‘We’ve Lost our Bearings’: Tourism, Place, and the Limits of the Mobility Turn

“We’ve Lost Our Bearings”: Place,Tourism, and the Limitsof the “Mobility Turn”

Jaume FranquesaDepartment of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto, Canada;

[email protected]

Abstract: The “mobility turn” claims that conceding analytical priority to the study of mobilityis the best way to overcome methodological approaches based on fixed and stable categoriesargued to be unviable in a world that is increasingly mobile. In this paper I argue that themobility approach, far from reaching this goal, in fact reifies the cleavage between mobilityand immobility, relegating immobility to a passive, undertheorized position, and collapsing thecomplex workings of power, thus foreclosing a dialectical understanding of the contradictoryalbeit co-produced processes of mobilization and immobilization. Drawing on an ethnographicanalysis of the impacts of changing patterns of accumulation of the tourist industry on the urbanspace of Palma (Majorca, Spain), I suggest a relational approach attentive to the dialectics ofmobility and stability, continuity and change.

Keywords: mobility, immobility, Majorca, tourism, gentrification, urban regeneration

Certain sociologues tentent de definir plus positivement la modernite;par exemple, par la mobilite. (. . .) Cette analyse sociologique metl’accent sur plusieurs traits reels de la modernite. Cependant, pourl’analyse dialectique ici poursuivie, elle ne sort pas de l’unilateralite(Lefebvre 1962:190).

IntroductionThe “mobility turn” rests on a double understanding of mobility. Itasserts that the world is increasingly structured by mobile flows andaccords analytical priority to analyzing these flows. Moreover, thisanalytical priority is claimed to hold the promise of achieving a broadepistemological goal of critical social sciences: to move beyond apositivist understanding of social reality as organized through fixedcategories and things fixed in space. Yet as Henri Lefebvre pointed outalmost half a century ago, the problem of such a framework is that itis one-sided, either excluding or condemning as passive anything thatis left outside of a mobility construct. Furthermore, the reification ofmobility rests on an understanding of social reality where things, ideas,Antipode Vol. 43 No. 4 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1012–1033doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00789.xC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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and people flow across a seemingly neutral space, ultimately reinforcingthe “old positivism” that the mobility turn pretends to overcome. Inthis paper I suggest that, if we are to destabilize a positivist view ofthe world, what is needed instead is an approach attentive to how thedialectical interplay between mobilization and immobilization producessocial reality, including the categories (such as mobility and immobility)through which we apprehend and conceive of this reality. I develop myargument through an analysis of everyday conflicts arising from therestructuring of the old centre of Palma (Majorca, Spain) in the contextof the island’s transition from a mass-tourism model to a new modelpromoting the uniqueness of a Majorca marketed for a more affluentclass of tourist.

The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section I present thecentral characteristics of what has been labelled the “mobility turn” insocial sciences, and I show that the founding premises of this approachlead to presume an asymmetrical dichotomous understanding of therelationship between mobility and immobility. The second section isstructured around an ethnographic vignette that provides the “hinge”between the theoretical discussion and the case study. Through thisvignette I discuss the limitations of the mobility approach, arguingfor the need to analyze how relations produce (im)mobilization ratherthan taking mobility and immobility as things or properties of things.In the third section I describe the restructuring of the old centre ofPalma throughout the last three decades. I pay special attention tothose processes that produce certain groups of people as immobilein relation to other groups, thus establishing a power differentialbetween them. In the final section I derive two main conclusions fromthe case study. On the one hand, I suggest that the immobilizationprocesses observed in Palma stem from the subsumption of newspaces and domains of activity into circuits of capital accumulation,so that the production of immobility can be understood as a resultof the attempts to stabilize certain sociospatial arrangements adequatefor accumulation, or to destabilize those that are not. On the otherhand, these processes of immobilization work through hegemonicnotions of progress, social change, etc reminiscent of the non-dialecticalunderstanding of mobility/immobility that conflates disparate meaningsand processes into a single asymmetrical dichotomy. I argue that, in sodoing, the mobility turn effaces, and thus reinforces, the power of thesenotions and of those who use them from positions of privilege.

The “Mobility Turn”According to Tim Cresswell (2006a), in recent years it has been possibleto identify a distinct “mobility turn” perceptible in works by Auge(1992), Clifford (1997), Urry (2000), as well as his own (2006b). Inspite of the disparate perspectives of these works, they all “share aC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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critique of thinking of the world as organized through fixity—of thingsfirmly in space” (2006a:738). For more than a decade, then, “mobility”has been a celebrated concept in many corners of the social sciencesand the humanities:

Everyone is travelling in the field of “theory” today. Metaphors ofmovement parade across the pages of cultural theorists, social theorists,geographers, artists, literary critics. Mobility is the order of the day.Nomads, migrants, travellers and explorers inhabit a world wherenothing is certain or fixed. Tradition and rootedness have the smell ofdeath (Cresswell 1997:360).

The mobility turn, however, is not only happening “in the field oftheory” but also “in the field of reality”, and to some extent all theseauthors justify their approaches through an assertion that the world haschanged, becoming less stable and rooted, and Urry goes to the point ofarguing that the growing movement of things, information and peopleis “materially transforming the ‘social as society’ into the ‘social asmobility’” (2000:2). A variety of names (postmodernity, globalization,supermodernity, liquid modernity, etc) have been used to emphasizethe fluidity of our contemporary world in which old dichotomies, suchas private and public, are vanishing (Sheller and Urry 2003). Mobilitybecomes, then, both what transforms the world (a process) and the resultof this transformation (a product):

Globalization can be seen in terms of global fluids constituted of wavesof people, information, objects, money, images, risks and networksmoving across regions in heterogeneous, uneven, unpredictable andoften unplanned shapes. Such global fluids demonstrate no clear pointof departure, just de-territorialized movement, at certain speeds anddifferent levels of viscosity with no necessary end-state or purpose(Sheller and Urry 2003:117, emphasis added).

