Entangled Future Im/mobilities

1. Why did you chose this topic?

In the background of the ongoing multiplemany ongoing crises, the topic of future appears to be more complex than ever before. The idea of future impacts people's everyday practices of im/mobility, manifesting at the level of im/mobility-related decisions, aspirations, hopes and, imaginations, as well as affective and embodied experiences. The An interest in the temporal entanglement of im/mobilities is whatkept reappearinged in our discussions and common works within an interdisciplinary research platform, and it is what we cherish as the result of our four-year-long scientific cooperation.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

In this book, the future serves as a thematic reference point that calls forth different questions in and across social sciences and humanities, beyond disciplinary boundaries and individual research projects that center around im/mobilities. Future is thus an analytical framework that brings these diverse perspectives together and deepens inter- and transdisciplinary exchange.

In this book, the future serves as a thematic reference point and an analytical framework bringing together diverse perspectives on im/mobilities from the social sciences and humanities and deepening inter- and transdisciplinary exchange. Our emphasis is on how futures and future im/mobilities are connected to pasts and presents in complex and non-linear ways, just as they are intertwined with relations of power that limit or attempt to push the boundaries of what is imaginable and achievable. Case studies focusing on Afrofuturist poetry, de-extinction projects, dystopian novels, a Uruguayan planned relocation program, lives of rural Zambian women, climate adaptation in Morocco and Austrian financial literacy policy examine different aspects of this insight and call forth new questions.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

The future is not only relevant as a topic or the object of research, but also as a horizon for the development of the field of mobility studies itself. Thus, our book contributes not only to the debates about how what future im/mobilities would look like, but also on and how those futures are temporally and spatially entangled. Moreover, this book contributes but also to tracing the future pathways of mobility studies, towards a more inter- and transdisciplinary approaches.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

Tim Cresswell.

Besides with mobility scholars, we would like to discuss the book with anyone in the academic community and beyond who is interested in how people and institutions imagine, anticipate, prepare for and act on possible futures within diverse and unequal contexts of im/mobility.

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

The book examines a plurality of futures from an im/mobilities perspective and explicitly addresses the entanglements of temporality, scale, and power.