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Under Which Conditions Can Intensive Commuting Be a Way of Life?

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Spatial Mobility, Migration, and Living Arrangements

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Abstract

Travelling extensively for job reasons is often seen as a matter of personal choice, for the sake of one’s own career or family. Yet, evidence on subjective experience of spatial mobility practices remains limited. In this paper, we argue that socio-economic and mobility conditions impact the way people perceive and experience high mobility. A large European sample of highly mobile people were studied to determine to what extent long-distance commuting, long-distance relationships and regular absence from (the main) home for job reasons are perceived as a way of life, i.e. a situation where people have incorporated their practices of high mobility into their private life and shape a positive, lasting vision of them. We show that, in the long run, people making frequent overnight business trips, men, self-employees, those with a high work status and high mobility resources are more likely to see their mobility as positive. Long-distance commuters living with partner and children and those firmly settled in their place of residence tend to see their mobility as a necessity. Finally, women, single parents, people with a low work status, low mobility resources and poor access to transport facilities are more likely to perceive their mobility negatively, which can be seen as a forced mobile way of life. High positions at work were found to be a better predictor of a mobile way of life than education. Overall, this study shows that work-related high mobility may reinforce gender and social inequalities. Besides migration, long-distance commuting and frequent travel for job reasons should receive more attention in current debates and research on work-family balance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more information on the project, go to http://www.jobmob-and-famlives.eu/

  2. 2.

    For the present study, the Belgian data were excluded from the analyses as questions regarding motility were only partially posed in this country.

  3. 3.

    Student population (whose mobility would warrant a study in its own right) was not included in the analytic sample.

  4. 4.

    For more information on the project, go to http://www.eurocities-datta.eu/

  5. 5.

    This grouping was likewise clearly interpretable from the two main axes of the factor analysis – positive perception vs. negative perception and long term vs. short term (33 % and 23 % of the explained variance respectively).

  6. 6.

    The goal of a correspondence analysis is to identify the main underlying dimensions (or factors) that can explain covariations among the multiple variables. The two orthogonal axes represent the two major explanatory factors, on which the categories of the different variables are localized (factorial scores). All the parameters were selected as active variables, meaning that they contribute to the construction of the factorial axes. The two factorial axes can be interpreted based on the categories of the variables located at the extremes of the two axes and contributing more to the interpretation of the factor. The horizontal axis (first factor) is related to respondents’ position in the life course. People at early life stages (young people, people living alone) had high scores on the axis, while people at later stages (supervisors and managers, older people) had weak scores. The vertical axis (second factor) was primarily defined by three parameters: the type of mobility, gender and the single-parent family category, which holds a marginal position. Overnighters and men figured on the top half of this axis, while long-time commuters, women and single parents figured on the lower half.

  7. 7.

    For more information on this typology, see Kaufmann et al. 2010.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their heartfelt thanks to John Urry for his insightful comments to earlier versions of this paper, although he is not necessarily in agreement with the authors’ point of view.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, 18 Buccleuch Place, EH8 9LN, Edinburgh, UK

    Gil Viry

  2. Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LaSUR), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin

Authors
  1. Gil Viry
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  2. Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin
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Correspondence to Gil Viry .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, Bremen University of Applied Sciences, Bremen, Germany

    Can M. Aybek

  2. Universität Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Johannes Huinink

  3. Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW and WU), Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Raya Muttarak

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Viry, G., Vincent-Geslin, S. (2015). Under Which Conditions Can Intensive Commuting Be a Way of Life?. In: Aybek, C., Huinink, J., Muttarak, R. (eds) Spatial Mobility, Migration, and Living Arrangements. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10021-0_5

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