No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Tourism is a large umbrella that primarily encompasses travel and movement. Within movement comes the idea of mobility. Mobility is the movement of things and people from one place to another. When students move across international borders, this is referred to as mobility by international students. Every year international students travel to foreign countries for study purposes, which falls directly within the tourism concept of mobility. The study, therefore, set out to find out what the experiences of international students were interms of mobility in Sweden. This was done by conducting semi-structured interviews of 8 international students, all studying different programs at Swedish universities, with a majority from Dalarna University, a university situated in Dalarna County. Dalarna county, Sweden, is in the Northern part of Europe. Sweden is becoming a popular study destination for students from within the European Union for Erasmus, a short exchange study period offered by Higher Education within Europe. Sweden has, over the years, become so popular as a study destination that students come from other parts of the world for a high standard of education. All these international students have different experiences when making their way to their universities of choice and face various obstacles which are subjective to them. This study focuses on the experiences of international students mobility. In particular, what experiences they have had collectively and individually, how these current students view mobility and how it can be improved for prospective students.

In the mediated narrative about Lampedusa as a destination, thetourist’s mobility is indicating consumption. The recommendation of a boatride off Lampedusa’s coast to best experience/consume Lampedusa’s beauty,stands in great contrast to the boat rides in the narrative of the mobility ofthe migrant/refugee. This research is investigating the mediation andmobility processes working in the narrative of Lampedusa’s social structuresas a destination for the two human mobility categories the Tourist and theMigrant/Refugee. Mediated material concerning the two categories of humanmobility, the tourist and the migrant/refugee has been collected on theInternet. Material from two tourist destination communication platforms isillustrating the mobility of the tourist and the narrative of Lampedusa as atourist destination. While material from two humanitarian-aidcommunication platforms serve to illustrate the narrative of the mobility ofthe migrant/refugee and of the humanitarian crisis at the destination and itssurrounding waters. In order to a get fuller understanding of the mediatednarrative of Lampedusa I have added articles from English and Italianspeaking online news channels. The included material is selected following anon-probability, purposive sampling method. The result of the studydemonstrates that by maintaining the meditated narrative of the tourist as aconsumer, the mobility of the tourist is weakening the mobility of themigrant/refugee. And the narrative of Lampedusa is reinforcing the socialpower structures of the tourist from the Global North and themigrant/refugee from the Global South, as a representation of the politicaland moral consensus of postcolonialism.

This thesis explores how gender is understood and conceptualised in mobility relatedurban planning. Mobility is central to urban planning in that it is a determining factorin overall quality of life and in that it shapes people’s experience of an urbanenvironment. Discussions about the social impact of urban planning decisions havemeant that the concept of gender has become a more prominent element of thesediscussions. However, some issues become apparent when a gender perspective isapplied in mobility related urban planning, notably regarding the conceptualisation ofgender and the analysis of gender inequality. Discourse analysis is an opportunity togain insight into the relationship between language and social reality. Therefore, theaim of this thesis is to analyse the discourse on gender found within documents usedto inform policy relating to the topic of gender and mobility in the case of Malmö inSweden. The findings lead to the conclusion that the discourse on gender reflects anunderstanding based on presumed biological characteristics of men and women.Gender is presented as a binary categorisation and the differences between men andwomen are emphasised. With regards to policy and planning decisions, we argue thatthis understanding is analytically limited because it ignores other social dimensionsthat play a part in shaping individuals’ identity and ultimately their experience ofgender and mobility.

