Mobility, Migration and Transport

Reviews / Votes

"It seems as though we have never been more on the move. Mobility theorists sketch how our lives are constantly remade by the intertwined movements of bodies, things and information circulating at geographical scales from the local to the global. In this incisive book Colin Pooley questions whether this is really anything new. By forging connections between the scholarly fields of migration, mobility and transport history he brilliantly demonstrates that more links us to than separates us from human movement in the past. Pooley thus challenges historians and mobility scholars alike to re-think their research. The social and ecological dilemmas of contemporary mobility can only be understood in a historical context; writing that history requires closer attention to how everyday and residential travel were entangled with each other and the transport systems that made them possible. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future, present and past of human motion." (Colin Divall, Professor Emeritus of Railway Studies, University of York, UK)

"Human mobility - through migration, everyday movement, transportation, and population shifts - can be understood in a myriad ways. Scholars have framed 'mobility' in the past decade or so as a dynamic and critical concept in studies of sociology and geography. Taking these ideas, and by providing a strong synthesis and interpretation, Pooley's book engages in new and exciting ways with the role of historical readings of mobility, migration and transport. The worlds of people in the past, their mobile lives, are integrated here in a sophisticated, short innovative text, with its underlying argument for an interdisciplinary shift across the way we think, read, teach and research in mobility studies." (Catharine Coleborne, Professor and Head of School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Australia)

"In this valuable and unique book, Pooley calls attention to key connections linking three closely related yet also independently developing fields of scholarship while also pointing the way forward for new, more interdisciplinary research." (Donna R. Gabaccia, Professor of History, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada)

"Pooley has written a revelatory and accessible book that makes the case that students of migration, mobility, and transportation would do well to look to each other in order to deepen their understanding of the human experience - and to do so in historical perspective. Using a combination of international data, a wide set of references, and individual example, Pooley persuasively argues that these three fields together open the way for rich interdisciplinary research and teaching." (Leslie Page Moch, Professor Emerita of History, Department of History, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA)