential impact of early emotional experiences on future mobile practices. It is argued here that mobile space produces particular emotions at different scales. For transnational journeys the sadness of leaving people and place behind at an airport contrasts with the exhilaration of taking off on a plane; whilst, for everyday travel, the disgust of ‘dog poo’ on the way to school is experienced alongside the joy in finding a new short-cut. However, despite these differences according to scale, there are commonalities in experience. Emotions are embodied, sensorial, intensely felt and are constructed and reconstructed in mobile space. They are set against a ‘rational’ adult-led negotiation of space (Davidson et al., 2005). Children’s supposed lack of rationality in response to mobile space often relates to risk-taking. However, the relationship between risk and emotion is underexplored despite increasing interest amongst academics concerned with risk and uncertainty (Zinn, 2006). Instead, emotions, in the context of childhood, are often considered in relation to parental attachment and the understanding of particular emotional states (Greig et al., 2007) with the focus on children as ‘becomings’ rather than ‘beings’. Another manifestation of this adultist approach is the view that, despite an increasingly mobile world (Urry, 2007), children are considered to be experiencing ‘hypomobility’ (Murray, 2009a) due to the proliferation of sedentary and indoor leisure activities. This is considered to impact negatively on children’s mental and physical wellbeing (Kegerreis, 1993) and is often understood in tandem with a rise in (escorted) automobilized travel. There are also concerns that children’s independent mobility is decreasing as contemporary society presents opportunities for parental control of children through their mobility (Fotel and Thomsen, 2004; Hillman et al., 1990; Pooley et al., 2005; Valentine, 2004). Changes in children’s travel patterns present new emotional opportunities and this is where, in particular, the ‘mobilities turn’ offers a framework for understanding the emotionalities of children’s mobile lives. Proponents of the ‘mobilities turn’ such as Sheller and Urry (2006: 216) consider the act of moving, or ‘kinaesthetic investment’, as an emotional act that places the corporeal body as ‘an affective vehicle through which we sense place and movement’. It is crucial to situate children’s experiences within the relationships of power that underlie emotional responses to mobility. Sheller and Urry (2006: 211) cite Skeggs (2004: 49) in illustrating that: ‘Mobility and control over mobility both reflect and reinforce power. Mobility is a resource to which not everyone has an equal relationship’. They assert that the new mobilities paradigm allows ‘tracking the power of discourses and practices of mobility in creating both movement and stasis’, a co-constitution of mobility and power that underpins spatial emotionalities. We need to understand children’s emotional engagement in mobile space in the context of adultist constructions of childhood, most notably at the

1 What remains outside the remit of this paper is the ways in which gender and ethnicity are significant for how children express emotions concerning being mobile within and across places. In this paper our concern is first and foremost to draw attention how children experience and narrate mobility.

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level of the ‘family’, and within wider geopolitical constructions of place. In seeking to comprehend children’s lives we need to situate our understanding within these attendant hierarchies of power. 2.1. Mobile relationships of power Childhood and adulthood are co-constituted and relational. Relationships of power underpin this co-construction. Although pre-dating more recent studies of childhood that foreground children’s agency, feminist theorists (Oakley, 1994: 14) have likened childhood studies to women’s studies, as they ‘are so constituted within a culture dominated by masculine power e in other words patriarchy’. Oakley contends that the main difference between them is that women’s studies are rooted in the political movement of women’s liberation whereas children have not had a similar political agency since, generally, it is adults who advocate on their behalf. It is, of course, adults who continue to determine the course of childhood studies and, therefore, it is imperative that social scientists recognise (and seek to minimize) power differentials both within the research process2 and in theorizations of childhood. In his discussion of children’s experiences of car travel, Barker (2009) does just this, using Foucault’s (1977) conceptualizations of power permeating society to illustrate the ways in which children contest parental power by capitalizing on ‘instabilities’ in practices of power. According to Barker, they do so through adversarial mobile practices. At the same time such challenges can reinforce boundaries of power as they make them visible (Murray, 2009a). The later discussion of children’s emotional mobile experiences will consider the ways in which these power dynamics are played out in both everyday, and less everyday, mobilities. Before this, however, it is useful to give further consideration to the relationality of childhood and parenthood and the role of mobility in the web of cultures and practices that produce both (Dowling, 2000). Children’s mobile experiences become contingent on the ways in which parental emotional investments construct childhood (Valentine, 2004). As Sheller (2004: 227) illustrates, mobile spaces can be particularly emotional sites of parenting where: The parent who places their infant in a car seat is faced with a warning of dire consequences (written in 11 languages in Europe): ‘DO NOT place rear facing child seat on front seat with airbag. DEATH OR SERIOUS INJURY can occur. Studies have shown (Bostock, 2001; Dowling, 2000) that the car, and lack of access to the car are important in producing cultures of parenting, which determine experiences of childhood. Indeed Dowling (2000: 348) argues that the car is embedded in ‘cultures of mothering’ (see also Barker, 2011; Murray, 2008), whilst Bostock (2001) illuminates the more deleterious emotional impacts of lack of access to car travel for low-income mothers who are then forced to walk whilst encumbered with children and shopping to meet their everyday needs. The ‘semi-private’ space of cars can represent a relatively ‘safe’ environment, a way of coping with risk. Cars can facilitate emotional investment in children (Sheller, 2004) and ‘facilitate family time’ (Dowling, 2000: 351), creating a relatively comfortable environment for one-to-one social contact with children (Barker, 2003). Emotional experiences are, of course, varied; whilst automobilized travel can be associated with exhilaration and excitement (Sheller, 2004), it can also be experienced