Rapid demographic aging in countries around the world has prompted an interest in understanding the mobility patterns of seniors. While much research has been conducted in terms of motorized modes, the promotion of healthy aging argues for new research to investigate the multi-modal travel behavior of seniors including active travel. It is generally agreed that walking is a convenient, safe, and adequate activity for all ages and particularly for seniors, because it places the right amount of stress on their joints. It also is an inexpensive mode of transportation under a wide range of circumstances and can help achieve physical activity guidelines without imposing additional time demands. The objectives of this dissertation are fourfold. The first two objectives investigate the factors that influence use, length, frequency of two motorized (transit and car) and one active mode of transportation (walking) of seniors. The third objective is to introduce a concept of Compliance Potential Mapping (CPM) that produces maps to show spatial variation in percentage of physical activity requirements seniors obtain from their regular walking for transport. Finally, the dissertation implements a street segment sampling approach and investigates the attributes of walkable environments from the perspective of seniors. A joint discrete-continuous modeling framework was used to model mode use and trip length simultaneously and, on the other hand, a trivariate ordered probit model was used for estimating the multi-modal trip generation of seniors. CPM concept used simple map algebra operations on maps of spatial variations in trip length and frequency in order to produce potential maps of physical activity compliance. Lastly, the street sampling approach used multinomial spatial scan statistic to detect cluster of street segments where walkability audits can be conducted. Data were drawn from Montreal’s Household Travel Survey of 2008. A broad array of covariates related to personal, mobility tools (possession of driver’s licence and automobile), neighborhood, and accessibility variables were considered in the models of mode use, trip length, and trip frequency for the Montreal Island. The results of the analyses reveal a significant degree of geographical variability in the travel behavior of seniors in the Island. In particular, estimates for seniors with different socio- demographic profiles show substantial intra-urban variability in walking behavior, and the role of neighborhood design attributes and accessibility in influencing the mobility of seniors. Demonstration of CPM indicates that seniors in the central parts of Montreal Island obtain higher percentage of physical activity guidelines from walking, but with variations according to gender, income, possession of driver’s licence and vehicle. The results of the walkability analysis suggest that, other factors being equal, walking is more prevalent in street segments with marked cross–walks, horizontal and vertical mixtures in land uses, and low traffic volume. Other factors being equal, walking was less prevalent in segments with unmarked cross–walks, single residential and/or vacant land use, and high traffic volume. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Number of seniors across Canada is increasing. Regular physical activity among these growing seniors can help them to maintain a healthy lifestyle. However, seniors are not active in their leisure time. This study shows how much seniors are active in travel behavior. In other way, how much walking seniors are undertaking as part of their travel needs and how much it contributes towards their recommended physical activity guidelines. In addition, this study also examines the street-scale built environment that encourages seniors to walk more and drive less.

This dissertation explores the importance of tourism and tourability to contemporary global politics. I argue that the global movement of tourists (declared by the UN World Tourism Organization as a ‘right to tour’) is made possible in part through what I call the production of tourability – the capacity of particular places, bodies, or experiences to be toured and to be seen as worthy of touring. Rather than a natural result of difference, tourability is a political process that involves contestations over what and who counts, how space should be organized, and how and what histories are told. I show that touristic movement is based on a specifically neoliberal mobility – a form of free movement that lays claim to ‘borderlessness’ and infinite access along lines eerily familiar to those claimed by contemporary capital – and use this to argue that the work of making places tourable is also designed in specific ways to facilitate this kind of movement. Thus, being tourable is part of the transnational politics of contemporary governance and is useful to constructing the boundaries of (in)appropriate movement. At the same time, the continual expansion of tourism across the Global South has given ‘being tourable’ important economic and political stakes for life, subjectivity, and land. To understand the interweaving of these stakes and the transnational mobility being produced, I examine two sites where tourability has been thrown into question by those whose work produces it. The first is situated at the tri-border region of the Colombian Amazon on the shores between Brazil and Peru that has, in recent years, seen a boom of tourism development and visitors. This boom has largely operated on the neoliberal designs of movement and contemporary development that promote access to tourable places as an enactment of freedom. Against this backdrop, a story circulating in early 2011 highlighted the decision by members of Nazaret, an indigenous community along the river, to refuse tourists and tour companies entry. Taking up this small and messy act, I interrogate around this refusal to examine how touristic mobility is being made (im)possible in this small corner of the Amazon. The second site is a tour designed by the indigenous Hñähñu community of El Alberto, Mexico, that takes participants on a simulated border-crossing to experience, as so many of these community members have, what it is like to cross the U.S.-Mexico border as an undocumented migrant. Impressive, provocative, complex, and controversial, this tour throws into question both how mobilities are addressed within touristic sites and the creative potential of those who are toured to make use of its practices in ways that further other aims. Using concepts of work, landscapes, circulation, and friction, I explore both production and refusal to elaborate on the transnational politics of tourism as neither a panacea nor as an afterthought, but as a sticky, messy, and significant part of global political life. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Educational attainment in the U.S. continues to be marred by racial and socioeconomic (SES) disparities. Despite decades of research on the predictors of attainment and the decreases in dropout rates, minority-race and low-income youth continue to dropout at higher rates than their White and wealthy peers. Therefore, the question remains, why do many students persist while some drop out? To better understand attainment, an analysis of a nationally representative sample within which attainment is evaluated as part of a process of grade advancement and the nuanced nature that the timing, frequency, and severity of previous life events have on a child’s educational path are addressed is needed. The study presented here is a first step to evaluate the effects of residential mobility and school exclusion history on the attainment of a cohort of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). First, patterns of school exclusion, residential mobility, and dropout over the study period were outlined. Next, the relationships between predictors of dropout and dropout examined. Finally, the effects of the frequency and timing of residential mobility, school exclusion, and other predictors on attainment were explored using discrete time survival analysis. Findings indicate the potential utility of these methods in future research to better understand the process of dropout so more informed interventions can be designed to serve students. / Urban Education