Social networks, mobile lives and social inequalities: Fid-Bau Portal

Social networks, mobile lives and social inequalities

Urry, John

Highlights ► Movement makes connections and connections make social inequalities. ► Travelling, communicating and networking are not cost free. ► Networking requires substantial resources, of time, objects, access and emotions. ► People’s social networks engender new forms of opportunism different from market opportunism. ► Digital technologies create new kinds of mobile lives and ways of relating to the self and others.

Abstract A central argument of much contemporary literature is that the advent of digital and mobile technologies creates new kinds of mobile lives, new socialities and new ways of relating to the self and others. In this paper I specifically examine how mobile lives unfold through social networks, facilitating the forming and reforming of connections people have with others, near and distant. I argue that movement itself is not so significant. Its importance rather stems from how it enables people to be connected with each other, to meet and to remeet over time and across space. Movement makes connections. These connections form patterns or networks, which many commentators see as the critical feature of contemporary life. Much travel thus involves making new connections and extending one’s network or sustaining one’s existing networks.