2 A more detailed exploration of the methods used in the research discussed here, including consideration of how power operates in the research process can be found elsewhere (Murray, 2012, 2009b).

as sensorially limiting and emotionally draining. Car occupants become cocooned from outside space (Urry, 2007). Barker (2009) contests that cars can represent a space in which children subvert prevailing power relations. Endorsing Bostock’s sentiments on the negative aspects of walking, Porter et al. (2012) found that, similarly, children in sub-Saharan Africa contest mobile walking space through processes of intergenerational negotiation. Other studies demonstrate the role of children as negotiators of mobile space, and as risk negotiators in particular (Murray, 2009a). This is exemplified in theories of risk seeking such as Lyng’s ‘edgework’ (Zinn, 2008). These explorations of youth cultures of risk-taking dispute the extent to which uncertainty is associated with the negative emotions of adultist discourses of risk. Nevertheless, most mobile spaces in which children are required to be escorted are considered to be more surveilled and regulated. Discourses of risk determine parental control of children’s spatiality and, in particular, their movements in public spaces (Murray, 2009a). Children’s mobility becomes contingent on parents’ negotiation of risk landscapes (Murray, 2009a; Tulloch and Lupton, 2003). Despite children’s hypomobility and studies that argue that mobility is conducive to the health and wellbeing of children (Mackett and Paskins, 2008), it is considered that to be mobile is to be risky and at risk (Urry, 2007). This is the basis for not only parental, but societal regulation of children’s mobile space. A complex set of cultures and discourses forms the context for both everyday and less everyday mobilities and their emotional manifestations.

3. Researching children’s mobile emotions The landscapes of children’s mobile emotions are explored here through data emanating from two research studies, which explored different aspects of children’s mobility: everyday and global mobilities. The first (Study 1), carried out between 2004 and 2007, explored the relationship between risk and mobility in determining mothers’ and children’s decision-making around the journey to school. The research was based on an ethnographical study of 25 children aged between 8 and 14 (and their mothers), using visual methods including self-directed video and film-elicitation and narrative interviews. Participants were drawn from a range of socio-economic backgrounds in both the centre and suburbs of a city on the south coast of the UK. Particular elements of the research focused particularly on the emotions associated with children’s mobility and how these changed over time (further details of this research and its methods can be found in Murray, 2009b, 2012). The second study (Study 2) explored the mobility of 54 British born Bangladeshi children between the ages of 9 and 13 between 2006 and 2009. The journeys that these children made could be situated in contrast to more everyday journeys, not solely as transnational,3 but as less everyday. Indeed there are a number of socio-economic and cultural differences between participants in both studies. These children form part of a wider Bangladeshi diaspora, in east London and, whilst their geographical location is in one of the world’s largest financial centres, Bangladeshis experience high rates of unemployment and poor housing. The children took part in research involving participant observation, participatory workshops involving drawing, story writing, role-play, watching videos, diary writing and recorded interviews with art workshops along with artists (Further details of the research

3 A great deal of the journey stories involved descriptions of travel to and from the airport e whether this is leaving from Heathrow or arrival in Dhaka.

