Transcript Mobilities and the well-being agenda Tony Gatrell Dean, School of Health & Medicine Lancaster University CeMoRe Research Day May 25th.

Mobilities and the well-being
agenda
Tony Gatrell
Dean, School of Health & Medicine
Lancaster University
CeMoRe Research Day
May 25th
Lack of visibility of health in mobilities
literature
For example:
• Cresswell ‘On the Move’
• Adey ‘ Mobility’
• Moran ‘On Roads’
So please regard this presentation in part as a general
invitation to explore connections
Some existing and potential areas of intersection
between ‘mobilities’ and ‘health’
•
Travel – the journey itself and the positive and negative affect it creates;
impact of journeys on others’ health and well-being
•
Migration – the ordinary experiences and extra-ordinary sufferings of migrants
•
Diffusion- the spread of infections and responses to these – impact of timespace convergence and socio-political responses (biosecurity)
•
Communication – the impact of new technologies on health and well-being
•
Care – the delivery of this in mobile settings, the seeking out of care abroad,
the movements of health professionals and the impacts of these
•
Many of these covered in ‘Mobilities & Health’ (Gatrell, forthcoming in
Ashgate series, November 2011); rich theoretical and empirical pickings...
Well-being
• Subjective wellbeing concerns people’s self-reported
wellbeing (e.g. life satisfaction, happiness, psychological
wellbeing).
• ‘Global evaluation’ questions are those which aim to
generate overall cross-cutting measures of people’s
experience of life (e.g. All things considered, are you satisfied
with your life?).
• ‘Domain evaluation’ questions are those which aim to
generate overall measures of people’s experience with
particular aspects of life (e.g. work, health, material
wellbeing, relationships, social support, quality of local area,
environment).
Measuring well-being
“All things considered, how satisfied would you say you are with
your life these days? Please tell me on a scale of 1 to 10,
where 1 means very dissatisfied and 10 means very satisfied”
“Taking all things together on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy
would you say you are? Here 1 means you are very unhappy
and 10 means you are very happy”.
• But the well-being agenda seems to be settings-based or
place-based (for countries, or cities, or workplaces)
• Well-being ‘on the move’ seems to be ignored.
Life satisfaction and happiness index by
country
Travel
So, plenty of evidence that well-being is affected by ‘place’,
but the well-being literature (and associated policy
documents) tend to neglect travel itself as a contributor to
well-being.
Journey as: adventure, experience, escape, therapy,
exercise.
Solitary or undertaken with others.
Any mode of travel can contribute, but experiences can
vary, and context matters.
Poetry in motion (walking)
Simon Armitage:
‘there’s a sense of creativity about it, and a sense of wellbeing that you
are getting the organs and the lungs and the blood moving. You never
come back from a walk feeling worse’.
Andrew Motion:
‘the rhythm of walking and rhythm of writing and poetry are very easily
combined...the movement of the body releases a poem and then confirms
its rhythmic identity...walking gives you ideas, unblocks blockages, sets up
rhythms in your head’
(interviews in the Guardian newspaper, 17 November 2010).
Care
Delivery of this via mobile technologies or online can
contribute to well-being, building network capital
This applies in generic contexts as well as in specific
circumstances (e.g. ‘disasters’ such as 2001 FMD
outbreak) or for particular user communities.
Key messages
For ‘mobilities’ community – please engage with the
broad health agenda
For ‘well-being’ and ‘happiness gurus’ – don’t ignore
the role that mobilities, real and virtual, actual or
potential, can contribute to well-being.