Mobility, in sum, appears to be the “spirit of the age”, both as anepistemological approach, the defining characteristic of our socialworld, and the force leading its transformation. This conceptionof mobility has been criticized by Tsing, who has observed thatmobility and interconnection are not new phenomena emerging inthe late 20th century, arguing that “if older . . . frameworks wereunable to handle interconnection and mobility, this is a problem withthe frameworks and a reason for new ones but not the mirror of anevolutionary change in the world” (1998:356). In other words, themobility turn cannot be justified as a mere reflection “in the field oftheory” of a set of transformations taking place “in the field of reality”,1

since mobility, interconnection, mutability, etc are intrinsic features ofthe processes constituting social reality.

The expression “mobility turn” not only refers to an epistemologicalshift in (our understanding of) reality, but also to a distinctC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


methodological approach that concedes analytical priority to the studyof those groups or phenomena in which mobility is more abundant orprominent.2 This methodological approach is based on the combinationof two different meanings of mobility. If up until now mobility appearedas a general force (a process) breaking enrooted divisions, the mobilityturn also understands mobility as a scarce resource (a thing) whoseuneven distribution creates a new division (that supersedes all formerdivisions) between those who possess/incarnate it and those who don’t:“mobility climbs to the uppermost among the coveted values—andthe freedom to move, perpetually a scarce and unequally distributedcommodity, fast becomes the main stratifying factor of our late-modernor postmodern times” (Bauman 1998:2). The unequal possession ofmobility, therefore, divides the world into two groups of “objects”, themobile and the immobile, and is as such empirically observable in socialreality. Hence, if mobility is the general force transforming the world andit is incarnated in a specific range of objects and people, the conclusionseems obvious: it is by conceding analytical priority to these “objectsand people” that social scientists will be able to understand the primaryprocesses that structure our contemporary world. It is this unilateralattention on mobility that Favell takes as the object of his critique:

To assess really the extent or nature of movement, or indeed even to seeit sometimes, you have in fact to spend a lot of the time studying thingsthat stand still: the borders, institutions and territories of nation-states;the sedimented “home” cultures of people that do not move (Favell2001:391–392).

Favell’s argument (ie that mobility can only be properly understoodif analyzed along with immobility, fixity and stasis) has caught onwith scholars working within the mobility framework (Adey 2006;Allon 2004; Allon et al 2008; Clarke 2004a; Cresswell 2002; Frello2008; Hannam et al 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006). Thus, Hannamet al argue that “mobilities cannot be described without attention tothe necessary spatial, infrastructural and institutional moorings thatconfigure and enable mobilities” (2006:3), while Allon (2004) exploresthe tensions between “travelling” and “dwelling” and argues for theneed to pay attention to the “new ‘dialectic of borders’ that accompaniesdifferentiated access [to mobility]” (Allon et al 2008:81). Adey (2006)tackles the question of immobility at a more theoretical level. Congruentwith the axiom of the mobility turn that nothing is fixed in today’s world,he proposes the notion of “relative immobility”.3 Adey considers thatmobility and immobility are just “illusions” derived from the idea thateven if all things move, they do it at different speeds, so that (relative)immobility would be nothing else than (relative) lack of mobility.

Adey’s work is a good illustration of the difficulties implied inreconciling a positive understanding of “immobility” with the foundingC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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premise of the mobility turn: that mobility is the main driving forcetransforming the world, the corollary to which is that we should accordanalytical priority to its study. If mobility is the active force that definesand also transforms the world, “immobility” must be relegated to apassive status, a passivity that might be understood in terms of absence(immobility as a relative lack of mobility), otherness (what is leftbehind or aside from the sweeping force of mobility), instrumentality(the “moorings” that allow mobility to keep apace) or consequentiality(the increased mobility of some provokes the immobility of others).There does not seem to be, therefore, much room left for a dialecticalunderstanding of the dichotomy mobility/immobility as mutuallyconstructed poles. Instead, the founding premises of the mobility turnlead to an asymmetric dichotomy that is reminiscent of what Freemancalls a “gendered dualism”, in which the feminine pole is axiomaticallytaken as passive and associated with the “local, . . . static, traditional,[and] homebound” while the masculine, active pole is linked with the“global, . . . mobile, modern, [and] cosmopolitan” (2001:1032, emphasisadded).

This fixed asymmetrical understanding of mobility/immobility ismost evident in the literature’s construction of the categories of “local”and “cosmopolitan”:

Elites are cosmopolitan, people are local. The space of power andwealth is projected throughout the world, while people’s life andexperience is rooted in places, in their culture, in their history. Thus, themore a social organization is based upon ahistorical flows, supersedingthe logic of any specific place, the more the logic of global powerspaces the socio-political control of historically specific local/nationalsocieties (Castells 1996:415–416).

The division between those who are mobile (the cosmopolitans)and those who are not (the locals) is thus a division that expressesand reinforces power inequality, and in this sense we can observethat mobility becomes equated with power, understood both as thecapacity to act upon the world (especially “upon its immobile parts”)and as the expression and organizing principle of social hierarchy.In a rather tautological way, therefore, mobility and power becomeinterchangeable: the powerful are mobile and the mobile are powerful;power confers mobility, and mobility confers power. At the otherside of the spectrum, we find the locals (“the immobiles”), thosewho (still?) think and live in terms of the old epistemology basedon enrootedness, fixity, contiguity and who are condemned to bedominated by “the mobiles”, the latter both a numerically increasingand an increasingly powerful fraction of society. Society appears thento be asymmetrically divided: on the one hand we find the “mobilecosmopolitans”, an active force associated with time, progress, capital,

C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


universalism, power, and agency; on the other hand we have the“immobile locals”, relegated to a passive role and associated withplace, backwardness, tradition, localism, and powerlessness. All thoseenrooted dichotomies that mobility was supposed to be dissolvingsuddenly appear collapsed into the cleavage between mobility andimmobility, the main dualism in our contemporary world as well asthe driving force behind its transformation. Immobility, thus, is part ofthis world, but it is condemned to disappear under the dissolving forceof mobility, as the latter erodes the geographical world that makes theformer possible:

As places are toured there is a tendency for all places in theend to become nomadic and cosmopolitan. The related shift to a“visual” economy of nature (. . .) assists this “de-substantialization”of place. A given locality becomes not a unique place, with its ownassociations and meanings for those dwelling or even visiting there,but a particular combination of abstract characteristics (Szerszynskiand Urry 2006:126, emphasis added).