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methods can be found in Gardner and Mand, 2012; Mand, 2011; Zeitlyn and Mand, 2012). In drawing from these two sources of data, rich in narratives of emotional engagement in mobile space, a number of themes emerged that are illustrative not of the divergence of experience at local/transnational everyday/less everyday levels, but of the range, intensity and unpredictability of children’s emotional responses in mobile space at these different levels. 4. Undulating emotional landscapes of the in-between As addressed earlier, childhood can be thought of as a mobile phase in the life course, often spoken of in terms of transitions. However, as discussed, it is important not to characterize childhood according to this mobility in a way that sets children aside from other generations. Children are agentic social actors. This opens up a framework for understanding the ways in which children’s mobility occurs in the context of the ordinary and the extraordinary, and leads to the possibility of a more thorough analysis of emotions that challenges assumptions based on children’s subjugated position in the lifecourse and their inability to assume roles as social actors on an ‘adult’ scale. In this way we are both challenging what is in fact a static notion of children as ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’, and illuminating mobile power relations, orderings and negotiations. This is made possible through exploring both the characteristics of the inbetween spaces of mobility and the freedoms of imagined mobilities. At the same time children’s emotional landscapes are indicative of the range of external forces and pressures that act upon them, and, as such, children’s mobile spaces are highly contested. 4.1. Ordinary and extraordinary mobilities: different and the same It is evident that there are disparities in mobile experiences and emotional responses of different children4 in different temporal frames: everyday and less everyday; and at different geographical scales: local and transnational. The foci of interest in the study of everyday mobility were firstly the negotiation of mobile space (or its imminent negotiation) at an everyday experiential level and, secondly, the socialities of the journey to school space (Murray, 2009a). In practicing mobility through negotiation of space and through socializing in this space, children were undertaking a process of place-making (Murray, 2010) and, in doing so, are exercising both agency and power. Much of the accounts, which included data gathered both during journeys and afterwards whilst watching footage of the journeys, remarked on the everydayness of experiences: I don’t like it if it’s a Thursday and I have to carry loads. That’s not a nice day for it. Cause it’s quite a long walk. (Jimmy, Study 1) Yeah, usually in the morning but especially getting the bus home . there’s spilt drinks and wrappers. Sometimes people smoke on the bus .Sometimes the bus driver will come up and say stop smoking but the bus drivers don’t tend to look at their camera. (Sean, Study 1) I get annoyed at dog poo cause its really lazy that people don’t pick up poo cause if you have a dog you have to take the responsibility of doing it. (Molly, Study 1) They also talked of assuming the rights to particular journey paths, of making them their own:

4 Whilst it is recognised that the participant groups in these studies differ significantly in a number of ways and therefore represent the socio-cultural differentiation of children the focus in this article is on scale.

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We’ve got about four ways to school. Through the Rec., straight down, up here left or right. This way seems to be quickest and we’ve got that secret path. Well it’s not very secret but that’s cool [Jimmy’s friend says: ‘Joe copied us’]. Yeah, their route’s exactly the same as ours now. (Jimmy, Study 1) The majority of children travel to school with friends or siblings and made a number of references to the making and breaking of friendships, and the maintenance of social networks in the mobile space of the school journey: We don’t like to [go to school in the car] cause then we can’t see our friends and we can’t walk with our friends. (Lilly, Study 1) I like [the journey to school because] usually when you’re with your friends on a Monday talking about the weekend or on a Friday talking about what you’re going to do. (Sean, Study 1) The school bus can represent an emotional battleground for children on the way to school, not only in relation to bullying, or ‘anti-social’ activities like smoking, but also as a space of stringent social rules that attempt to order mobile space in certain ways. This ordering of mobile space must then be negotiated by children. For example, Becca (Study 1) illustrated through her video that she was preoccupied with social and friendship issues allowing three buses to pass, all going to her school before she chooses one with an acceptable mix of friends. Like other modes of travel, buses are not only a means of transport from home to school but a key social space for establishing, maintaining and breaking friendships. They are a social gathering, with young people moving around, mingling, sharing stories, looking at books and magazines, listening to music, eating and performing. As such, the mobile space of the school journey becomes a significant place for children, a place to be made and re-made as they ‘do’ it, own it and practice being social. Unlike the transnational journeys, the children were not in-between countries that are geo-politically and economically distinct, but two different institutions, the family and the school, with two sets of conventions that maintain their relative hierarchies of power. Whilst children making transnational journeys did not escape the exercise of power through the educational system,5 the primary institution of power here was the family. In addition, these journeys took place on different temporal and geographical scales. In this way the mobility of this group of children was more extraordinary in relation to other children’s mobile practices. However, whilst extraordinary in the course of everyday lives, transnational journeys are nevertheless not an extraordinary practice in the mobile realms of the children themselves. In part, the ordinariness of transnationalism manifests itself through children being located within transnational families, whose members are often in flight between ‘here’ and ‘there’ (Bryceson and Ulla, 2003). Indeed, children’s stories about journeys focused on their own travels, and that of other family members, whether going abroad or coming to London. The ordinariness of transnational mobility in the context of family has, furthermore, occurred over generations, as Reema, reflecting on why it is important for her children to go to Bangladesh, illustrates: [going to Bangladesh] was quite common...they [her parents] always took us back home, literally every two years.something my parents taught me. and I want to teach my children. (Reema, Study 2) Whilst transnational mobility may not be extraordinary per se within the familial and cultural context of children’s lives, an

