Work

Senses of place and mobilities nexus - a scoping literature review

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: : People-place relationships are shaped by people’s mobilities within and across places. Thus, mobilities are constitutive of place relations. Multiple disciplines study the relation between people-place relationships, here conceptualized as senses of place, and mobilities taking their own phenomenological focus. However, there are few studies that seek to advance the nexus between senses of place and mobilities. To close the lack of a cross-disciplinary synthesis and understanding of the nexus that guides theoretical and empirical work, we reviewed 163 articles that to some extent engaged with the interface between senses of place and mobilities. To do so, we first developed an analytical framework based on existing conceptual work, which serves as the basis for a scoping literature review of empirical studies. It revealed different methods and conceptual approaches applied. We identify dominant research topics and knowledge gaps, and discuss the limitations and future directions of research, which should: 1) embrace the complex interdependencies of different mobility types within the nexus, 2) stronger include virtual mobility and imagination acknowledging the omnipresence of the Internet and virtual space, 3) integrate the temporal and dynamics of people-place relations given the increasing pace at which environmental change is influencing all geographic regions of the world, and the associated implications for human movement, 4) acknowledge and address the physical characteristics of the place more strongly, and 5) strengthen the use of mobile methods to deal with the inherent characteristics of mobilities.

Source: Journal of Environmental Psychology

DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102658

Authors: Iga Kołodyńska, Sarah Gottwald, Agnieszka Jakóbiak, Jasmin Otto, Wiktoria Morawska, Christopher M. Raymond