Szerszynski and Urry explore the way in which residents in westCumbria relate to place, offering a compelling analysis of the dichotomybetween “locals” and “cosmopolitans”. The first group is composed byold-time, traditional residents, and the second by affluent, highly mobileprofessionals that have moved to the area in recent years. Drawing onIngold’s (1993) distinction between “globe” and “sphere”, the authorsdescribe the relation of the “locals” with place as based on experienceand activity. The locals’ engagement with place is “from within”, astheir experience is mainly based on a single place and is understoodin terms of that place. In contrast, the “cosmopolitans”, according tothe authors, do not live so much in places as between places, theirexperience being one of detachment from actual places. Place becomesan object detached from them, transforming place into a landscape ora spectacle to be compared, evaluated, and possessed, but not “dweltwithin”. The cosmopolitans not only describe place in abstract terms butthey experience place in this way: “it is not simply that the privileged,mobile, cosmopolitan sections of society are better at it [the abstractlanguage]; the language is itself an expression of a mobile, abstractedway of being” (Szerszynski and Urry 2006:126). And this language,4

we could add, does not merely reflect privilege, power, and mobility,but constructs these as it advances towards the de-substantialization ofplace.

Mobility and Immobility Face to Face?In my fieldwork in Palma (Majorca, Spain) I have come across manysituations that are reminiscent of the way Szerszynski and Urry describeC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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the dichotomy “mobility/immobility” or “cosmopolitans/locals”. In thefollowing extract Miquel, a baker in the old centre, narrates his ratherturbulent encounter with Ingrid, a Swedish woman who had boughta house next to Miquel’s bakery a couple of months prior to ourconversation:

The neighbour that you have had all your life, well, you know, thisneighbour already knows that at six in the morning, s/he is used to thischimney smoking some days. It always smokes, but some days thewind blows to the other side and hits him/her. Then, not many daysago a Swedish woman came here, to the bakery, and said to me:“What’s happening? Is there anything on fire?”“No”, I said.“No! What do you mean?”“No. It is the same thing every day, that what’s on fire.”She was absolutely hysterical (sic), all upset that how could it bepossible.“Look, the wind blows to the other side, and today it’s been your turn,that’s all.”“Oh, this can’t be.”“What do you mean that ‘this can’t be!’? We’ve been here bakingbread since 1914. You’ve been here for two months, or two weeks,and today the smoke came your way, but we’ve been here, workingand living, all our lives”.. . . I mean, you can see that we’ve lost our bearings.5

Apparently, at least, this encounter illustrates the difference betweencosmopolitans and locals. There is no doubt that Miquel fits into thecategory of local as we have presented it: his everyday life and his workare attached to a place, the same place where he and his family wereborn and raised for at least four generations. His relation with place isbased on experience and activity, and it is from this perspective that hereads the situation, claiming that any other local would share the sameunderstanding. Ingrid, on the contrary, is more educated and affluent,and before buying the house next to Miquel’s she compared it to otherhouses in other locations; she evaluated it, both as a place for living andas an investment, since Ingrid bought the house as a second residencewhere she could spend a few months every year. Aesthetics and thehistoric atmosphere of the old centre of Palma played an importantrole in her final decision, and we can suppose that Miquel’s antiquebakery (the oven comes from the 17th century) played a part in thecharm and character that she found in the place. Ingrid’s appreciation,however, is mainly visual, and she does not seem willing to engage withthe practices and activities of the place. The sense of entitlement thatMiquel understands from his encounter with her suggests that she feelsthat place, including the practices of the locals, must be adapted to herrequirements, something that, again, would match with the idea thatC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


cosmopolitans convert places into a combination of mainly detachedabstract characteristics. Ingrid’s mobility, thus, reflects a position ofpower, and, because of the relative detachment of this position, is also amechanism for the exercise of power.

Miquel and Ingrid, then, can be read as incarnations of adichotomy mobility/immobility, one that collapses multiple unevensocial categories into a single difference. In this asymmetric dichotomy,immobility plays a totally passive role: although Miquel did not move,his immobility is not so much an attribute of his action (of not moving),but an effect of Ingrid’s mobility that transforms him into “a local”.A closer examination of the case, however, reveals the shortcomingsof such an approach, precluding an understanding of reality by forcingit to fit into a rigid pre-defined dichotomy. On the one hand, becauseof having bought a house, Ingrid is more immobile than the millionsof tourists that have been visiting Majorca every year during at leastthe last half a century. However, as we will see, the mobility of thosetourists had never posited Miquel as the incarnation of immobility. Onthe other hand, Miquel’s image and expertise have travelled around theworld, appearing in half a dozen travel magazines that have portrayedhim as an example of Majorcan artisanship. In this sense, Miquel hastaken advantage of the shift into cultural tourism in Majorca, and thedeeply related revalorization of the old centre of Palma in the last dozenyears, a shift that is also behind Ingrid’s movement.

What these examples suggest is the need to think relationally,to develop a dialectical understanding of the dichotomymobility/immobility and put it into motion. Or to put it in other words:what counters the fixity and positivism of what Cresswell (2002),borrowing from Malkki (1992), calls a “sedentarist metaphysics”, thatis, an approach based on “things firmly in space”, is not “nomadicmetaphysics” celebrating fluidity and mobility as inherently positive(Frello 2008; Sager 2006), but a relational approach that understandsthings as nexuses of multiple determinations: “The concrete is concretebecause it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unityof the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, asa process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure”(Marx 1973:101). Instead of paying attention to things, be they firmlyanchored or flowing across space, we must focus our attention onrelations, analyzing how these relations produce “objects” and “people”as well as the role played by power in this process.

