Keywords

1.1 Introduction

Human mobility is currently one of the central topics of interest to the social sciences around the world. It takes on different forms, which include migration and tourism, and is an element of scientific reflection due to the relationships and overlaps presupposed by these flows. Tourism is a form of mobility of variable duration, which in turn generates further forms of migration: (i) those activated by the demand for services from tourists, (ii) those linked to second homes, (iii) those dependent on seasonal cycles in the labour market, (iv) those linked to changes in lifestyles and (v) those linked to new habits of elderly people and pensioners. Starting at the beginning of the last decade (2000–2010), the problem of redefining the concepts of migration and tourism was considered, as well as the need to carry out new research on the synergistic relationship between migration and tourism (Hall and Williams 2002). Many forms of migration do in fact generate flows of tourists, as immigrant communities can become hubs for such flows, while simultaneously activating return tourism flows for visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and for maintaining relationships with the country and culture of origin. These transformations in the nature of human mobility developed between the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first in a context of advanced globalisation following significant changes in public policy due to technological innovations and economic changes. These new forms of mobility in turn influenced social and cultural development and were supported by increasingly globalised information. In contemporary culture, global phenomena and local development are strongly interrelated. Human mobility is one of the most significant expressions of this interrelationship.

1.2 Human Mobility in the 1960s and 1970s: The Prerequisites for Identifying the Phenomenon

Research into the phenomenon we now call “human mobility” intertwined from the very beginning with comparative research in the social sciences. The researchers initially focused their attention primarily on the mobility of the population within metropolitan areas. This was due to the fact that the variable of commuting had been chosen in defining the size of a metro area and its components, core and ring. In effect, the first forms of urbanisation saw places of production and places of residence concentrated in specific areas, and the phenomenon of commuting was easily identifiable and predictable. These reflections had taken their cue from the concepts expressed in one of the best known and most widely distributed sociology texts of the early twentieth century (Park and Burgess 1921). Park et al. (1925) then developed a model in which the urban structure is identified via concentric zones, including the central business district, the zone of transition containing the residential areas in a phase of degradation and finally the working class and residential zones and the commuter zone. The city was therefore identified as a living organism in continual transformation, in which the concentric circles could change their hierarchy on the basis of the different stages of development. Apart from this potential for change, the urban structure remained predominantly stable in the case in which the power of planning to orient and change was prevalent.

The concept of dynamism of the urban structure became a priority in research from the 1960s onwards. The Social Science Research Council’s Committee on Urbanisation noted the need to identify a reference model for urban development capable of demonstrating its validity beyond the limits of geography and time. However, the attempt to identify a reference model was soon bogged down by the principles of ideological contrast that governed the world at the time. For the free market economies, the phenomenon of urbanisation was unstoppable and the resulting problems and conflicts inevitable. Public administrations could have taken measures to reduce the undesired social and economic effects. In planned economies, on the other hand, the problems were considered from completely the opposite point of view; the urban-rural contrast was seen as a tool to contribute to the destruction of the traditional lifestyle of inhabitants of rural areas. Jones (1975), in his “Essay on World Urbanisation” for the International Geographical Union (IGU), held that the widespread phenomenon of urbanisation in countries around the world referred to such a large number of variables that it would be impossible, as well as irrational, to draw up a common summary of such a phenomenon.

Jensen (1976) attempted to perform comparative analysis of the urban environments in the USA and the Soviet Union. He concluded, however, that due to the different historical experiences and different stages of economic development, it was not particularly significant to perform comparative analyses and it was more appropriate to analyse the dominant themes of the two countries’ urban development. Among these, the policy for reducing the growth of the largest urban areas is significant. From 1958 onwards in the Soviet Union, new industrial plants were built only in urban areas with a population of between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, on condition that they did not then exceed a population of 250–300,000. Berry (1976a) found that a fundamental change had begun in the 1970s in the USA, when the American metropolises grew at a slower rate than in the past, and on the contrary even began losing population – around 1.8 million people between 1970 and 1974 – in favour of areas outside the metro regions.

In the same period, the Stockholm Conference (1972) confirmed worries about excessive atmospheric pollution, and the process of introducing new environmental policies began at the worldwide level. The deteriorating environmental situation led to numerous major international meetings between the end of the 1960s and the early part of the following decade, when a more concentrated and significant series of events highlighted the onset of environmental risk on a worldwide scale, among these, the formation of the Club of Rome (1968), the promotion of the Man and Biosphere (MAB) programme by UNESCO (1971) and the Stockholm Conference, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, UNCHE (1972).

Berry (1976a) reported that there was no longer an indistinct movement of population, but that it was limited to particular social and economic groups who were more sensitive to innovative phenomena moving to new areas, leaving the less dynamic groups behind them. Berry (1976a) called this phenomenon “freedom to move”, which he justified with the desire for a better quality of life in residential areas closer to nature and in regions where it is easier to grasp the opportunities offered by the new phases of economic development. This phenomenon is the result of a number of decisions taken individually within an individualist, yet extremely contagious, cultural position. Berry’s work (1976a) therefore shows the first attempts to identify the phenomenon of human mobility. This must be understood as a complex phenomenon in which individual options and choices overlap with policies on national and international migration implemented by public players. Berry (1976b) also encouraged verification of the findings from the USA in other countries around the world.

Drewett et al. (1976) analysed the situation in the UK, noting that changes in the population distribution were due only to natural changes and migration. They hoped, however, that subsequent research would aim towards a better understanding of the social and economic implications of the changes in progress, above all in terms of the roles of the different social groups. Berry’s research (1976b) had an immediate impact on European research as well; indeed, even as the first results were arriving from the USA, a group of researchers coordinated by Roy Drewett (who had collaborated with Brian Berry) presented a research project proposal entitled The Costs of Urban Growth (CURB) to the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (Vienna Centre). The CURB project was approved and operated between 1975 and 1982, when the first volume was published (v.d. Berg et al. 1982). The Vienna Centre had been set up by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) to coordinate comparative research projects in the social sciences and to encourage cooperation between European countries with planned economies and those with free market economies. Previously, between 1963 and 1973, the Vienna Centre had coordinated a project titled “The economic and sociological problems of tourism in Europe”, involving research groups from 12 countries.

The topic of urban change was a particularly delicate one to take on, considering the debate around it in the preceding years. A balance was found in recognition of the fact that urban growth was a burdensome phenomenon to deal with, regardless of the economic system of each country. All the European States, moreover, needed to further analyse a topic to which the social sciences had paid little attention, mainly for methodological reasons. Up to that point, research on urban areas had been performed mainly by geographers, including in the USA. Input from economists was missing, and as a result, the increase in costs related to urban growth had not been quantified. Sociologists had identified the problems related to social imbalances, but had not provided the costs. For this reason, the CURB project had proposed measuring the demographic and economic changes and the extent of the urbanised areas in order to identify the human, economic and environmental costs, aiming to involve all branches and skill sets of the social sciences.

As well as the internal costs of the urban area, it was also necessary to add costs relating to areas the city is able to influence, the size of which would represent a topic for study and analysis. For this reason, as the research proceeded, the concept of functional urban region (FUR) was gradually identified and developed. This definition was later enhanced by the introduction of the “core” and “ring” concepts in order to also take in the external areas of influence. The logical model adopted by CURB to identify the main relationships in the urban system provided three lines of evolution, the result of decisions concerning policies for (i) the location of industrial areas, (ii) the organisation of recreational activities and (iii) the services provided. Three levels of analysis corresponded to these lines. At the first level were the number, the quality and the location of jobs, together with the size, quality and location of the areas reserved for recreation, and the location and quality of social infrastructure. At the second level was analysis of the time to reach the workplace, size, quality and location of the residential areas and the difficulty in overcoming social imbalances. At the third level was analysis of the accessibility, in both hard and soft terms, of the workplaces, recreational areas and geography of the infrastructures.

The results of the CURB project showed that it is not the economic and political/administrative system which determines differences in urban development, contradicting the numerous theories which, up to that point, had highlighted different relationships between urban growth and free market economies and between urban growth and centralised political/administrative systems. The problems of large urban areas, particularly those deriving from crises or insufficiencies in urban planning, existed in all regions of Europe, albeit with specific characteristics and peculiarities. CURB represented the basis and the occasion for intense scientific discussion, which lasted for several years and produced around 300 working papers. In this way, a scientific path was developed which led to verification of the development of areas from both a macro- and microeconomic point of view, at the international, national and regional levels. The most original aspect of the project – i.e. the theory of growth and decline of the urban areas in the European continent – was built on the processing of this research material. Although particular emphasis had been given in the early stages to specific aspects of the comparability of eastern and western countries, the greatest concern soon became to provide the research with a goal. The objective was to provide an answer to the need to understand urban development trends in advance in order to anticipate problems in this regard. For this reason, CURB was extended to the largest possible number of European countries. The results of CURB were presented at numerous international conferences to be compared with the results of other national and international research projects.

In the first phase of research and comparative analysis, no references were made to human mobility, as there was the danger of conflict with the planned economies, in which the circulation of goods, services and persons was controlled by the state. It could be argued that the free market economies tolerated and maybe even encouraged human mobility in its different forms of migration and tourism. The planned economies did not permit phenomena of human mobility. They highlighted the negative consequences of these phenomena experienced in the West. Despite this, in some Eastern countries, illegal forms of spontaneous urban migration were recorded, which had an impact on the quality of life of the citizens. With regard to the USA, Berry (1976b) points to phenomena of individualism that have always prevailed in American history, causing an administrative fragmentation also driven by interest groups using the principles of democratic pluralism to their advantage. Berry (1976b) found it appropriate to cite Warner (1968), who pointed out that US cities depended on the sum total of the success, or conversely on the lack of success, of that plethora of private enterprises operating independently of the actions of the public administration for their own economic success and prosperity. The form, the characteristics and the organisation of American cities therefore depended on the actions of large-scale companies, the goal of which was their own profits and, at times, their own speculative activities. In any case, private enterprise is able to move more rapidly than public bodies and therefore able to follow the demand from the population more quickly or even to anticipate it.

The political atmosphere in Europe began to change, and on 1 August 1975, the Helsinki Declaration, the first official document of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, was signed; this was an attempt to improve East-West relations. During his first decade as president of the Vienna Centre, Adam Schaff threw himself into activities supporting the preparation of the Helsinki Declaration, and following this promoted a series of meetings dedicated to semiotic analysis of the declaration (Villaine-Gandossi 1991).

In the CURB project as well, as with other international gatherings, the researchers from countries with centralised economies held positions that were officially different from those expressed by the researchers from free market countries. The former denied the existence of an urban development model, since the countries of Eastern Europe had concentrated their efforts on developing production and settlements in the context of a rural type of “urban network”. For this reason, the work of v. d. Berg et al. (1982, p. 5) stated that the form, purpose and path of development of an urban settlement are the consequence of socioeconomic development, geographical conditions, institutional characteristics and finally of citizens’ choices. As these conditions were significantly different in the countries with centralised economies, the results should have been different. Enyedi (1992), who had participated in CURB in his quality of member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, retraced the urban history of the cities of Eastern Europe after 1988. Significant differences emerged between what had been theorised and what had happened. He wrote that Eastern European researchers, in their official declarations, referred to the Soviet model, as they had no choice in the matter. In reality, however, those responsible for town planning in the Eastern European cities paid close attention to the Western models. Alongside the official positions, there was also an “informal” policy which had an impact on urban development which was much greater than might have been envisaged at the end of the 1980s.

1.3 Human Mobility in the 1980s: Recognition of the Phenomenon as a Research Subject

In the 1980s, significant transformations in the world production system and major changes in the economic, political and social structure in Europe occurred. In order to analyse the roots and the significance of those changes, the European Science Foundation (ESF) promoted a series of conferences and seminars between 1985 and 1988 with the goal of defining the characteristics of the new map of Europe, which was then being traced out. The discussion initially examined the prevailing tendencies of the world economy, its consequences at the national and local levels and at the same time the processes of change in the core and peripheral regions around the world. Problems pertaining to the core-periphery relationship were also considered, both at the global and European level. The problem faced by the participants at these meetings was that of justifying the weakening, and in some cases the reversing, of the clear trend towards counter-urbanisation, a phenomenon already identified in the preceding years and which many thought would continue for at least several decades. The meetings promoted by the ESF had in fact highlighted the onset of a powerful push towards new regional polarisation in a world increasingly dominated by the innovations brought by new IT and internationalisation of the economy. In 1987 a conference was organised in Jerusalem to consider issues related to the globalisation of economic phenomena, while the impact of these changes on the geography of the European States and regions was considered in Bergen the following year (Shachar and Öberg 1990; Hebbert and Hansen 1990). The results obtained during the feasibility stage of the project and the topical nature of the research areas identified made it possible to prepare a research project proposal on “Regional and Urban Restructuring in Europe (RURE)”; this proposal was approved by the ESF towards the end of 1989. Indeed, there was significant interest in predicting the characteristics of the new European regional and urban structure that would result from the economic, organisational, technological, geopolitical and sociocultural processes in progress in those years. The programme prioritised the study of regional changes set in action by the transformations to the production system, new operational strategies and methods of multinational companies, demographic changes and the population’s ability to adapt to the new economic processes. To this end, RURE was structured into four working groups (WGs) responsible for studying the following topics: “Changes in the organisation and operation in the production system” (WG 1, chairperson E. Shamp), “Strategies and operations of transnational corporations” (WG 2, chairperson M. de Smidt), “Population processes in the urban and regional system” (WG 3, chairperson A. Montanari) and “Societal responses to changes in the production system” (WG 4, chairperson J. Gaspar).

At the time of the launch, the numerous changes involving the European economic and social structure due to the collapse of the Soviet Union were superimposed with the methodological clarity and consistency of that project. Some of the transformations that had only been vaguely hypothesised in the pre-feasibility phase of the project proposal quickly became highly topical, requiring revision of the research projects already underway. In some cases, this led to the study of new topics – via the introduction of ad hoc groups – and greater collaboration and integration between the different WGs. The ad hoc WGs which met during the Lisbon Conference (February 1991) were as follows: car manufacturing (chairperson W. Gaebe), advanced producers services (chairperson F. Moulaert), tourism (chairperson A. Montanari), housing (chairperson J. V. Weesep), industrial districts (chairperson A. Amin), rural and peripheral areas (chairperson J. Oksa), atlases and GIS (chairperson C. Vandermotten) and research proposal on Southern European integration (chairpersons J. Gaspar and A. Shachar). These eight groups approached and developed topics that had not been sufficiently considered when preparing the project proposal. The “tourism and economic development (RURETOUR)” group was transformed into a full WG with its own independent scientific activities and working meetings. To this end, it collaborated with the most active European researchers in the sector, including some external to the RURE Programme.

The results from RURE were published in around 20 books and special issues of journals (Malberg 1996). Around 70 scholars from 21 European countries took part in the programme, primarily geographers, but also economists and sociologists. The working groups met twice a year. Each year, moreover, a topic was chosen for a conference (urban and regional restructuring in southern Europe, in central Europe, in northern Europe) during which the RURE programme compared its results with research performed by other academics, including those with different disciplinary approaches. The research was led by two codirectors – Arie Shachar (University of Jerusalem) and Sture Öberg (University of Uppsala and IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria) – who operated within a management committee in which the heads of the four research groups and the coordinators of the annual conferences participated.

RURE had to deal with numerous problems as soon as it got underway. One initial problem was the speed of the geopolitical transformations occurring in Europe in the late 1980s: never in the post-war period (in other words, since multinational comparative research programmes on urban and regional changes in Europe had begun) had such a multitude of profound economic, political and social transformations taken place. It was no longer possible, for example, to divide the European countries into free market and centrally planned economies. The economies that had been subject to central planning had begun a rapid transition towards new and different economic systems. The free market economies seemed to be keeping to their own line in terms of economic policy, but in reality had to adapt to a world which was no longer simply black and white. RURE, on the other hand, had been conceived in a period, later recognised as being one of great stability and continuity, in which urban and regional transformations were considered almost exclusively as the result of phenomena internal to the system, though within the context of internationalisation of the economy. RURE, therefore, which had already been defined but was no longer completely up-to-date in all its components, was presented to the participants – selected when the research programme had already been defined – to carry out, and it was received with some controversy.

It is fatal when, in times of crisis of a research project in which the initially chosen goal is no longer identifiable, rigidities owing to different mindsets, methodological habits and, above all, different schools of thought re-emerge. Schools of thought that in some cases were sharply cut down to size by the evidence of what was occurring, and had lost part of their identity, found it more difficult to regain a logical line of reasoning. This new situation was discussed in particular during the meetings of the working groups and the managing committee in the autumn of 1991, without managing to provide sufficient answers to the impending events. Reopening the discussion at the general level would have perhaps been fatal for the entire RURE programme, and for this reason, each working group was left to face and deal with the problems on the basis of its own individual choices and management abilities. This was done by dividing the working groups into subgroups to cover the different topics, allowing to express themselves to the best of their ability in their own cultural and methodological area. Although they were part of a common system of coordination, the subgroups were formed on the basis of free individual participation; they identified their own lines of research and put together their own publications. This occurred in working groups 1 and 2 after intense discussion and fiery methodological confrontations. In working group 3 (RUREPOP), the discussion was possibly even more heated. With all the exasperation of this conflict, the researchers still managed to find a strong spirit of scientific solidarity. This led to the identification of three common topics to which all group members gave their contribution, without forming subgroups, following a conceptual plan based on the relationship between society, the economy and the territory. Three typologies were considered in relationship to development cycles, changes in the organisation of production and strongly rooted structural processes.

It was in this atmosphere of uncertainty and profound scientific conflict that the foundations were laid for the study of human mobility. RURE WG 3 concentrated its activities on the qualitative changes in migration flows. The reference was always to migration, but by that point the types of migration were becoming rather numerous. And also for this reason, the term “mass migration” was used: migration that was large in scale yet heterogeneous in its goals and motivation, between regions with different cultures and management abilities in their public administrations. It was pointed out that these flows, even when they did not concern large numbers in absolute terms, were nevertheless able to modify the population distribution both in their countries of origin and countries of arrival (King 1993). The research mooted the possibility of European states introducing policies to contain these flows and succeeding in managing them. The alternative was that these migration flows were uncontrollable and that over the course of a few years there was the possibility they would reach a level of between one and two million immigrants, legal and illegal, per year. These new flows were in addition to the previous ones that had seen populations, above all from southern Europe, find work and set up residence in northern European countries.

At the same time, it was noted that these historical emigrants were beginning to return to their countries of origin, while the flows of skilled international migration and qualified manpower were spreading out. The RURE WG 3 tried, with the RURETOUR WG, to tackle the problem of how the flows “traditionally” considered tourism overlapped with those traditionally considered migration. Specifically, King (1995) examined the changes in the tourism labour market in the post-Fordist period. He also noted that the tourism labour market represents a particular form of attraction for foreign workers, who are often not easily identifiable because it is an informal labour market that escapes official statistics. It was then also noted how the returning migration flows had a significant impact on the tourism sector. These may be temporary or permanent returns, but are nevertheless made after retiring and therefore in forms which are easily comparable to tourism. The returnees also use money they have saved to set up tourism businesses in their places of origin: often, these are pleasant seaside locations in southern Europe, little known to traditional flows of tourists.

1.4 The Theory of Human Mobility Between the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century

There were around ten bodies of scientific work significant for the acceptance of the concept of “human mobility” by the international academic community. Urry’s work (2000) influenced research in the social sciences even before its publication, since he had hinted at its contents in advance at various conferences and some concepts had already been covered in previous publications. Although Urry is a professor of sociology and the stated goal of his work had been the development of categories relevant for the field of sociology, his sensitivity, attention and communication in regards to geography should not be forgotten. It is not surprising that his work was even informally discussed at the IGU conference, August 1996, The Hague (NL). In particular, a meeting between William A. Clark, Armando Montanari, Arie Shachar and Allan Williams is notable, in which the relevance of the subject for geography and the need to prepare the proposal to set up an IGU commission on “Global change and human mobility (GLOBILITY)” was considered.

Urry’s volume (2000) represented a manifesto for sociology which examined the different “mobilities” regarding human beings, goods, images, information and refuse, their interdependencies and the relative social consequences. For this reason, the second part of the title of his work refers to “mobility” for the twenty-first century: mobility is considered a phenomenon that is both geographical and social. When Urry states that social mobility has so far failed to ignore the intersections of social classes, genders and ethnic groups with regions, cities and places, he indicates a new dimension in sociology, no longer anchored to the concept of human society, but by now in search of new paradigms, which can be precisely networks, mobility and horizontal fluidity. Sheller (2011) wrote a historical reflection on the way in which sociology, in the cultural dynamism expressed in the 1990s, provoked widespread discussion between sociologists as well as between academics in the fields of geography, anthropology, architecture, urban planning, media and communications theory and art (Sheller and Urry 2004).

On the basis of this new disciplinary approach, the parameters became those of the sociology of flows, where there are points of neither arrival nor departure, there are no specific reference scenarios, the direction and the speed are more important than the destinations and so characteristics such as viscosity and temporariness come into play; barriers to mobility exist but contain cracks that cannot be ignored. The intersections of the flows and the hierarchical rungs of these cracks are the centres around which power revolves, just as different flows intersect in the “non-places” of modernity. Of the notable authors in this preliminary stage of developing the base concepts, Favel, Sheller and Urry are sociologists; Axhausen and Smith are urban planners; and Cresswell, Hall, Kellerman and Williams are geographers; however, all refer to Urry in their work, regardless of their main academic discipline. All these geographers, with the exception of Kellerman, were involved by Urry in the editorial board of the journal Mobilities, published since 2006 by Routledge and edited by Urry alongside M. Sheller and K. Hannam. Larsen et al. (2006) published the results of research commissioned by the British Ministry of Transport considering five independent types of mobility that form and re-form the geography of networks and of travel in the modern world. These are physical journeys undertaken by people, goods and things, imaginary ones based on memory, virtual ones made via the Internet and those requiring direct communication between people via post, telephone, fax, Skype and videoconferencing.

While the authors complain of the limitations in their mandate, the work is particularly interesting as it transfers and verifies primarily methodological approaches on an empirical level. Indeed, the concept of mobility, in the various ways in which it is considered, does not easily find statistical reference data that can be compared and contrasted in a straightforward way. The gathering of statistical data makes reference to long-acquired concepts and can therefore not offer a quantitative base consistent with theories that have only been very recently formulated and are predominantly methodological. This therefore represents one of the few studies in which combining a quantitative base with a qualitative survey of reference has been possible. Cresswell (2004) published his work in the Short Introduction to Geography series, which includes fairly accessible volumes to facilitate students’ understanding of core geography concepts.

In this volume, the key concept is the “place”, dealt concisely but without ignoring traditional topics and academic debate on human geography, covering the evolution of the concept from the 1950s onwards. The author also manages to discuss the end of the concept of place in relation to mobility, above all comparing Relph’s (1976) approach full of negative moral connotations – for example, when he refers to the “place and placelessness” relationship – with the value of the transitory, temporary and ephemeral in Augé’s (1995) definition of “place and non-place”. According to Relph (1976), it was mobility, therefore the railways and motorways, which destroyed places. The destination is not important, but rather how one arrives there. Cresswell (2004), on the other hand, believed he had found in Augé (1995) the prerequisites for an evolution of the concept of place that presupposed mobility.

In examining the literature, Cresswell (2004) concluded by identifying three approaches to the concept of place: descriptive, social constructionist and finally phenomenological. In a later work, Cresswell (2006) centred on mobility as one of the key concepts of modern life, and to do so he examined social mobility over the last 150 years from many standpoints. He also claimed that the study of human mobility in geography has a history as long as the discipline itself, and therefore anyone trying to describe the positions expressed in this period, would get bogged down and should focus on certain salient points. In this volume, human mobility is thought of as a potentially observable empirical phenomenon, an ideological concept such as freedom, transgression, creativity and life itself, and finally as a fulfilled experience; mobility is practised as a way to exist in the world.

Cresswell (2006) also presupposes a further interpretation: human mobility implies the presence of complex beings, pedestrians and dancers, pilots and athletes, refugees and citizens, tourists and businessmen, men and women. He enters the discussion between the interfaces that form between physical bodies in movement and mobility, represented in order to understand situations which could not otherwise be interpreted. The volume did not miss out on acclaim from Urry, who in a review defined it as a novella that is also a scientific volume thanks to its wealth of details and enlightening theoretical suggestions; in short, it is a must-read. Cresswell (2006), not Attali (2003), whose work is perhaps – to use Urry’s concept again – simply a novella on the history of man, initially a nomad, then stably settled and now becoming a nomad once more, but of a new type.

Kellerman (2006) came to the concept of human mobility using a different approach; for many years, he mainly studied the geography of telecommunications and information. His volume deals with personal mobility, explaining his approach in the first part of his work, making reference to Lash and Urry (1994) and the concept of society in movement. This statement is contrasted by Kellerman, who cites the “homo viator”, the individual who moves both in society and in space, and immediately thereafter reminds us that the greater dimension of mobility was made possible by the invention of the telephone, which permitted a spatial extension of interpersonal relationships and therefore a society based on the mobility of information. He thus focuses his attention primarily on innovation and thereby on the relationship between this and mobility: was it the need for mobility that accelerated innovation or the latter which facilitated mobility?

Another recurring theme is the interface, or rather the interference, between human mobility and personal mobility. He then opens a treatise on the reasons behind mobility, which despite being geographical in nature have not yet been studied in depth by geographers as much as it has been by sociologists. Smith and Favell (2006) collected together ten chapters written by sociologists, political scientists, demographers and ethnographers, which illustrate various aspects of what is defined, maybe too hastily, as a new development of global migration. Financial and commercial flows represent, together with free movement of specialised personnel, technicians and students, a key aspect of globalisation. This work aimed to provide a more in-depth analysis of the discussion about the characteristics of these migrants, on the costs and consequences of the phenomenon of “brain drain” which is the inevitable result of the migration of specialised personnel, the characteristics of national policies on highly skilled migrants and the presumed inevitability of professional migration.

Szelényi (2006) published the results of interviews with 26 university students who had moved to the USA, leaving open the question of whether this was brain “drain, gain or circulation?” Smith and Favell (2006) also gave a glimpse of the interesting implications of a form of invisible “slippage” from controlled migration to mobility without any kind of social friction. The new forms of migration are slowly moving through the classical migration categories, like goods and capital migration is in part turning into temporary mobility that is less visible to countries’ monitoring and surveys. Many new ways of “frictionless mobility” are possible through the use of new forms of temporary movement. Cressell and Dixon (2002) published 14 contributions from around 20 authors, many of whom are geographers. The authors explain the reasons behind their work in the introduction: many geographers use films for their lectures and researches as metaphors, allegories or a means to question the character of representation and a tool to record the day-to-day perception of the world. Three aspects are considered – mobility, identity and didactics – to explain the way the films are used.

The epistemological passage from an existentialist to an anti-existentialist behaviour had a significant effect on how mobility was studied and theorised. Mobility in and of itself does not have a specific meaning, inasmuch as it exists only in relation to the presence of a social and cultural context. This mobility must be structured in such a way as to reproduce or challenge social relationships. Mobility is therefore of lower status than the priorities represented by space, place and landscape. On the basis of the various social and cultural theories, the preoccupation for stability and permanence has been replaced by the fluid, both at the level of theoretical transfer, nomadism and theory of travel, and been the topic of research, fluid space. Mobility is able to capture a certain attitude with regard to the notion of society and space that is expressed in scepticism towards stability, towards that which is entrenched, without uncertainties, and observance of the rules. Concentrating on the mobility included in or around films has the effect of putting our notions of fixity and identity up for discussion.