5 Sanctions against children taking time off school to travel to see relatives in other countries for extended periods of time were evident during the study.

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imminent journey nevertheless presents a moment of disruption from the daily lives of children. Given their location as children within a British educational framework, the lives of children are structured according to the school day involving a walk to and from school in accordance with the school calendar made of term and holiday time. Indeed, one of the specificities that relates to childhood transnational mobility, distinct from that of their parents (adults), is their emplacement as British citizens attending school. A key finding of the research on transnational journeys was the simultaneity of living highly localised lives, whereby children’s mobility in London centred on a radius of a few miles (close to home and school), and global movements across national boundaries. Many children spoke about going to and from the homes of relatives living in close proximity (in east London), whilst journeys to other parts of the UK rarely figured in their experiences. Recounted journeys often illustrated the risk of travelling across spaces and into other sets of circumstances. For arriving, unscathed, in Bangladesh involves a transformation away from the deprived London context to being part of a wealthy diasporic community referred to as Londoni (Mand, 2010, 2011). The difference between places and, by extension, the social roles children experienced in these places showed up as more pronounced in their interviews. As Farida recalls: It (London) isn’t as good as Bangladesh . it’s really crazy that people (in Bangladesh) think that it’s really nice, because you know in Bangladesh everything is open space, you can run wherever you want. There is a bigger park then you could ever think of .it’s an adventure park, you know, (there’s) theme parks and stuff. There is a bigger park than our local park.it is really small .. It’s (the one in Bangladesh) is bigger than Victoria Park. and its really nice and open space. Here in London everything’s like all together you know how in Bangladesh like, our house is here and like 20, 30, 25 meters away, there is the next door neighbours. In England it’s like all everything’s together.. (Farida, Study 2) The accounts by the children in the transnational study draw attention to a mixture of excitement and anxiety that is present travelling from London to Bangladesh. In her story about going to Bangladesh, Shaz wrote:

4.2. Liminal and contested mobile placings Holloway and Valentine (2000: 779) argue that ‘children’s identities and lives are made and (re)made through the sites of everyday life’ within a global context. The mobile practice of the journey between home and school is an illuminating example of this ongoing place-making and remaking. Barker (2003: 139) defines the geographies of this space as ‘unique’ as it is a ‘highly complex, well-organized yet diverse set of spatial movements that constitute the journey to school’. The school journey is distinctive as a space for children to demonstrate agency and, in doing so, challenges prevailing adultist hierarchies of power (Murray, 2009a). It is distinct from the usual spaces either side of it, which are regulated and controlled in different ways. Nevertheless the space of the school journey is still managed in myriad ways, and the characteristics of this management are contingent on a number of interdependent factors including mode of travel. Car travel, for example, is often experienced as a heavily surveilled space although, as discussed previously, it is also a space in which children can challenge adult authority. Other modes can be equally as surveilled through, for example, the insistence on carrying a mobile phone: I don’t really like phones.My mum will ring me if it’s after about 4.15 but actually sometimes I meet my friends at the bottom of the road and I stay there for. a couple of minutes. (Jimmy, Study 1) As Jimmy demonstrates the imposition of rules can lead to the subversion of them. Constraints on freedom of movement can become precursors to spatial freedoms where the space between home and school becomes a decompressing space, a space where it is possible to be, to varying extents, both subversive and liberated (Murray, 2009a). The spaces of home and school are imbued with an intensity of conventions and expectations, whereas the between space of the school journey is a space of freedom from this particular emotional compression, a freedom made visible through a range of emotions, as illuminated by Jake (Study 1):