In order to develop a dialectical understanding of the relationshipbetween mobility and immobility, the first step that must be undertakenis the undoing of the dichotomy as it is presented by the mobility turn,a dichotomy that considers mobility as an autonomous force or as aneat all-encompassing property of objects. Indeed, neither Miquel norIngrid can be bluntly defined as “mobile” or “immobile”: mobility andC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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immobility are contradictory albeit mutually constituted forces of everyprocess structuring social reality, not a dichotomy between differentkinds of “objects” but a dialectics that produces objects. A relationalapproach, however, should not stop here, since even if we can think ofevery bit of social reality as traversed by both mobility and immobility,it is true that Miquel and Ingrid are constructed as mobile and immobilein relation (not relatively) to each other, in a single movement thatestablishes a power asymmetry between them. It is this relationalconstruction that we must explore. The most important task is to showthat Miquel’s immobility vis-a-vis Ingrid is the result of a process ofimmobilization and not a mere expression of his attachment to place, anunderstanding that would render his presence as natural and ahistoricand would therefore naturalize and thus reinforce the power asymmetryestablished through the processes of mobilization and immobilization.

It’s not that the mobility turn completely dismisses the question ofpower, or that it prevents the analysis of processes of immobilization.As we saw earlier, the mobility turn argues that access to and controlover mobility is unequally distributed, thus allowing for the analysis ofthe power content of the dichotomy. The problem with such an analysis,however, is that it presumes the dichotomy to be something given,a natural division in a contemporary world primarily characterized,according to the mobility turn, by the impetus of mobility. In otherwords, in the mobility approach the analysis of power operates withinan asymmetrical and non-dialectical understanding of mobility andimmobility, thus neglecting the power of the dichotomy itself. If nothingis simply mobile or immobile, the reading of the world as divided intothese two categories of “objects and people” is itself a process thatinvolves power, as it establishes a power asymmetry between the twosides of the division. As we will see in the next section, by understandingthe world through the lens of an asymmetric non-dialectical dichotomybetween objects, the mobility turn participates in the production of adivision that it presupposes. By doing so it conceals and thus reinforcesthe power of the dichotomy and potentially the action of those inpositions of power who use it for their own benefit.

Mobility and Immobility in the Old Centre of PalmaIn this section, I will very briefly analyze the defining role thatimmobilization has played in the restructuring of the old centre of Palmaover the last 30 years. This analysis will provide the necessary toolsto understand what are the processes that made the encounter betweenMiquel and Ingrid possible and, more importantly, that made it legible asan apparent clash between mobility and immobility. In the first part of thesection I will focus on El Puig, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants havegone from being (politically) mobilized to being presented as immobile,C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


that is, (politically) immobilized. I close this section by unpacking thediverse and often divergent topics and dichotomies conflated in the termsmobility and immobility. In the second section, I deal more generallywith the main transformations that the old centre of Palma has undergonein recent years primarily as a consequence of the tourist crisis the islandexperienced in the early 1990s. This final exploration will allow us tore-read the immobility of Miquel and the neighbours of El Puig.

El Puig: from a “Mobilized” to an “Immobilized”NeighbourhoodEl Puig is a neighbourhood situated in the eastern extreme of the oldcentre of Palma, forming part of the city’s waterfront and framed byone of the only remaining sections of the city’s Renaissance walls. Inthe 1970s El Puig, traditionally considered the fishermen’s area of thecity, had huge problems: the built environment was extremely degraded,and services and basic infrastructure including water, electricity andgreen areas were either lacking or in very poor condition. Residents ofthe quarter, overwhelmingly tenants and poorer than the city average,felt helpless in the face of this situation, and many of them weremoving to newly built areas of the city in order to escape fromthese conditions. These residents were partially replaced by a stillpoorer population, including a substantial number of Portuguese gitanofamilies.

In parallel to these processes, a group of investors was buying plotsin the area with the intention of building a modern-style hotel andsome associated residences for short tourist stays. The execution ofthese developments was ultimately dependent of the re-zoning of atleast part of the area. As it was demonstrated later (Ajuntament dePalma 1985), these investors were acting in collusion with the Francoistmunicipal administration. In fact, the neglect of the municipality helpsexplain the accelerated pace of degradation that El Puig was suffering inthose years, a degradation useful for the investors in a variety of ways.First, it made land purchases cheaper and easier, since degradationfavoured a population exodus that liberated investors from negotiatingcompensation with tenants. Second, the worsening conditions in El Puigallowed developers to present their investment and the required rezoningas the only way to “save” the neighbourhood. Third, the dereliction ofthe buildings protected them from any criticism about replacing themwith buildings in an out-of-place modern style rather than rehabilitatingthe building stock. This building option matched with the then widelyspread assumption (Ruiz Vinals 2000, for the case of Palma) that renewaland modern-style architecture was equated with progress, but it alsomatched with the mass-tourism model that was dominant in Majorca inthose years. This model assumed that tourists were interested in sun,C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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sea, and comfort, and not in local history or places with alleged uniquecharacter.

It was in this context that a political mobilization arose in El Puig.In the last years of the dictatorship (1973–1977), a handful of highlypoliticized neighbours, with connections to the still clandestine left-wingpolitical parties, created a Neighbours’ Association. The main activityof this association was the campaign El Puig for its inhabitants thatdemanded a regeneration plan for the neighbourhood. The Neighbours’Association called for the rehabilitation of the built environment of ElPuig while creating the necessary measures that would make possible theright of the residents to stay in place. At the same time, the associationopposed the construction of the hotel, arguing that market interests, andmore specifically tourist interests, were a threat for the neighbourhoodand its “popular character” (Oliver and Garcıa 1977:96–110).

