Decolonising Mobility: Disrupting Routes and Transport Practices from the Global South

Keywords: Mobility Justice, Decolonising, Transport Geography, South Asia
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 19

Abstract

Transport infrastructures in the Global South are typically envisaged along the triadic compass of speed, efficiency and safety. Large investments in motorways and high speed rail networks have often worked to the detriment of public transport in the fastest urbanising cities in developing countries. Transport planning reflects continuities with modernist development assumptions imbibed by ‘technocratic experts’ who belong to new elite coalitions in neoliberal-nationalist contexts (Basu, 2019). This paper argues for a decolonial approach to transport planning by focusing on the mobility experiences of motorised and non motorised mobility operators in pandemic contexts in India and Bangladesh. Empirically focusing on ‘everyday routes’ and myriad practices of disruption, trespassing and conflict it entails, the paper reveals an alternative to linear approaches to mobility. Highlighting how everyday journeys of mobility providers are networked assemblages of social and political relations which are in contestation with planning and policy regimes, this paper advances a decolonial approach to mobility planning.