The next thing I knew, Mum was shouting at my face! “What’s wrong, Mum?” “Your uncle has forgotten to fill the car up, and now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere!”. (Shaz, Study 2)

I like.every time I go up it I say welcome to poo valley. If I’m sad or I’m crying I stop it and say welcome to poo valley. It makes me feel happy walking up there. I like to balance on the squares. I never do it on the way back. Sometimes I step inside the lines, not on the cracks. It’s a game where you’re not allowed on the lines. (Jake, Study 1)

Although the degree of stress, in part, reflects the desire to travel, to be part of an adventure, which also forms a key aspect of everyday journeys; it also involves moving from one set of social economic circumstances to another. It is not a coincidence that leaving Britain involves anxiety, for failing cars and negotiating traffic reflects the degree to which children’s mobility is context specific. The imminent journeys to Bangladesh were narrated as necessitating specific materialities such as cars and heavy suitcases filled with gifts. This is in contrast to the everyday mobility where journeys, although predicated on the materialities of mobile space, were nonetheless less dependent on specific material things. The differences in mobile experiences in different scales are perceptible here. However, there are also commonalities of experience that transcend social and cultural differences as well as geographical scale. These relate to wider socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts that construct life at both the everyday and more global levels. Children’s mobilities are contingent on two ‘rites of passage’: their mobile positioning within the life course, and on their opportunities and freedoms to be mobile in local and global spaces. Both of these illustrate children’s place both socially as ‘beings’, and spatially as beings in mobile space.

Mobile freedoms are perhaps less apparent during transnational travel, as travelling to and from different countries most often involves air travel, with the inhabitation of particularly surveilled, and often militarized, mobile spaces. Global mobility as a result of socio-economic or political factors is a contemporary reality. Increasingly there is an awareness amongst academics and politicians of the interconnectedness between places, created and maintained by migrants, resulting in a focus on mobility that looks at ‘here’ and ‘there’ simultaneously (Gardner and Grillo, 2002; Mand, 2010). Within the context of South Asian transnationalism the life course has been documented as playing a significant role in the experiences of mobility (Gardner, 2002; Mand, 2010). However, children’s experiences of transnational mobility have remained peripheral in the literature as the focus is on practices relating to the creation and maintenance of familial ties (Gardner and Mand, 2012). Transgression of national boundaries often involves the negotiation of socio-economic identities. In the case of Bangladeshi children the journeys involve a move from being ‘poor’ in London and ‘rich’ in Bangladesh (Gardner and Mand, 2012). Their journeys also include particular kinds of lingering spaces, spaces that have been conceptualized as ‘non-places’ (Augé, 1995). However, the

