What is mobility-related exclusion?

We define mobility-related exclusion as:

"The process by which people are prevented from participating in the economic, political and social life of the community because of reduced accessibility to opportunities, services and social networks, due in whole or in part to insufficient mobility in a society and environment built around the assumption of high mobility."
(Kenyon, S., Lyons, G. and Rafferty, J.: 'Transport and Social Exclusion: Investigating the Possibility of Promoting Inclusion Through Virtual Mobility.' Journal of Transport Geography 10:3)

It is suggested that inadequate mobility could impact, in some way, upon each of the dimensions of exclusion, detailed on the 'what is social exclusion?' pages of this web site.

People with inadequate access to motorised or personal mobility can find that they are unable to participate in the civic, economic, political and social life of the community, because their access to opportunities, social networks, goods and services is reduced by their lack of mobility. For example, inadequate mobility could prevent someone from finding out about and taking up a job; from taking up educational opportunities; accessing health care or other social services; or from being able to meet new, and visit existing friends and family.

Their social exclusion can be both enforced, that is, created and reinforced, or made worse, by lack of adequate physical mobility. The table below shows how lack of mobility can affect each dimension of exclusion.

Dimension of exclusion	Influence of lack of mobility: example exclusionary factors
1. Economic	Unemployment - inability to take a job because of lack of adequate transport to interview and to place of employment
2. Living space	Geographical isolation - lack of mobility reinforcing isolation
3. Mobility	The cost, routing, timing, accessibility of public transport and the cost and accessibility of private transport acting as inhibitors to access to opportunities, social networks, goods and services
4. Organised political	Low participation - linked to inability to travel to meetings, which are often in the evenings in centralised locations
5. Personal	Not directly linked to mobility: factors including ethnicity, culture, gender
6. Personal political	Powerlessness - particularly in the face of social and health care, linked to low levels of knowledge/poor access to information
7. Social networks	Loneliness, isolation - lack of adequate transport to visit family, friends
8. Societal	Poor educational opportunities - inability to travel to learning venues
9. Temporal	Time poverty - time taken to travel reduces time for activities