Reconsidering Mobilization: Smart Transnational Young People in the Allegedly Smart and Open City

• In Event: Mobile Socialities

Abstract

This paper explores the mobile sociality practices of transnational and immigrant young people aged 12-18 as they navigate the political processes of governance and city planning in an effort to influence decision-making about their communities. The paper analyzes a region’s efforts to harness mobile media in both the gathering of information and the analysis of passive data collection for city planning, and explores this in relation to ethnographic data gathered from observations with several small teams of young people intent on influencing city policy around issues of transportation, housing, and mobility. Through this bidirectional analysis, the paper calls into question the ways in which the concept of mobilization is utilized in increasingly divergent ways. On the one hand, the young people in this study have participated in projects of social mobilization in that they have been encouraged to see themselves as agents of change, or part of a social movement for increased equity that honors an increased desire for social mobility. At the same time, these older concepts of social mobilization and of social mobility clash with the concepts of social mobilization that are embedded in ubiquitous computing.

The actions of governmental agencies reveal a belief in mobilization for change that relies on the collection of passive locative data and an instrumental approach to the use of mobile devices by would-be political actors. This approach inadvertently constrains the input that the young political newcomers might have in political processes. Following the insights of Anne Galloway (2004), the paper aims to “shift our focus from ubiquitous computers as networked objects or artefacts, to ubiquitous computing as diverse procedures or performances in which socio-technical assemblages take shape.” The paper thus explores disconnects that emerge between the elite and those at the margins of society regarding concepts of mobility and sociality, and the role of these discordant conceptualizations in the relationships of technologies, actors, and social and cultural practices in emergent forms of self-governance.

Author

• Lynn Schofield Clark, U of Denver