Ruth Phillips

ruth683@btinternet.com
THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY: A LITERATURE
REVIEW
________________________________________________________________

“Mobility is central to what it is to be

human … Culture, we are told, no
longer sits in places, but is hybrid,
dynamic – more about routes than
roots”
Tim Cresswell, 2006:1

“Nowadays we are all on the move”

Zygmunt
Bauman, 1998a:77

Mobilitymay be considered as central to ideas and practices of

modern or, if you prefer, post-modern Western societies. Both
Bauman and Cresswell, in the above quotes, are referring to our
current propensity for travel, whether this is in a physical sense
or via the internet and cable TV, but they also refer to what
Cresswell (2001; 2006) terms a ‘metaphysics’ of mobility. That
is to say, an understanding of and relationship to the world
which is couched in terms of time, space and distance. Whether
we ‘stroll down memory lane’, get ‘stuck in a rut’, ‘go the
distance’ or ‘fall at the first hurdle’, metaphors of mobility
orientate us to the world in much the same ways as metaphors
of ‘place’ do (Cresswell, 2004).

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Mobility, then, permeates our culture, yet its very ubiquity
makes it somehow ‘unseen’ and ‘natural’, thus able to conceal
powerful ideologies (Cresswell, 2006:22) and this alone should
demand attention. The very term ‘mobility’, as opposed to
‘movement’, is loaded with socially-produced meaning
(Cresswell, 2006:3) and is thus inherently political. In fact, were
it not for a desire to foreground the notion, it would almost be
ridiculous to speak of a ‘politics of mobility’, for mobility can
hardly be apolitical, either in practical or representational
senses.

Cresswell (2006) draws our attention to the conflicting

representations of “mobility as progress, as freedom, as
opportunity, and as modernity, sit[ting] side by side with
mobility as shiftless, as deviance and as resistance” (2006:2).
Thus, certain forms of mobility – commuting to work, foreign
holidays, student gap years – are positively encouraged, whilst
others – hitchhiking, tramping, nomadic lifestyles - are frowned
upon, at best, and criminalized at worst. Bauman (1998a;
1998b), on the other hand, focuses on the stratification of our
consumer society where
Those ‘high up’ are satisfied that they travel through
life by their heart’s desire and pick and choose their
destinations according to the joys they offer. Those ‘low
down’ happen time and again to be thrown out from
the site they would rather stay in (Bauman, 1998a:86).

Mobility, according to Bauman (1998b:39), is one of the

freedoms demanded by the consumer in his or her quest to

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eradicate the boredom which is the antithesis of all that
consumer society stands for. Yet, as he points out,
Common remedies against boredom are not accessible
to those in poverty, while all unusual, irregular or
innovative counter-measures are bound to be classified
as illegitimate and bring upon their users the punitive
powers of the defenders of law and order (Bauman,
1998b:39).

Hitchhikers, Tramps, Gypsies and New Age Travellers can all be

seen to have employed ‘unusual, irregular or innovative
counter-measures’ to achieve mobility, and have been cast as
‘outsiders’ in our society. Examining such outsider groups can
tell us a great deal about the dominant culture (Cresswell,
1996:9; Sibley, 1981:4) and may provide an opportunity to
make visible the politics of mobility.

The transgression these outsider groups have committed

(Cresswell, 2004:103) highlights a paradox whereby
The social ‘other’ of the marginal and of low cultures is
despised and reviled in the official discourse of
dominant culture and central power while at the same
time being constitutive of the imaginary and emotional
repertoires of this dominant culture (Shields, 1991:5).

In other words, these outsider groups embody the ideology of

mobility which is at the heart of modern society, whilst at the
same time representing a threat to society by the very practice
of that mobility (Cresswell, 2001:14).

