1st Edition
Nurturing Mobilities Family Travel in the 21st Century
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.
1. Introduction; 2. Establishing the field: why we travel and why it matters; 3. Thinking with travel; 4. Parents talking about family travel; 5. Travel as integral to class-making practices; 6. Global middle class families: the children as active and seasoned globe trotters; 7. Young people discuss travel; 8. Alternative modes of family travel: new articulations of global citizenship education; 9. From tourist gaze to carbon gaze: travelling in a time of climate concerns; 10. Conclusion; Commentary: final reflections on nurturing mobilities
Biography
Claire Maxwell is a professor at sociology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research has focused on the ways the internationalisation of education has shaped education systems and how elite forms of provision are being developed and embedded around the world. A second focus has been on the lives of globally mobile professionals and their families, examining school choice, identities and family practices.
Miri Yemini is a comparative education scholar at Tel Aviv University, Israel, with interests in internationalisation of education in schools and higher education, global citizenship education, and education in conflict-ridden societies, with a particular focus on the role of mobility in educational experiences. Dr. Yemini is an active member of CIES, CESE and BAICE and she is a President Elect for the Israeli Comparative Education Society.
Katrine Mygind Bach holds a Masters in Global Development and a Bachelor degree in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Previously, she spent several years in India working in the field of rural development. Her research focuses on the intersection between social and environmental sustainability, and the role of climate governance in these processes.
"This is a highly innovative book, which explores the nature and impact of family travel, focussing particularly on how it influences the identities and ‘future-making projects’ of both families and individuals. Drawing on data from parents and young people, and including the perspectives of those who reject travel (for environmental reasons) as well as those who travel a lot, the book engages with important debates that cut across several disciplines – including the extent to which such practices contribute to social differentiation, how mobility is conceptualised, and the role of travel within broader understandings of parenting. It is also international in its orientation, and will thus be of significant interest to researchers in many different national contexts." Rachel Brooks FAcSS, Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey, UK"This is a thought-provoking book on how mobility shapes individuals. By zooming into the experiences of family travel, the book offers engaging accounts of the links between the ideas of mobility and social class. Highly recommended for sociologists of education and social scientists more broadly." Maia Chankseliani, Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education, University of Oxford, UK
"Maxwell, Yemini and Bach offer a rigorous and thoughtful journey into some of the uncharted aspects of mobility, by exploring family travel and its nuanced links with parenting, family-making practices, strategies of capital accumulation and class differentiations." Jason Beech, Senior Lecturer in Education Policy, Monash University, Australia