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distinguishing feature here is the intensity of these liminal spaces. They are not only places, but highly emotional mobile places, steeped in meaning. The liminal space of the school journey is also rich in emotional potential. Its undulating emotional landscapes include, in particular, emotional responses related to relaxation, and ‘chilling out’: decompressing emotions. As Lucy put it ‘you can relax into the car’, especially on chilly days’; and, about walking, that it ‘blows the cobwebs away and you’re ready for a hard day at school’. For many the journey is an opportunity to either emotionally prepare themselves for school, or to de-stress from the day at school. During Joe’s journey observations include: ‘overall a very calm walk’, and ‘very peaceful’, especially so compared with the bustling space near the school. On Ellie’s journey she also seemed ‘very relaxed’, especially as she walked further from the school and got closer to her house. And, on Harry’s journey (from Harry’s video in Study 1), he sings and chants rhymes and appears very happy en-route. Mobile space here is a transitional space, a space of gradual transformation between home and school. Transnational journeys, too, are transitional, with the prospect of these journeys often triggering ambivalence: I overheard my dad was saying we’re going to Bangladesh on December the 10th to go see my family. So in the morning at nine am I went to tell my friends Batista, CJ, and Ryder. They were all shocked with what they heard so after school my friends planned to go and rip the tickets up but it was a waste of money, so we decided to go and persuade my mum not to make me. It took us almost three hours but at the end my mum had told us to stop annoying her and said I had no choice but to pack my bags. [...] Later on we went to the airport with my uncle’s Lamborghini. We were there in forty five minutes. [.] When I arrived in Bangladesh everything looked beautiful and I went to the biggest shopping centre there in the city. I went on the bumper cars and a roller coaster ride then went home at the end it was very exciting! (‘Losing my Friends’ by Saleem, Study 2) Despite his hesitancy in leaving his friends in London, Saleem accounts for a fast, risky and pleasure-filled journey to the airport in his uncle’s Lamborghini, which he had photographed as part of the ‘things he did in half term’ activity. The arrival and experience of being in Bangladesh is notable for, whilst being Londoni in Bangladesh, Saleem experiences a rise in social mobility, which he notes through bumper cars and roller coaster rides. Saleem’s ambivalence in leaving friends behind transforms as he narrates the experience of the fairground, which he describes as exciting. This transition is then more markedly a transition between economies and cultures than between regulated and less regulated spaces. At the same time, it is significant to note Saleem’s satisfaction of being in Bangladesh is related to consumption in particular sites: the fairground and the shopping mall, which can be thought of as places that are de-territorialised as well as being markers of mobility (Gardner and Mand, 2012). 4.3. Imagining mobile spaces Mobility takes place in a number of ways beyond corporeal movement. For children, in particular, as opportunities for virtual mobility proliferate, this form of mobility becomes increasingly significant. The nascent notion of imaginative mobilities (Urry, 2007), mobilities that take place in the mind, similarly allows an appreciation of children’s spatial range beyond corporeal movement. The plane flied for five hours but after that the plane stopped in mid air and it started to fall and we all shouted “AAAHH HELP!” We all fell on something soft so I managed to get out. I found out

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a lot of people were dead. Blood was everywhere. I said my prayers. After that I climbed back into the plane and I saw all of my family members were okay. I think Labiba fainted during the fall but we all knew we were in the Sahara Desert. “I hate this stupid holiday!” I shouted angrily. (Isra, Study 2) All of a sudden smoke came out of the car in front . and then the car exploded! (Sam, Study 2) Transnational travel begins in a locality where everyday things happen: cars break down, there is no fuel, or, as Sam narrates, they explode. Alongside failing cars, the stories indicate the anxieties of getting to the airport by having to negotiate local traffic. Missing planes, siblings wandering off, delayed aircrafts are key tropes in the stories. The anxieties of travel are recounted alongside fantastical events occurring on the journey involving failing engines, thieves on board the aircraft, as well as a plane crash leading, in Isra’s story, to her family being stranded in the Sahara desert. Isra’s reference to the trip to Bangladesh as a ‘holiday’, and the associated emotion of ‘hate’, draws attention to desires where being mobile results in a particular type of experience: that of being on holiday. For many of the children going on holiday occurred in the context of visiting family members, whilst visiting family were conceptualised as being on holiday (at their homes in London). At the same time, travel to another place for the purposes of holiday, beyond the familial context, featured when they were asked about places they would like to go to or had been. For example, Kylie (Study 2) described her stop-over in Dubai enroute to Bangladesh as an experience that was: different it was and [like] we go on holidays because erm we know it should be fun, it’s different for us, it’s going to.. it’s different from your real life like when I was in Dubai I said ‘oh back to our normal life again’, I said that to mum and she said ‘why do you say that’ I said because, erm look how we are in Dubai we like, we, erm, always go out, we have a shower and we stay in a hotel room and stuff like that. For the young people in the study of everyday travel, also, the journey can involve different emotional responses at different stages, and at different times, and can include fantastical events or imagined mobilities. For example, in looking forward to an age when he has been told he could travel alone, Jake (Study 1) constructs an image of himself as a warrior: My mum says I have to be a bit older [to travel independently], 10 or 11, well, 12 or 11. We end when we’re 11 so probably when I’m 12 or 13. If I’m in year 6 and I’m quite big ‘cause I do Karate now and I’m nearly a black belt. I need to do two more belts.I’ll have two sharp daggers and I’d always probably carry my daggers in my bag.Probably if I asked them they’d let me go down to the shops on my skateboard’. The imagined space of mobilities appears to be a space where children are freed to develop spatial awareness and strategies for negotiating mobile space. They are spaces where children have the capacity to regain power and contest adultist mobile space. As discussed, the liminal, transitional, internal and imagined mobile spaces hold potential for children to resist the exertion of adult power. These spaces are the key to understanding mobile experiences at local, global, everyday and less everyday levels. Children’s negative emotions, which are often based on stress and anxiety, are often associated with particular spaces on journeys. For the children travelling between London and Bangladesh, and for the children travelling between home and school, these emotional spaces are often the more ambiguous in-between areas: the airport, the area outside school e outside each of the entrances/exits and beyond. These are the particularly contested and emotional spaces precisely because they offer opportunities for resistance. For this