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Perhaps the key word here is ‘threat’ – there is certainly a
consensus, running throughout the literature, that nomadic
groups have been perceived as a serious threat to society in
some form or another. This much is clear from all the legislation
which has been introduced over the years to deal with the
Traveller ‘problem’ and which, in the UK, stretches back to the
early 16th century (Okely, 1983:1) and culminates, most
recently, in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill in 1994.
Whether the threat is analysed psychologically (Bauman,
1998a; Hetherington, 2000; Sibley, 1995), politically (Halfacree,
1996; Okely, 1983; Rojek, 1988) or spatially (Cresswell, 1996,
2006; Sibley, 1999), it is nothing new. Travelling people have
demonstrated remarkable persistence and continuity (Sibley,
1986) in the face of both personal and cultural persecution
(Okely, 1983) and have become one of those recurring moral
panics which were hinted at by Stanley Cohen (1980:9).

Cohen’s (1980) model suggests that a moral panic is created

when a deviant group draws a reaction from the public. The
deviance, exaggerated in the media, becomes an issue of
public concern and this leads to further deviance and still
greater concern. Ultimately, legislation is introduced to deal
with the deviant group. Chris Rojek (1988:28-29) argues that
the concept of moral panics cannot be applied to New Age
Travellers because of its “annual regularity”, but I would argue
that this ‘annual regularity’ only represented a seasonal high-
pitch to the societal reaction. Rojek was writing in 1988 and can
thus be forgiven for not seeing the bigger picture: legislation,

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which effectively outlawed the Travellers way of life (Martin,
2002:724), was finally introduced in 1994. It is interesting to
note that academic literature pertaining to travellers peaked in
the late 1990’s with the introduction and aftermath of the
Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, and has petered out in
recent years. This also coincides with an apparent peak and
decline in media coverage and, perhaps, a popular perception
that the ‘problem’ has disappeared. However, on examining the
history of Gypsies (Okely, 1983), Tramps (Cresswell, 2001) and
other nomadic cultures there appears to be a pattern of
recurring moral panics, over a long period of time, usually
resulting in legislation against these outsider groups. Travellers,
of one kind or another, are folk devils who just refuse to
disappear!

New Age Travellers are often categorized as separate and

distinct from Gypsies, not least by Gypsies themselves (cited by
Levinson & Sparkes, 2004:720) and certainly in terms of
government policy (Wilkin, 1998). Nonetheless, studies of
Gypsies provide a useful starting point and actually highlight a
number of similarities. Some of the earliest ethnographic
studies of Gypsies by social scientists are contained in Farnham
Rehfisch’s 1975 collection, Gypsies, Tinkers and Other
Travellers, which attempts to overcome a previous lack of
“reliable studies on their social structure and social
organization” (1975:Preface). Yet accounts contained here still
hold descriptions of travellers as ‘pariahs’ and ‘parasites’
(Barth, 1975:287). Okely (1983) and Sibley (1981) have both

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produced ethnographic studies which successfully address this
attitude by relating the Gypsy culture to the dominant culture
of which it is, in fact, a part (Okely, 1983:30), and by
highlighting the ethnocentricity of both popular and academic
(mis)understandings of Gypsy culture (Okely, 1883:33; Sibley,
1981:23-24). I would, however, repudiate the importance of
race as a factor in the Gypsies status as ‘other’ (Sibley,
1981:29). Levinson and Sparkes (2004:710) discuss the
“nomadic mindset” of Gypsies whereby
Travelling often remains integral to the Gypsy sense of
identity even when the amount of travelling achieved
seems to constitute little more than
‘holidays’(2004:710)

That this mindset is also claimed by New Age Travellers (see,

for example, Lowe & Shaw, 1993:218-243) contradicts the
widely held view “that travelling was ‘in the blood’, the only
explanation for which is Gypsy ancestry” (Levinson & Sparkes,
2004:711).

