Slices of (mobile) Life as a graphic novel
© Jean Leveugle
EPFL’s Laboratory for Urban Sociology carried out a sociological study on highly mobile individuals in Europe. The outcome of the study has now been published as a graphic novel with six portraits of workers that spend much of their time commuting.
Gaby, Martin, Émilie, Jean, and Thierry’s lives are shaped by their daily commute. They are members of a segment of society that spends more than two hours per day in buses, trains, planes, or cars, or are obliged to spend more than 60 nights away from home for their work. What are their lives like? How do they deal with their commute, their professional life, and their private life? Is their extensive mobility a consequence of their professional objectives?
Their day to day is made real in this graphic novel, revealing to the reader the many forms and perceptions of work-related mobility. Far from usual stereotypes of highly mobile people, this book, which was launched and directed by the Mobile Lives Forum*, is a window into the lives of people we see and meet all the time.
The elements and situations that are depicted in this book stem from the second part of a large-scale European sociological study conducted from 2006 to 2013 by EPFL’s Laboratory for Urban Sociology, supported financially by the Mobile Lives Forum. These slices of life are accompanied by a text written by the researchers who conducted the investigation, providing a scientific analysis of the impact and social conditions of high mobility.
The study aims to better understand the lives of highly mobile people in contemporary societies, whose lifestyles combine working and private life. To provide better support for such people, and to combat the increasing professional pressure to adopt this type of lifestyle, the book concludes with several ideas for developing genuine mobility policies. Businesses and governments have only to seize them.
Slices of Mobile Life, editions Loco, Emmanuel Ravalet, Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin, Vincent Kaufmann, adapted and illustrated by Jean Leveugle, co-edited with the Forum Vies Mobiles, 120 pages, available in bookstores since November 6.
*Created in 2011 by the SNCF (Société des chemins de fer français), the Mobile Lives Forum is a research and exchange institute that studies mobility. Professor Vincent Kaufmann, head of EPFL’s Urban Sociology Laboratory, is its scientific director. EPFL’s Transportation Center is coordinating three research projects with the Mobile Lives Forum.
