Hello. In this video, I propose you a genealogy of the concept of mobility. The purpose of this exercise is to adopt a definition both contemporary, rich and operational of mobility. A concept which helps to describe and understand how contemporary societies build themselves in time and space. Mobility as itself is mostly used in contemporary social sciences characterized by a certain poverty. So mobility is considered in many works as a synonym for crossing space, forgetting all the other dimensions, like time, but also the social component of mobility. Mobility is <i> de facto </ i> a synonymous to transport. Similarly, it is considered in numerous researches as an activated phenomenon that can be measured, without considering its potential dimension. In short, mobility appears as a concept rather polysemous, a portmanteau word, one word at fashion rather vague. It is from this dissatisfaction that I want to start the genealogy of mobility, because the history of the term and its meanings allows to restore accuracy, richness and thickness. In dictionaries, the word mobility appears in the 18th century to evoke a mental fitness, the ability to juggle ideas in his head. It was not until the 19th century that the word is used to describe movements in geographical space but in a rather ambivalent way. We then talk of mobility to discuss travel of young English aristocrats, pioneers of tourism, but we also use the word to talk about the wandering of the migrant, a wandering that worries. It was not until the early 20th century, in the 1920s, that the word mobility entered in the research. This is particularly the case with the work of Sorokin one hand and of Chicago School on the other. Around these authors were born Migration Studies, the study of social and professional mobility and the study of residential mobility in the city. Parallel to this research, is developed independently, also in the 1920s in the United States, the science of traffic, which is the study of flow and regulation of flows. The work of Sorokin and the Chicago School are very creative and will give rise to many conceptual reflections. This is for example the case of the social mobility concept and the notion of social mobility table, such as the one you have before you for France in 2003. A social and professional mobility table measures the change in socio-professional position, in social mobility, between parents and children. It is therefore a measure of the mobility in terms of change of position and not in terms of crossing space. Mobility is defined here as a change without reference to the geographical area. In a table of social mobility, one can distinguish three regions: the diagonal, which is the region of intergenerational reproduction of positions or of immobility; the region of downward mobility, which is here; and the region of upward mobility, which is at the bottom of the table. By the 1950s, pioneering works initiated since the 1920s will gradually build up autonomous areas of research having their own harems. Thus the social and professional mobility, the science of traffic and spatial mobility become respectively the sociology of mobility, the <i> Transportation Studies </ i> and analysis of spatial mobility. In the 1990s, however, the need for an inclusive approach arises because the descriptive and comprehensive power of analysis of mobility is blunting, as shown in the development of an hybrid form of displacement or changes in the way people use their travel time. The field of spatial mobility is structured into four sub-areas of specialization are distinguished by the spatial range travel and movement type, origin, destination or return, as shown in the table you have before you. The study of mobility is now fragmented in several highly autonomous research. By the 1990s, however, the need for an inclusive approach arises because the descriptive and comprehensive power analysis of mobility is blunting, as shown in the development of hybrid forms of displacement or changes in the way in which people use their travel time that the fragmented approach of mobility understands difficultly. First example: the hybrid mobility. The long-distance commuting or bi-residence also known as hybrid mobility, whether work-related or for leisure, is developed in recent years in a number of European countries. These are phenomena that can hardly be grasped with the table you have before you because these trips are located exactly at the border of the different boxes. The long-distance commuting in particular, is a mobility of daily life but not internal to the pool of life. Similarly, the bi-residence is somehow a residential mobility which takes place every week. Second example: the conjecture of Zahavi. Zahavi's conjecture posits that the movements of everyday life are done all over the world in about an hour and their spatial extent is a function of the moving speed. However, there is in many European cities and North America a lengthening of commuting time budgets since the 1990s. More and more people take more than an hour to move in their daily lives. The Zahavi conjecture no longer works. Among the factors that explain this change there is the the shift in travel time. Today, one can easily use their travel time to deploy small activities with a tablet, a mobile phone or a computer while one is moving. Moreover, it is also an explanatory factor of the disaffection of driving among those under 30 years. It is also a factor, and this is why we speak of it, that explains the fact that we have a need of an integrative approach of mobility. The partition of research areas begins to be perceived as an obstacle to the advancement of knowledge, as we have seen through the two examples above. Researchers develop inclusive approaches, like John Urry or Tim Cresswell, that you will enjoy discovering the thinking in other videos. The need for new tools is very clearly felt to grasp a changing reality. Thus arise the so-called <i> mobilities studies </ i> whose purpose is to grasp the relationship to space, time and change in contemporary societies. We arrive at the end of this video. Through the genealogy of the uses of mobility over time, we were able to capture the richness of this notion. We also see clearly the need to discard a sense of mobility that reduces crossing space. It is to regain the richness of the mobility analysis and it is important to consider that this is naturally spatial but it is also social, that it is activated as movement but also potentially and remains in the state of latency. Finally, it can take different forms which combine themselves systemically.
