Abstract
Territories and communities have to deal with constant reconfiguration, with one of its main expressions being the intensification of spatial mobility. The changes that occur in rural areas – namely, the gradual decrease of the agriculture sector and, at the same time, the growth of functional dependency in relation to more urbanised areas – have contributed to an exponential increase of spatial movements such as commuting. Moreover, people are not attached to nor do they relate to their communities and neighbourhoods in the ways that they used to. The way people create their own social ties depends on a complexity of sociological factors such as interpersonal relationships based on mutual trust. This chapter measures the level of spatial mobility in different rural spaces and its impact on people’s daily lives. Through survey information, the social changes that take place in two municipalities in southern Portugal will be analysed: São Brás de Alportel, which has gone through an intense process of urbanisation in the last two decades, and Alcoutim, whose regressive demographic trends are widening.
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Notes
- 1.
The survey was applied in the context of a CIES-IUL research project funded by FCT which was intitled “Voluntary associations and local development: public policies, social capital and citizenship”. From this project was written a broader report in portuguese language (see Carmo, 2011).
- 2.
INE – RGPH (2001).
- 3.
Marques da Costa and Marques da Costa (2003) and Marques da Costa (2007) clearly illustrates the relationship between employment basins, mobilities and the urban system in Portugal. Even so, gender studies in this regard have highlighted the persistence of a reductive and potentially discriminatory perspective of this approach to mobilities that focuses mainly on commuting, in the drafting of public policies, especially on transports (Greed, 2006). This question is now starting to be recognised institutionally at national and international level (CIG, 2009).
- 4.
This index is the result of combining six variables that measure the regularity of travel: for supermarket shopping, going to shops and shopping centres, going to the cinema, theatre and concerts, visiting friends or relatives, going to restaurants and cafés and going to bars and clubs.
- 5.
The more intense mobility for these shopping purposes justified dividing this index into ‘very intense’ and ‘intense’.
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do Carmo, R.M., Santos, S. (2012). Between Marginalisation and Urbanisation: Mobilities and Social Change in Southern Portugal. In: Hedberg, C., do Carmo, R. (eds) Translocal Ruralism. GeoJournal Library, vol 103. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2315-3_2
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