The majority of New Age Travellers were not born on the road
since this movement only emerged in the 1970s and there are
differing views, not about the history of these origins but
certainly about the causes. Kevin Hetherington’s (2000) study
of New Age Travellers clearly identifies the travellers as having
chosen this way of life (eg, 2000:6) yet this is misleading and
his account, whilst providing a thorough history (2000:1-29),
fails to adequately locate this within the social context of
Britain in the 1970s and 80s. Ultimately, then, he presents a
picture of New Age Travellers which has been criticized by Greg
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Martin (2002:724) as overly romantic and voluntaristic. I would
add to Martin’s (2002) critique that Hetherington takes Sibley’s
(1995) use of psychoanalytical theory (Rodway, 2004:259) a
little too far in, for example, positioning Travellers as the
‘stranger’ being “symbolically sacrificed so that social order
may be renewed” (2000:23). Whilst Hetherington’s account
may be a little too esoteric (Martin, 2002:728), that is not to
say that a consideration of the psychological role of the ‘other’
is not useful.

Bauman’s (1998a) discussion of ‘the tourist and the vagabond’

– which may usefully be seen as Weberian ‘ideal types’ – posits
the vagabond as the tourist’s “inner demon”, not because of
what the vagabond is, but because of what the tourist could
become, yet he still maintains a practical orientation:
While sweeping the vagabond under the carpet –
banning the beggar and the homeless from the street,
confining him [sic] to a far-away, ‘no-go’ ghetto,
demanding his exile or incarceration – the tourist
desperately, though in the last account vainly, seeks
the deportation of his own fears (1998a:97)

Referring to an article in the Daily Telegraph (1986) in which a

group of New Age Travellers are said to be “soiling” an area of
the New Forest, Cresswell (1996:83) makes the same kind of
link between the physical actuality and the psychological
effect:
The residents are homeowners and settled, and the
holidaymakers are engaging in legitimate forms of
travel and will eventually return to a home and a job.
The ‘hippies’, however, are clearly ‘deviant’ in their

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 nonsettled lifestyle, and thus they soil normality (my
italics).

The notion of the ‘other’, of ‘difference’, is often linked to ideas

about dirt and disease (Cresswell, 1996:81; Sibley, 1995:106),
and the mobile other represents a further threat to the spatial
organization of society (Cresswell, 1996:87; Sibley, 1999:139).
Cresswell (2006:17), citing James Scott (1998), describes how
modernity always involved the imposition of spatial order onto
chaotic nature, hence the anxiety that mobile people provoke.
Others have gone further, suggesting that the presence of the
‘other’ exposes fundamental deficiencies in modern society
(Halfacree, 1996:44; Okely, 1983:2) so that, as Hetherington
(2000:18) states, “it is not that the stranger brings disorder but
that he or she reveals order to always be a process rather than
a thing”. These fears become myths in the popular imagination:
Tramps, Gypsies and Travellers are soap-dodgers; they are idle
and work-shy; they have no respect for private property (for
refutation of these myths see Davis et al, 1994, and Webster &
Millar, 2001).

A common myth, of the ‘rural’ and/or ‘real’ Gypsy, is explored

by both Okely (1983) and Sibley (1981) yet, unfortunately,
these are distinctions which continue to be applied in
comparing Gypsies (real nomads) to New Age Travellers
(deviants) – eg: Government policies, cited by Wilkin
(1998:115) – as well as between early New Age Travellers (real
travellers) and the later arrivals to the scene (deviants) – eg:
Hetherington (2000). Sibley (1995:102) describes the “enduring

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stereotypes of Gypsies … as a constituent part of the rural
scene” and goes on to state that
Stereotypes often include elements of place so that
discrepancy or acceptance depend on the degree to
which a group stereotype matches the place in which it
is located (1995:102)

Whilst it may be extending the point slightly to suggest that

Gypsies will actually find ‘acceptance’ in rural places, it is no
great surprise that Wilkin’s (1998) empirical study of council
policies for Travellers found that rural areas have better
provision. Urban Gypsies are seen as doubly-deviant since their
stereotypes are simply not located in urban places, and little
provision is made for them here (Wilkin, 1998). There is plenty
of historical evidence to show that Gypsies have always had a
connection to urban areas (Okely, 1983:30), yet the rural myth
has persisted, not only as a “yardstick against which outsiders
are measured” (Sibley, 1981:6) but perhaps more as a
yardstick with which to beat them! Sibley (1995:102) laments
the way “Gypsies in the city are likely to appear out of place
and to be represented in negative and malign terms” but then
goes on to locate New Age Travellers firmly in the countryside
(1995:106-107). In fact, many studies connect New Age
Travellers with a desire for rural life (Cresswell, 1996; Halfacree,
1996; Hetherington, 200; Rojek, 1988; Sibley, 1995) and this
assumption is as problematic for New Age Travellers as it has
been for Gypsies (Okely, 1983; Sibley, 1981; 1995), resulting in
an ongoing distinction between ‘real’ New Age Travellers and
“town-based squatters, crusties and buskers” (Hetherington,
2000:70). Just as “the Gypsies can only survive as a group
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within the context of a larger economy and society” (Okely,
1983:30), the same can also be said of New Age Travellers, and
this has often necessitated urban living.

