Diverse factors like globalization, geopolitical tensions, and the transformation of lifestyles are strengthening the role of mobility as a structuring dimension of contemporary societies. Social-science research has taken note of these changes, but few studies cross the different forms of mobility, ranging from commuting to tourists and backpackers, and on to seasonal workers or international migrants. The diversity of mobility situations studied in this book highlights the contribution of the reality of mobility in the daily construction of urban, regional, and global spaces, as well as in the redefinition of socio-spatial concepts. By using an interdisciplinary relational approach, the book revisits certain concepts such as exclusion, heritage, or distance, in order to understand spatialities beyond the oppositions of fixity/mobility, private/public, or here/elsewhere. The book sheds light on the capacities for resistance of mobile persons in Singapore, Dakar, Bangkok, Amman, Paris, New York, or Mexico by studying the power relationships that are established in situations of mobility. By deciphering the values that characterize regimes of (im)mobility, the contributors stress the normative injunctions of public policies and social practices. The originality of the work lies in capturing the deployment of alternative spatialities and underlining how they are reshaped between sedentary and mobility regimes. It highlights the importance of fully associating mobility with its characteristics of ephemerality and fluidity, in our theorizations and understandings of spatialities. By taking a post-structuralist posture, the book makes it possible to establish a logic of 'and' to design a 'between' of things, and to reverse ontology. This allows the temporary and the connected to be rehabilitated, beyond distance, in our practical knowledge of spatialities and territorialities. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars of geography, sociology, anthropology, and urban studies with interests in mobility, migration and relational thought.

This aim of this book is to look at the dominant representation that at present underpin the issues of territorial organisation and planning in Europe. Cities and networks are often envisaged as inevitably driving territorial development. However, the conceptualisation of European territorial integration has often been reduced to two conventional models: the centre-periphery model and the hierarchical model of urban networks. Limiting territorial integration to these two schema means that integration is limited. Today, reference to polycentric territorial development has to some extent changed the picture. Rather than being viewed in a polarised, pyramidal manner, spatial dynamics are being read in terms of interconnection and reticulation. In addition, reflection on the subject of polycentric territorial strategies has encouraged politicians and spatial planners to include the principle of "territorial cohesion" in the priorities of European public policies. From considerations which associate conceptual approaches and analytical studies, this book makes it possible to understand in what manner polycentrism, viewed as an alternative to metropolisation, could sow the seeds for new readings, at various scales, of the organisation of European territory. The main challenge of this book is to explain why it is worthwhile revisiting some rather too static representations of territorial systems in Europe. The aim is to promote the emergence and the consolidation of new, critical ways of looking at the issues of territorial dynamics.