The campaign gathered strong support, both among its fellowneighbours of El Puig and among the media and other crucial agentsof Majorcan public opinion such as the College of Architects. As aresult the first version of the regeneration plan was approved in 1977,and was ratified in 1980 by the first democratically elected governmentof Palma. This regeneration plan stuck very close to the demands ofthe Neighbours’ Association. Thus, on the one hand, the plan explicitlyprevented any tourist development by making it impossible to rezonethe area for tourist purposes. On the other hand, it focused on therehabilitation of the built environment, converting a large number ofbuildings into public housing to be occupied by people who werealready living in El Puig under a tenancy regime. Also, the plan investedsignificantly in the infrastructure of the area, creating green areas,improving the sewage system and paving streets.

A quarter of a century later, the municipality inaugurated the newMuseum of Modern Art of the city, located in the bastion of theRenaissance walls bordering El Puig. In an interview with the headurban planner of the municipality, I asked him about the reasons behindthe election of such a location for the museum:

Because our intervention [during the 70s and 80s] was so strong,expropriating and so on, there, the ghetto that we had in there . . . Imean, the objective of a [regeneration] plan must be to take a placethat is outside the market and where the private initiative does notinvest, and to get the private initiative back to invest. (. . .) In El Puigwe have a ghetto because no-one goes to it, and maybe we can solvethis with the [Museum in the] Bastion.6

These words of the head urban planner, stating that the museumcould somehow reverse the effects of the regeneration plan of the1970s and 1980s, follow an interpretive logic that recalls the dichotomymobility/immobility of the “mobility approach”. On the one hand, weC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


have El Puig described as a ghetto, with the connotations of confinement,apathy, idleness, and backwardness that are associated with the term.By saying this, the planner is constructing El Puig as immobile andcontrasting it to the fluidity, mobility, and openness of investment andtourists. Capital accumulation is equated with mobility and progress.Yet the head urban planner of Palma is not describing El Puig and thepeople living in it as immobile, he is immobilizing them.

This immobilization rests on the conflation of the different meaningscontained in the terms mobility and immobility, a conflation presentnot only in the words of the head urban planner but also in thenon-dialectical, asymmetrical understanding of these two terms thatwas noted in the previous section. Analytically, we can distinguishat least three different meanings of mobility and immobility in thenarrative of the head urban planner. First, a strictly spatial dimension,that is, the movement or lack of movement through space or betweenplaces. This movement, or its lack, is linked with a certain relationbetween people and place, and terms like “local” or “cosmopolitan”are primarily associated to this first geographical meaning. The secondmeaning refers to time and change, that is, to the transformation orlack of transformation of social reality. This second understandingis related with questions of agency and control, and possesses astrong political dimension that is captured in expressions such as“political mobilization”. This political dimension is also evident in thehegemonic ways in which ideas such as “progress” or “development”are manipulated. The third meaning or dimension is linked with capital,and more specifically to capital’s tendency towards unbridled circulationand its need to be fixed/immobilized in order to provide the stablebasis through which capital circulates and also to monopolize locationaladvantages. Capital accumulation navigates through the tension betweenthe twin tendencies towards mobility, equalization, and homogenizationon the one hand and, on the other, towards immobility, unevenness, anddifferentiation (Smith 1990). In all three senses, we find a mutuallyconstitutive dialectic rather than a dichotomous opposition betweenthe two poles: there is no social transformation without some level ofcontinuity, and capital cannot move (circulate) without some part of itadopting an immobile (fixed) character.7

Nonetheless, the head urban planner builds a straight opposition thatconflates these disparate meanings. This operation is homologous tothat of the mobility turn when it applies to reality the asymmetricaldichotomy mobility/immobility and in so doing conflates, for instance,geographical and social mobility (Nowicka 2006), as Giddens’ oft-quoted statement that “time-space fixity also means social fixity”(1984:xxv) clearly illustrates. This conflation precludes a complexunderstanding of the relationship between mobility and immobilityand, more importantly, effaces the power of the dichotomy and thoseC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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managing it to distribute the objects of the world into these two poles,thus assigning asymmetrical value to them:

To claim that a certain activity is “mobile” can be seen as a performativeact that constitutes what it names (. . .) Furthermore, when mobilityin general is invested with positive connotations (. . .) then a positiveflavour is added to these phenomena simply by virtue of the referenceto mobility. Hence, the distinction between “mobile” and “immobile”phenomena is not an innocent exercise (Frello 2008:31–32).

Indeed, the head urban planner equates lack of movement inspace with lack of social transformation, localism, and apathy, thusconcealing the political mobilization of the inhabitants of El Puig, theirconnection with previous and contemporary struggles, and the socialtransformation they brought about: rights were recognized, claims weremade, new networks were constituted, buildings were rehabilitated,new policies were devised and implemented, etc. This dichotomousscheme, therefore, is applied to reality in order to deny the history ofthose labelled as “immobile” (a label aprioristically associated withpassivity) and therefore producing the division that it claims to portray.The objective behind the statement of the head urban planner is toundermine the rights the neighbours of El Puig conquered in the1970s, and ultimately to displace them, or part of them, out of theneighbourhood in order to make (the) place for the flows of capitaland for the “mobiles”. At the same time, opposing the “immobility”of the neighbours of El Puig with the mobility of flows of capital andtourists, the head urban planner conceals that these flows will in partbe immobilized in the built environment, as Ingrid’s case illustrates. Itseems, then, that power is not so much an attribute of the “mobiles”, butan attribute of those who can decide who is mobile and who is immobile,and this decision is not only made by restricting or allowing mobility, butalso more immediately through the application of the dichotomy itself.It is not only by building the Museum in El Puig that the head urbanplanner expects to reverse the regeneration plan, but he also expects todo so by “immobilizing” the neighbours of El Puig through the use ofthe non-dialectical dichotomy mobility/immobility. A look at the broadtransformations that have affected the old centre of Palma in the last twodecades will allow us to understand the rationale behind the attitude ofthe head urban planner.