In the section examining the acquisition of mobility, there is the contribution of Kirsch (2002), who writes about the spectacular violence, hyper-geography and alienation characterising Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Tarantino parodies the popular fiction of the 1930s and 1940s published in so-called pulp magazines, indicating publications printed on low-quality paper and thus implying similarly low-quality writing. Pulp Fiction is a film which is not only timeless but without landscape: the viewer is subject to an unstable vision of modern-day Los Angeles, a hyper-geography composed of a social network of roads and internal spaces, both public and private, all linked together in a relative space.

Hall and Williams (2002) highlighted three topics: migration linked to tourist production, migration due to tourist consumption and finally human mobility resulting from visits to friends and relatives. For some years, Williams and Hall (2000) had been working around the subject of human mobility, and as far back as 2000, an article had already appeared with their early reflections, involving numerous authors who had approached these topics.

Szivas and Riley (2002) examined the characteristics of the job-related mobility of an economy in transition towards the tourist sector through a sample survey (351 questionnaires collected) performed in four different regions in Hungary. Although tourism offers low levels of pay, it has attracted labour from other sectors in crisis, therefore leaving open the question of whether this phenomenon might be permanent or just temporary. Cooper (2002) considered the impact on the labour market of two regions in Australia and one in New Zealand from flows of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese tourists. These tourists do not speak English, and therefore in the initial phase, they encourage a flow of labour and entrepreneurs from their own countries. The second phase is represented by Japanese, Korean and Chinese tourism companies using itinerant labour such as students or Australian and New Zealand nationals who speak the same language as the tourists. Once the labour market becomes more flexible, there is then a third phase characterised by individual tourists from these same countries whose travel is primarily motivated by social relationships and visits to friends and relatives.

Mason (2002) analysed the phenomenon of a significant number of young New Zealanders aged between 18 and 30 who move for a period of time ranging from a few months to a year or two to gain experience abroad, above all in Great Britain. In qualitative terms, this flow is new and original in comparison to tourism and migration and represents a sort of pilgrimage, a rite of passage that does not exclude the typical motivations of push and pull theory which provides for visits to friends and relatives, or places of family origin, and also leaves space for subsequent travel experiences to visit the places of initiation and experience abroad. For Krakover and Karplus (2002), the concept of human mobility is highlighted by the relationships between tourism flows and migration flows in Israel, where the state practices a policy of attracting flows of migrants who could be defined as “ethnic tourists”. In the initial phase, the flow which is activated can be likened to that of tourism for visiting friends and relatives; therefore, there is good information before travel, reduced cost of the stay abroad and finally a support network in the event of decision to remain abroad. The state itself intervenes in this phase, partially even replacing the network of friends and relatives by offering a generous contribution to integration. In a second phase of settlement and integration, the “tourist” is transformed into a migrant. In the third phase, the decision may be made to return to the country of origin, and therefore, it will be necessary to assess whether this return is performed as a tourist – in the case that the stay in Israel was brief or the settlement abroad was temporary – or else as a returning migrant.

The two authors describe the case with a wealth of data and demonstrate how it is possible to put in place policies aimed at attracting specific segments of population by using the similarities and continuity which exist between the phenomena of tourism and migration. Salvà Tomàs (2002a) references the Balearic Islands and the stages of development of tourism in relation to the different types of mobility according to three time periods: the 1950s in which the phenomenon began; the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, in which growth and consolidation occurred; and the 1990s, when it reached maturity. Tourism is certainly the product of situations and policies with a global reach, but its qualitative and quantitative dimensions are strongly influenced by the ability of numerous local players to attract and modify its flows.

Timothy (2002) considers ethnic tourism, which occurs in certain enclaves, on the basis of the results of empirical research performed in two ethnic islands in the USA. This type of tourism is the result of the overlapping in space and alternation in time of flows of both migrants and tourists. Fountain and Hall (2002) analysed the case of Akaroa – a small island in New Zealand, the attraction of which is the lifestyle – identifying characteristics, behaviour and the impact on the local community of four types of flows: pensioners, groups of artists, stressed-out professionals and telecommuters (those who move home while maintaining their work connections through teleworking). For Müller (2002), the phenomenon of the approximately 7000 Germans who purchased a second home in Sweden during the 1990s highlights one of the typical processes of human mobility. The research focused on a phenomenon which, having property deeds as a reference, can easily be documented with precision and also makes reference to the topics of terrain use, which are particularly significant for geography, and finally presupposes a commitment to the area and the community of arrival similar to that of immigrants.

Flognfeldt (2002) also focused on the topic of second homes, in Norway, analysing a longer period to study the sense of place between primary and secondary residences and to what extent the purchase of a second home is the first step towards a subsequent decision to migrate. In the field of visits to friends and relatives (VFR), Lew and Wong (2002) reference how the development of tourism in China was able to draw advantages from the complex network of connections with Chinese emigrants who made their fortunes abroad and returned as entrepreneurs. Nguyen and King (2002) studied the Vietnamese communities in Australia, highlighting how they perceive Vietnam and the cultural and economic features of their visits to the communities of friends and relatives in their country of origin. Boyne et al. (2002) used the results of their research into the phenomenon of visits to friends and relatives in Scotland to highlight the increasing importance of this type of flow both in relation to the phenomena of globalisation and to the positive economic and cultural effects on the local communities.

