Nurturing Mobilities

Book excerpt: Nurturing Mobilities employs new empirical material and an innovative theoretical framing to bring new clarity to why families travel today – and what happens when they do. The authors argue that an imperative to ‘think with mobility’ and to ‘aspire to be mobile’ shapes identities, futures, and family practices. Drawing on data that examines family travel practices – typically short-term trips – across the working-, middle-, and globally mobile middle-classes, Nurturing Mobilities describes how families travel, why they travel, and the role young family members play in curating family travel. Vitally, it examines the two biggest contemporary issues in global mobility: COVID-19 and climate change. How has COVID-19 changed travel motivations in a world beset by lockdowns and diminished finances? How are concerns around climate change, and engagements with global citizenship education, changing family travel practices? Nurturing Mobilities illuminates new ways in which social class divergence is forged through movements across borders. The authors’ theoretically inter-disciplinary approach delivers a full analysis of the apparently divergent processes that differentiate family travel along social class lines, yet also allow travel to play a core role in social mobility. This book is a vital resource for scholars and students studying mobility, globalisation, social class, and climate change engagement.