From “Sun and Sea” to the “Real Majorca”After almost 40 years of uninterrupted growth of the tourist industry,the number of tourists visiting Majorca, as well as the money theyspent, started decreasing in 1988, and did not recover until 1996. Thisabrupt decrease is usually attributed to the emergence of competingC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


destinations in the Mediterranean, such as Turkey, Croatia or Tunisia,that could provide the same product that Majorca had historicallyoffered to its mass tourism, that is, sun, sea, and beach, at a cheaperprice (Buswell 1996; Robledo and Batle 2002). In this context, therewas a consensus among businesses (hotel owners, tour-operators, etc),government, grassroots and civil society associations, and tourist expertsthat it was about time to abandon the mass tourism model, basedon a generic image of sun, sea, and cheap prices addressed to anundifferentiated clientele. Paraphrasing Morgan (1991), the solutionconsisted of “dressing up Majorca and marketing it anew”. Hence,significant resources were devoted to selling the “real Majorca”, asingular place with distinct cultural and natural values. This new imagewas expected to attract a new kind of tourist: affluent, educated and avidfor distinct, authentic experiences, a profile akin to the “cosmopolitans”that people the mobility framework.

The reorientation of Majorca’s tourist model brought about aninternal reorganization of the tourist industry and an expansion of itsfield of action. With regards to the internal reorganization, the mostrelevant transformation was the rise of real estate and construction asthe leading sectors of the Majorcan economy, making tourism nearlyindistinguishable from the real estate sector (Amer 2006; Rullan 1999).On the other hand, the reorientation of the tourist industry implieda geographical expansion of tourist activity outside of the more orless confined coastal resorts where tourist activity had long beenconcentrated up until the mid-1990s (Rullan 1997). In addition to theextensive pattern of land consumption of the real estate and constructionsectors, this geographical expansion responded to the need to find “new”territories for tourist exploitation that were rich in the “natural” and“cultural” values that the reoriented tourist industry was to draw upon.

The historic centre of Palma quickly became a key area of investmentsince its collection of historic buildings, secluded ambience andpicturesque layout incarnated the kind of uniqueness that the new touristindustry required. Prior to the mid-90s the old centre of Palma occupieda very specific position within the tourist industry of the island asa place for an excursion of a few hours, usually organized by thehotels and limited to a couple of landmarks, like the cathedral andthe royal palace. Under the new model, the tourist industry envisagedthe full incorporation of the centre into the main circuits of tourismand capital investment. Gentrification would become the main path forthis incorporation, emphasizing the “unique atmosphere” and “historiclandscape” of the area, far more than discrete heritage landmarks.The cultural value of the old centre, nevertheless, was not alreadyavailable for exploitation: large parts of the old centre were in a statecomparable to that of El Puig in the 1970s and the area was associatedby Majorcans and tourists alike with ideas such as degradation, dirt, orC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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crime. The local government took the lead with an extensive programof urban regeneration, explicitly aimed at the gentrification of thearea (Ajuntament de Palma 1998), that would produce the old centreas a space associated with positive meanings (quietness, authenticity,historical value, etc) and ready it for the extraction of profits.8 Thebroad range of actions implemented by this program of regenerationcan be divided into three fields: (a) amelioration and embellishment ofthe built environment: renewal of public spaces, restoration of historicbuildings, a program of facade embellishment, etc; (b) subsidizingprivate investment, especially by facilitating the removal of tenants;and (c) the creation of amenities linked with cultural tourism, such asitineraries, cultural events, or cultural facilities (like the museum in ElPuig). The main effect of these amenities was the construction of anarrative emphasizing the historic and artistic value of the area.9

Gentrification was the main mechanism through which the culturalvalues of the old centre of Palma were expected to be converted intoprofits, and the regeneration program, therefore, intended to displaceresidents in order to make (the) place for gentrification. In parallel withthe most visible action of embellishment, then, the regeneration plansof the municipality carried out a less publicized action of displacementof the population, either through direct expropriation or by negotiatingcompensation with tenants, often involving their relocation to publichousing units in other parts of the city (Franquesa 2007). El Puig,however, remained the only part of the historic centre where themunicipality has not been able to displace residents because of theright to stay in place they had conquered through the mobilization ofthe 1970s. This abstract right was granted by the fact the majority ofthe neighbours of El Puig lived in public housing enjoying life-longcheap rental contracts. This is the reason why the head urban plannercomplained about the “immobility” of the residents of El Puig anddepicted it as a ghetto.

On the other hand, the total gentrification of the old centre of Palmawas not desirable from the perspective of the reoriented tourist industry.In contrast to what we saw in El Puig in the 1970s, where the touristindustry was interested in the area as a mere location, a privilegedsituation by the sea, now the tourist industry was interested in distinctplaces. In consequence, it was necessary to keep an important proportionof residents in place in order to sell the old centre as a unique space,a place with “character”, an “authentic” piece of the “real Majorca”.Miquel and his bakery were among the privileged that could stayin place, and in fact their presence enhanced the attraction the placecould rouse among potential gentrifiers like Ingrid. On the other sideof the spectrum, many of Miquel’s neighbours had to abandon thearea, and it is one of the houses these neighbours left that Ingridpurchased. The purpose was to convert the old centre of Palma intoC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


a “romanticized monumental place”, marked by what Herzfeld (1991)calls “monumental time”, as opposed to “social time”, the time ofthe everyday life practices. The old centre could thus be presented asfull of history but a-historic, frozen, out of the flow of events thatmake life historical; inasmuch as Miquel has been incorporated aspart of this romanticized, frozen landscape, he is also presented asahistorical, quintessentially immobile. The results of this strategy havebeen spectacular. While the increase in the number of people visitingthe new tourist attractions of the old centre has been modest, real estateprices have soared, with increases between 100 and 150% from 2000to 2006, an increase fuelled through purchases made by non-Majorcans(Vives Miro 2008).