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reason, parents attempt to control the spaces through, for example, enforced use of mobile phones as discussed. However, as Jimmy previously demonstrates in his quote, phones are only useful if children are compliant. Parents, therefore, are prepared to relinquish power on some occasions in order to maintain a level of overall acquiescence: I walked Jimmy to primary but once he got into year 5 he decided he was walking on his own and wild horses wouldn’t have stopped him. (Hannah, mother in Study 1) 5. Concluding thoughts As discussed, mobile space is always in-between space, a cerebral space, a space that is neither here nor there and therefore a place in which power hierarchies can be challenged. In this article, we have explored the emotional aspects of children’s mobilities across geographical and temporal scales and illuminated children’s emotional travels. For both the everyday journeys between home and school and the transnational journeys between London and Bangladesh, children exhibit an array of emotions that is complex and contested. The mobile space of the journey, and the movement of people, objects, communications and ideas can represent surveillance, autonomy, constraint and liberation. The ‘journey’ that is accounted for in this article relates to the social, economic, cultural and spatial transformation of children. In some ways these transformations are divergent. For children travelling in the everyday there are opportunities to occupy their mobile spaces in ways that are identity-forming and simultaneously challenging to existing hierarchies of power. In producing their everyday mobility in the relatively unregulated space of the school journey, children have transformed mobile space through determining and marking their paths. In doing so they have carved out trajectories that do not necessary comply with the rules and regulations of home, or those of school. In the project involving Bangladeshi children, freedoms are more restricted, and the travel across national borders more discernibly moves them beyond one set of economic and cultural circumstances to another. Nevertheless, the studies have revealed a number of similarities in children’s mobile experiences, not least that children experience a range of emotions in mobile space, and that these may contradict established notions of childhood. Whilst decision-making around children’s mobility is highly constrained and shaped by a range of individuals and institutions, in particular, parents, families and the state, a focus on understanding children’s emotional perspectives on travel highlights them to be agentic. It may appear that children exert a greater degree of agency at the micro-spatial level. The ‘journey’ for children in the study of everyday school travel demonstrates the importance of resisting adultist regulation of space and asserting agency in ‘owning’ the journey. Similarly, children embarking on transnational journeys sought to redress power imbalances. In planning to tear-up plane tickets, Saleem and his friends considered the material manifestations of the journey a legitimate target, one that represented the journey itself. Similarly Isra’s fantasy of exploding aircrafts is about power and powerlessness. These are moments within which children challenge the (hierarchical) context of their travel to and from Bangladesh, which invariably occurred as a result of their emplacement within families. The ‘journey’ for children in the study of travels between London and Bangladesh related most significantly to cultural and economic transformations. Emotional transformations of mobile space were evident in both studies. Children sometimes use imagined mobilities to transcend the materiality of place and these become as much a part of their emotional mobile experience as corporeal mobilities. Equally, it is important to stress the literal mode of mobile experience narrated

through the stories children gave of their journeys. Some of the children’s stories accounted for the journey in terms of leaving ‘home’ to go to the airport or to school using a certain mode of transport, and having particular emotional experiences based on the materiality of this mode. In articulating these emotional engagements with mobile space this discussion has illuminated the importance of scale, both temporal and spatial, in distinguishing and conflating children’s mobile emotions. We have also highlighted the significance of the emotionality of children’s mobility. Emotional responses to mobile space are emotional responses to moving, socialising, and being free and independent, which is something about which more needs to be known. The emotional experience of being mobile intersects with children’s negotiation and contestation of space. This is highly significant in understanding the geographies and mobilities of childhood and the importance of this knowledge to wider debates on mobility. The article highlights the substantial gaps in knowledge of the relationship between scale and children’s mobility, as well as of both transnational travels and of the cultural contexts in which local mobilities take place. These need to be addressed in future research and debate.

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