Greg Martin’s ‘Generational differences amongst New Age

Travellers’ (1998) attempts to explain this error by looking at
the social context within which people went on the road.Martin
(1998) suggests that the earlier New Age Travellers, who
formed the original ‘convoy’ and free festival circuit in the
1970s, were people who “gave up the relative security of their
jobs and their homes, and opted for what they believed to be
an existence that offered a better quality of life” (1998:741). In
contrast, those who went on the road in the mid to late 1980s
were largely “economic refugees” who were “forced to do so for
want of any reasonable alternative” (1998:745). This has an
interesting relevance to Berger’s (1979) ‘cultures of survival /
cultures of progress’, referred to by Sibley (1981:13-14). Berger
(1979) asserts that the peasantry represent “a class apart” who
“maintained or developed their own unwritten laws and codes
of behaviour, their own rituals and beliefs, their own orally
transmitted body of wisdom and knowledge, their own
medicine, their own techniques and sometimes their own
language” (1979:197) and can thus be identified with other
“peripheral group cultures” (Sibley, 1981:14). This kind of
peasant culture, then, is said to be a “culture of survival” which
“envisages the future as a sequence of repeated acts for
survival” (Berger, 1979:204). “Cultures of progress”, on the
other hand, are those that predominate in modern society and

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are concerned with expansion: “they are forward looking
because the future offers ever larger hopes” (1979:204). If we
apply this to Martin’s (1998) analysis of generational
differences, it could be said that the convoy was born of a
culture of progress, at a time when they were “privileged
enough to fight for quality of life issues” (1998:741). However,
by the 1980s there was far more emphasis on survival as a
result of Thatcherite policies which led to high unemployment,
homelessness and increasing restrictions in the benefit system
(1998:745).

Many of the New Age Travellers in Martin’s (1998) study

recognized the irony of their decision to go on the road, to
provide themselves with cheap accommodation in the face of
unemployment and homelessness, as being “entirely consistent
with the prevailing political ideology of personal responsibility
and enterprise” and felt that “the Governments reaction [w]as
wholly unreasonable” (1998:749). Of course, when those in
poverty find an “innovative counter-measure” it is always, as
Bauman (1998b:39) stated, destined to be outlawed. For, just
as Cohen (1980, cited by Sibley, 1995:40) said
Our society as presently structured will continue to
generate problems for some of its members … and
then condemn whatever solutions these groups find.

Yet, while the numbers have undoubtedly diminished, New Age

Travellers, like other travelling cultures before them, have
persisted (Sibley, 1986). Berger (1979) was pessimistic about
the continuing survival of the peasantry but nonetheless he

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presented a model of a culture which has lived at the margins
of the dominant culture and survived through adaptation and a
degree of self-sufficiency (1979:197). Whatever has happened
to New Age Travellers since the introduction of the Criminal
Justice and Public Order Act in 1994 – whether they have fled
the country as Martin (2002:749) suggested, or simply found
ways to stay out of the public consciousness – there is a distinct
lack of academic literature concerning the ways in which New
Age Travellers have adapted and survived.