Duval (2002) went into these concepts in depth, referencing the results of a study of the Caribbean community in Toronto, Canada, which allowed him to highlight the continuity between visits to friends and relatives – traditionally considered a form of tourism – and the migrant flow of departure and that (final) of return. Hall (2005) returns to the concepts expressed in an earlier work (Hall and Williams 2002) with reference to the mobility of production and consumption, broadening them by reminding us how tourism is increasingly considered a dimension of mobility and temporary circulation. Research into tourism must aim to formulate an approach consistent with the attempt to interpret the meaning of the range of different types of mobility that refer to individuals and not necessarily to tourists. Considering tourism on the basis of space/time relationships will not only allow the analysis of various forms of mobility but also the tools which limit or encourage mobility at both the individual and collective level. Although this work echoes Hall’s previous research, it tries to maintain continuity in its attempt to answer questions that could contribute to rethinking – as indicated in the volume’s subheading – the social sciences of mobility.

In 2000 the International Geographical Union (IGU) set up a research commission – “Global Change and Human Mobility (GLOBILITY)” – on the methodological prerequisites of a process of evolution of population flows. Researchers and lecturers from over 100 institutions participated in GLOBILITY, 50 % of whom are Europeans and others are distributed among the other continents. The research benefited from the experience and evolution of the social sciences in the preceding decades, and contributions thus came not only from the countries in the northern hemisphere but also Africa and the Pacific region. In order not to end up with a distorted view of human mobility, care was taken that the participants represented the point of view of both developed and developing countries. Although the network was set up within the confines of the IGU, scientists from other disciplines in social sciences were invited to actively participate in GLOBILITY.

Attention was focused on the processes that occurred from the 1990s onwards, when the effects of the global changes due to the processes of the post-socialist (Baláz and Williams 2002; Kolossov and Galkina 2002; Galkina 2006) and post-apartheid (Maharaj 2003; Manik et al. 2006) societies were clear. The different aspects of human mobility were examined in relation to the processes of globalisation of production and consumption (Claval 2002; Montanari 2005, 2012; Williams et al. 2012).

Scientific contributions did not concern only domestic and international migration of unskilled workers, which have been given significant attention in the literature; rather, they examined the role of women (Domínguez-Mujica and Guerra Talavera 2005, 2006; Raghuram and Montiel 2003; Wickramasinghe 2002) and young people (Lash 2003; Chikanda 2003), a topic which has still not been focused on sufficiently. Staniscia (2012) and Montanari and Staniscia (2014) published work on the mobility of university students outside the framework of international agreements, occurring as spontaneous phenomena linked to the decisions of individual young persons.

Specifically, attention was paid not to one single type of human mobility but rather to the many and varied forms of mobility present in contemporary society. The study of new methodological approaches for examining processes totally different from the past also made it possible to consider and develop proposals for intervention policies to alleviate the significant imbalances that human mobility can generate for the environment and the quality of life of our societies. The difficulty of involving researchers from various parts of the world, for economic reasons as well as difficulties in obtaining visas, was dealt with by organising meetings in Africa (Chikanda 2003; Laroussi 2002), America (Clark 2002) and Asia (Janzen and Bazargur 2003; Kim and Yoon 2003; Montanari 2003), so that the Eurocentric thrust of the empirical and methodological approach could be reduced.

GLOBILITY studied the forms of international mobility and migration which can be linked to the processes of internationalisation and globalisation of the economy (Venier 2002), forms of local development and investments (Staniscia 2005), social and cultural habits which can mainly be ascribed to consumption rather than production phenomena (Salvà Tomàs 2003) and new forms of investment and social habits (Salvà Tomàs 2002b; Michalkó and Rátz 2006). The study of human mobility phenomena on islands produced significant results because the spaces are easier to delimit, and it is therefore easier to gather quantitative and qualitative data and compare the current situation with the past, as in the previously mentioned works of Salvà Tomàs and Domínguez-Mujica, who recently performed a study on a historical fishing community settled in Las Palmas (Domínguez-Mujica and Avila-Tàpies 2012).

The reference typologies can be ascribed to the new forms of recreation, free time and tourism that represent the economic prerequisites for the transformation of urban areas (Glorius and Friedrich 2006; Hatziprokopiou 2006; Montanari and Staniscia 2006). The economic restructuring due to the crisis in traditional production sectors comprises niche forms of tourism that represent the driving sectors in urban and regional development and restructuring strategies. The internationalisation of economic activities leads to new forms of short-term occupational mobility, including temporary transfers between one office and another of the same multinational company and participation in training, promotional activities and conferences (Verquin 2002). This favours investment in the free time and hospitality sector as well as in services and the related infrastructure and therefore contributes to urban and regional restructuring. Changes in the time patterns, organisation and porosity of work, in the availability of retirement income and in the organisational and institutional structure of pensions favour processes of internationalisation of the use of free time from work and retirement (Illés 2006). Over the last 3 years, the effects of the international economic crisis on human mobility have also been considered (Brusa and Papotti 2011; Ishikawa 2011; Montanari 2010; Montanari and Staniscia 2011), with particular reference to the real-estate market (Tömöri and Süli-Zakar 2011), starting out with the experience of Japan which represented an early case of domestic economic crisis in a framework of international growth (Ishikawa 2003).