With the geographical expansion of the tourist industry into the oldcentre of Palma, its residents faced two possible fates exemplifiedby Miquel and his neighbours: they either faced displacement orwould become part of the romanticized landscape to be sold to the“cosmopolitans”. Since the reorientation of the tourist industry is basedon selling uniqueness, the geographical expansion it has implied hasled to the disappearance of the spatial division that lay at the heart ofthe mass-tourism model between places of production, associated withwork and tourism, and places of reproduction, devoted to Majorcan’ssocializing and housing. In addition to a geographical expansion weobserve an infiltration into new domains of social life, wherein thetourist industry subsumes the ordinary daily lives of most Majorcansinto what Britton (1991) calls the “tourist productive system”. This pointis clearly illustrated by the promotional campaign recently launched bythe Balearic Government featuring the slogan “A tourist, a friend” [Elturista, un amic]. On the one hand, this campaign wants to ease theirritation and discomfort that Majorcans feel when they see tourists inwhat they consider to be “their places”: in the mountain pathways theyknew, in the hidden beaches they frequented, or as seasonal residents intheir neighbourhoods. On the other hand, it attests to the fact that theeveryday life and reproductive practices of Majorcans have become animportant part of the functioning of the tourist industry and as such haveto be governed.

Re-Reading ImmobilityAfter our tour through the transformations that have occurred duringthe last 30 years in the old centre of Palma, we are confronted with theneed to re-read the encounter between Ingrid and Miquel and the roleimmobility plays in it. Contrary to what we could call a common-senseunderstanding, if Miquel appears as immobile it is not because he staysin place, because he lives where he was born and raised. It is not either,as the mobility approach may want to assert, because of a generalizedC© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.

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increase of mobility in the world, or as a result of the increase andconsolidation of a new class of people, the cosmopolitans, in contrastto which those attached to a place become “immobile” and powerless.Miquel’s immobility is not so much a consequence of Ingrid’s mobilitybut a requisite for the latter, part of its condition of possibility, and itis in relation to her that he is immobile. Miquel’s immobility is partof the mobilization of the old centre of Palma as a recipient of mobileflows. The fact that Miquel appears to be ahistoric and timeless has todo with the presentation of the old centre as a place frozen in time; nextto him we have an absence, or better the absent presence of those who,considered to be an obstacle for capital’s dynamism, have been expelled(ie rendered mobile) from the picture.

On the other hand, Miquel has been able to take advantage of thisprocess, an advantage palpable in the way he has been able to mobilizehis image internationally as an artisan, hoping that this projection willbenefit his business as a pole of attraction for flows of visitors. Therestructuring of the old centre of Palma has not immobilized him in ageneral way, instead it has immobilized him in relation to gentrifierslike Ingrid. The fact that he appears as immobile vis-a-vis Ingrid is anexpression of his relative powerlessness, but the origin of this powerrelation is neither born in their encounter nor in the absolute power ofmobility. His lack of agency is nothing less than a reflection of the wayin which the place has been produced: his relative privilege has allowedhim to stay in place, but even if he is part of the old centre, it has notbeen produced for him, but rather for people like Ingrid. While in ElPuig the whole process of transformation was focused on the need ofthe neighbours, contemporary plans of urban regeneration have replacedthis category by that of the visitors, and especially the investors. Power,then, is not so much located in the pole of mobility, as an intrinsicattribute of it, but rather in the capacity to manage the relation betweenmobility and immobility, understood not as a relation between objectsbut as a producer of discrete objects and different kinds of people.

The old centre of Palma has been restructured with the aim ofattracting flows of visitors and, above all, capital. The production ofthis place as an appropriate channel for the mobility of capital and thegeneration of profits is part of the dialectic tension between capital’s twintendencies incarnated in the interplay between circulating (mobile) andfixed (immobile) capital: some capital has been immobilized in orderto create an adequate channel for the circulation of capital. Miquel hasbeen formally subsumed as part of this channel, in a clear example of theinfiltration of the tourist/real estate industry. Miquel, then, is not legibleas immobile because of having been left behind or aside of a seeminglyautonomous mobility that is structuring the world, but rather because hehas been put at the very centre of these mobile global flows.10 Miquel hasbeen immobilized (fixed) as part of a profitable configuration of place,C© 2011 The AuthorAntipode C© 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode.


but he has also been “mobilized” as part of this configuration, sincehe is part of an exchange value that has been successfully circulatingin the European real-estate market for second residences, a market thatpromises access to a piece of sun in a romanticized Mediterraneansetting as well as a profitable investment.

Under this lens, and inasmuch as the increase of global flows isrelated with capital circulation and accumulation, it seems inappropriateto think in terms of “global fluids [with] no clear point of departure, justde-territorialized movement, at certain speeds and different levels ofviscosity with no necessary end-state or purpose” (Sheller and Urry2003:117). Rather, in the case of the old centre of Palma we findvery specific routes through which capital circulates, channels thatmake capital’s mobility possible and meaningful, being total mobilityno more than a meaningless aporia from the point of view of capitalaccumulation. It is not mobility that opposes the world of fixed forms ofpositivism criticized by the mobility turn, it is relationality, a dialecticalway of understanding things in the world as nexuses of multipledeterminations.

Our case shows us, however, that we should be careful not toreduce the workings of mobilization and immobilization to a merereflection of the dynamic of capital. In fact, in order to understandthe power asymmetry between Ingrid and Miquel we must pay attentionto hegemonic notions of progress, social change, and development,notions that cannot be disengaged from but neither are they reducibleto the requirements of capital accumulation. In Palma, the idea thatcurrent transformations are “good” for the city is widely shared. Thisidea is influenced by what is perceived as an economic need to attracttourism, but also by other considerations such as the need to leavebehind degradation or the need to preserve the history and identity ofthe city materialized in cultural heritage. The simple notions of mobilityand immobility as asymmetrical opposites, as we have seen them inthe analysis of the “mobility turn” but also in the words of the headurban planner, possess power effects. The attribution of these simplifiednotions to different parts of reality is not only a reflection of hegemonicnotions, but more importantly a powerful way through which hegemonyis constructed.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Susana Narotzky, Katharine Rankin, Gavin Smith, Marion Werner,and four anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts. I would also liketo thank Matilde Cordoba Azcarate for the organization of the Young Scholars’ Plenary“Immobilities: new challenges for anthropology in a globalised world” at the Xth EASABiennial Conference (Ljubljana, 2008) where I presented a former version of this paper.I acknowledge support for the realization of this paper from the Commissionat pera Universitats i Recerce ad Departament d’Innovacio, Universitats i Empresa, de laGeneralitat de Catalunya.