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References
Barth, F (1975) ‘The social organization of a pariah group in
Norway’ in Rehfisch, F (ed) (1975) Gypsies, Tinkers and
Other Travellers London: Academic Press

Bauman, Z (1998a) Globalization: The Human

Consequences Cambridge: Polity Press

Bauman, Z (1998b) Work, Consumerism and the New Poor

Buckingham: Open University Press

Berger, J (1979) Pig Earth London: Writers & Readers

Publishing Co-op

Cohen, S (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The

Creation of the Mods and Rockers London: MacGibbon &
Kee

Cresswell, T (1996) In Place, Out of Place: Geography,

Ideology and Transgression Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press

Cresswell, T (2001) The Tramp in America London: Reaktion

Books

Cresswell, T (2004) Place: A Short Introduction Oxford:

Blackwell

Cresswell, T (2006) On the Move: Mobility in the Modern

Western World London: Routledge

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Davis, J, Grant, R & Locke, A (1994) Out of Site, Out of Mind:
New Age Travellers and the Criminal Justice and Public
Order Bill London: The Children’s Society

Halfacree, K (1996) ‘Out of place in the country: Travellers and

the “rural idyll”’ in Antipode 28 (1) 42-71

Hetherington, K (2000) New Age Travellers: Vanloads of

Uproarious Humanity London: Cassell

Levinson, M & Sparkes, A (2004) ‘Gypsy identity and

orientations to space’ in Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography 33 (6) 704-734

Lowe, R & Shaw, W (1993) Travellers: Voices of the New

Age Nomads London: Fourth Estate

Martin, G (1998) ‘Generational differences amongst New Age

Travellers’ in Sociological Review 46 (4) 735-756

Martin, G (2002) ‘New Age Travellers: uproarious or uprooted?’

in Sociology 36 (3) 723-735

Okely, J (1983) The Traveller-Gypsies Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Rehfisch, F (ed) (1975) Gypsies, Tinkers and Other

Travellers London: Academic Press

Rodaway, P (2004) ‘David Sibley’ in Hubbard, P, Kitchin, R &

Valentine, G (2004) Key Thinkers on Space and Place
London: Sage

Rojek, C (1988) ‘The convoy of pollution’ in Leisure Studies 7

(1) 20-31

Shields, R (1991) Places on the Margin: Alternative

Geographies of Modernity London: Routledge

Sibley, D (1981) Outsiders in Urban Societies Oxford:

Blackwell

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Sibley, D (1986) ‘Persistence or change? Conflicting
interpretations of
peripheral minorities’ in Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 4 (1) 57–70

Sibley, D (1995) Geographies of Exclusion: Society and

Difference in the West London: Routledge

Sibley, D (1999) ‘Outsiders in society and space’ in Anderson, K

& Gale, F (eds) (1999) Cultural Geographies 2nd edition
Australia: Longman

Webster, L & Millar, J (2001) Making a living: Social

security, social exclusion and New Travellers – Summary
of Findings [online] Available at
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/pdf/521.pd
f Accessed 21/10/2008

Wilkin, K (1998) ‘Sustainable social exclusion: the case of land-

use planning and newer travellers’ in Critical Social Policy 18
(1) 103-120

Bibliography

Caplow, T (1940) ‘Transiency as a cultural pattern’ in

American Sociological Review 5 (5) 731-739

Collin, M (1997) Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy

Culture and Acid House London: Serpent’s Tail

Cresswell, T (1999) ‘Embodiment, power and the politics of

mobility: female tramps and hoboes’ in Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 24 (2) 175-192

Cresswell, T (2002) ‘Theorizing Place’ in Verstraete, G &

Cresswell, T (eds) (2002) Mobilizing Place, Placing Mobility:
The Politics of Representation in a Globalized World
Amsterdam: Rodopi

Dearling, A & Gubby (1998) No Boundaries: New Travellers

on the Road (Outside of England) Lyme Regis: Enabler
Publications
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Earle, F, Dearling, A, Whittle, H, Glasse, R & Gubby (1994) A
Time to Travel: An Introduction to Britain’s Newer
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Liégeois, JP (1987) Gypsies and Travellers Strasbourg:

Council of Europe

Maffesoli, M (1996) The Time of Tribes: The Decline of

Individualism in Mass Society London: Sage

Sandford, J (1975) Gypsies London: Abacus

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