The empirical evidence of a relationship between phases of development and flows of human mobility was highlighted by the research of, among others, Salvá Tomás (2002b) on the Balearic Islands. He identified seven stages of economic development corresponding to the same number of phases of growth, crisis and consolidation of the tourist industry. To each of these phases – identifying distinct flows of human mobility, primarily of consumption – it is possible to combine an equal number of phases in which the mobility flows are directed at production. The flows from the European countries are primarily attracted by consumption activities such as tourism and free time, long-term tourism, ownership of second houses and spending long periods during retirement. In addition to these types of flows, there are also those connected with production activities linked to tourism, holidays and free time or professional support in the field of financial and real-estate consultancy, as well as healthcare. The population pyramid related to German citizens, for example, is characterised by a greater presence of individuals aged between 50 and 64 years, with a significant presence of those aged between 30 and 50 as well, and a general predominance of females.

The flows originating in developing countries, on the other hand, are attracted by production activities, even though they also contribute to generating other flows, which are initially minor, linked to consumption, therefore visits to friends and relatives, and family reunions in general. In the case of persons originating from Africa, the population pyramid indicates a predominance of individuals aged between 30 and 40; in terms of gender, there are three or four times more males than females. An equivalent study was performed in Italy’s Sangro Valley, analysing the flows of international migration in relation to the phases of economic development (Staniscia 2005). In outlining the conclusions of her research, Staniscia (2005) refers to a model of migratory attraction based on two key characteristics: (i) the local economy and its ability to provide employment opportunities for unskilled workers as well as managers and entrepreneurs and (ii) the local community characterised by a high degree of hospitality.

An attempt to create a model for the relationship between the stages of development and the different types of mobility was made by Montanari (2005). The mobility flows were catalogued according to four spatial levels, the local, national and European spaces, as well as the international extra-European one, and three levels of permanence, commuting, temporary and permanent mobility (Montanari 2012). The flows were divided into incoming and outgoing flows according to these characteristics.

Alongside the previously mentioned international activities, GLOBILITY also favoured the organisation of research teams that submitted to the European Commission research proposals which were then financed. These included the following projects: “Interregional migrations in Europe” (MIRE 2002), “Spatial deconcentration of economic land use and quality of life in European Metropolitan Areas” (SELMA 2002–2006), “The spatial effects of demographic trends and migration” (ESPON 1.1.4 2003–2006), “Female citizens and workers in Europe” (CELINE 2005–2008), “Preserving places. Managing urban tourism, urban conservation and quality of life in historic centres” (PLACE 2008–2010), “Solutions for environmental contrasts in coastal areas. Global change, human mobility and sustainable urban development” (SECOA 2009–2013), “Territorial Impact of Globalization for Europe and its Regions” (TIGER 2010–2012). More recently, the YMOBILITY Project has also seen some of the main players in the European debate on human mobility come together to study the phenomenon of youth mobility, the stimuli and the necessities sustaining it and finally the policies which should be put in place to enhance its advantages and reduce any negative aspects. In all the above-listed projects, the central element was the region, specifically the place where the spatial theories are applied and where the new social theories were born. This issue cannot, certainly, be limited to the discussion within the social sciences, but should be applied as an element of understanding for all phenomena concerning human beings.

1.5 Conclusions

Until recently, research projects have made reference to the positions of the European Commission, which makes a clear distinction between flows of migrants and flows of tourists, as if it were the responsibility of the European administration to focus its attention on something – the migration flows – considered to be serious by the public opinion: serious because it involved hard work, old-fashioned sweat and toil, and because it concerned industrial production and economic development, and flows of workers, often illegal, crossing borders. Migration is a serious ethical and cultural problem. EU is based on the breaking down of borders and on the exchange of goods and services between countries, as well as free movement of its inhabitants. But EU has also established a series of international agreements, providing for a certain freedom in the movement of goods and financial flows. Information and communication flows travel freely between countries and continents, but this is extremely difficult to manage when it comes to people.

Tourism, on the other hand, does not seem to create problems: the more the flows increase, the greater the advantages, often only apparent, for the countries receiving them. Even the idea of admitting that the “blessings” of tourism might be strictly interwoven with migration creates both cultural and ideological problems. Recently, significant progress has begun to be seen in the cultural acquisition of the link between flows of tourists and migrants. A signal, although maybe a weak one, can be found in the first HORIZON 2020 calls published in late 2013, where, for the first time, a reference appears to mobility as a complex phenomenon concerning certain segments of the European population. Young persons, who seem prepared to experiment, or to look elsewhere for what they cannot find at home, are the first to fully experience mobility.

The question should be asked of what are the opportunities for the social sciences to keep a central role in producing results that can be of support to EU policies. The first problem is that of data. The concept of human mobility is too highly evolved with respect to the methods and variables used by statistics offices both in EU countries and at the coordinated EU level. The speed with which the extent and the characteristics of human mobility change is only comparable with that of financial flows. People – above all the most dynamic ones and, therefore, young people – are able to receive information on events, trends and culture exactly as they occur. The information used by researchers should, therefore, also be acquired in real time, making the best use of the available information.

Human mobility has already changed the demographic structure of European countries. We have to make the most of this situation in order to study in depth the changes produced, above all, because, now more than ever, the entire world is represented within Europe. It is no longer necessary to go to the places where human flows circulate to perform research. This would consist of studying this new demographic situation to the fullest possible extent in order to best understand who is arriving and who is leaving, who has never moved and maybe never will and those who are in perpetual movement. These analyses will allow us to learn more about situations of well-being and malaise in our societies, the consequences of eating habits, about diseases and the ability of our bodies to best come to terms with global changes. Researches on human mobility are placing themselves ever more at the centre of the multidisciplinary research that is required, now more than ever, to understand and solve the complexity of the issues at hand. This approach is required for collaboration with the natural sciences when it is necessary to understand environmental change as an active and passive relationship with human behaviour. If we place multinational research at the centre of attention, then we also have to put the clinical and psychological aspects of human health into play, along with the way we feed ourselves.