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Endnotes1 In this respect it is worth noting that Burgess (1967 [1925]:59–62) suggested a programof research around the idea of mobility that predated the contemporary turn to mobilityby more than half a century.2 Sheller and Urry, for instance, propose the creation of a “new mobilities paradigm”that would include “the study of exile, migration, immigration, migrant citizenship,transnationalism, and tourism” (2006:211). It is interesting to contrast the minimalimpact of the “mobility turn” on the study of forms of non-voluntary mobility like exilewith the warm reception by scholars interested in forms of voluntary mobility, especiallyin the field of tourist studies (Allon 2004; Allon et al 2008; Clarke 2004a, 2004b; Coleset al 2005a, 2005b; Hall 2005). The pervasiveness of the “mobility turn” in touriststudies has led Coles et al (2005a, 2005b) and Hall (2005) to suggest that the study oftourism should move into a post-disciplinary field of mobility studies. It must be pointedout that while influenced by advocates of the “mobility turn” such as Urry, the notionof mobility used by these authors is primarily derived from Hagerstrand’s works onindividual geographies or time-geographies and Giddens’ notion of structuration (seeespecially Coles et al 2005b).3 Clarke (2004a) proposes a very similar notion of “relative contingent fixities”.4 This abstract language, with the emphasis on the visual and its transformativecharacter, echoes Urry’s concept of “tourist gaze” (Urry 2002).5 “Es veınat que tens de tota sa vida pues sempre esta acostumat a que a les sis desdemati, pues, segons quins dies aquesta xumenea tirara fum. En tira sempre pero hi hasegons quins dies que es vent bufa cap a s’altre costat i li pega a ell. Com va venir no famolt una sueca i me diu: / ‘I que passa, que se pega foc algo?’ / ‘No’/ ‘Com que no!?’ /‘No. Se pega foc lo mateix de cada dia’ / ‘Pero es que a mi. . .’ -pero histerica va venir,o sigui que tota alterada de com aixı. / ‘Pues miri es vent avui bufa de s’altre costat iavui li ha vengut cap a voste’. / ‘I aixo no pot ser’ / ‘Com que no pot ser senyora? Esta,des de l’any 14 estam cremant llenya. O siga que voste ara fa un parell de mesos que esaquı, o dues setmanes que es aquı, i avui li ha pegat es fum, pero naltros feim de tota savida’ / (. . .) O sigui, hem perdut es concepte”.6 “Com naltros varem agafar tota la part alta on se va expropiar tot, llavonses alla, totel ghetto que hi havia alla . . . O sigui: s’objectiu d’un pla es que una cosa que esta forade mercat i que ja no hi interve sa iniciativa privada, torni a intervenir. (. . .) Es que alPuig s’ha muntat el ghetto aquest perque no hi entrava ningu, i a la millor ara hi entrames gent pes Baluard”.7 My understanding of the mobility and immobility of capital follows Marx’s analysison the relationship between fixed and circulating capital. For Marx, the contradictionbetween fixed and circulating capital has to be primarily understood not as an observablecontradiction between different objects, but primarily as an abstract contradictionconstituting objects: “[T]he aspects of circulating and fixed are initially nothing morethan capital itself posited in the two aspects, first as the unity of the process, then as aparticular one of its phases, itself in distinction to itself as unity—not as two particularkinds of capital, not capital of two particular kinds, but rather as different characteristicforms of the same capital. (. . .) One and the same capital therefore always appears inboth states; (. . .) one part tied down, another part circulating” (Marx 1973:621–622).Once these two different determinations become objectified, the contradiction betweenthe two forms of capital proceeds as if they were two different kinds of capitals: “While,up to now, fixed capital and circulating capital appeared merely as different passingaspects of capital, they have now hardened into two separate modes of its existence,and fixed capital appears separated alongside circulating capital. They are now twoparticular kinds of capital” (Marx 1973:702, emphasis added). Even when these twoforms have “hardened”, however, we should be careful not to think of them either asfixed or absolute categories: “Finally, although circulating capital and fixed capital now



appear as two different kinds, circulating capital is still posited through consumption,the wear of fixed capital; while fixed capital, for its part, exists only as circulating capitaltransformed into this specific form” (Marx 1973:738).8 Although this program of urban regeneration was certainly influenced by thereorientation of the tourist industry, it would be misleading to see it as a mechanicresponse to it. For a more nuanced account on the diverse actors, scales and, oftenopposed, interests complicated in the emergence of these policies see Franquesa andMorell (2005) and Franquesa (2010).9 Authors like Verstraete (2003) and Spring (2006) have emphasised the central roleplayed by historic narratives in the freezing of certain configurations of place orientedto the attraction of mobile flows and to allowing the structured circulation of these flowswithin these places.10 This should not be confused with Urry’s notion of “moorings”, an instrumentalimmobility that allows mobility to keep apace. In fact the argument could be reversed,observing that the mobility of place (as property titles in increasingly internationalizedreal estate markets, or as an image in tourist brochures and plane magazines, etc) isinstrumental for investments that are fixated to the land. My point is that we have tomove to a dialectical analysis of mobility and immobility that goes beyond a reading interms of instrumentality that will forcefully lead us to understand some parts of realityas (relatively) passive.

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‘We’ve Lost our Bearings’: Tourism, Place, and the Limits of the Mobility Turn

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Transcript of ‘We’ve Lost our Bearings’: Tourism, Place, and the Limits of the Mobility Turn