From cocooning to Skyping: An ethnographic study of young children's everyday mobilities in an English town

‘From cocooning to Skyping: an ethnographic study of mobilities in young children’s everyday lives in an English town’ posits the question of how the movements of people, objects, ideas, information and images through physical, virtual, communicative and imaginative means are practiced, experienced and represented by and in relation to young children, in a small English town that I will call Wishwell. This question involves identifying the manifold forms of mobilities that shaped young children’s lives in this particular location: from babies bodily movements and everyday trips within town, to journeys to other countries, cards and parcels sent and received through the post, and videoconferencing on Skype. It also involves tracing the varied places, people and things to which children were connected through these mobilities, and the discourses and representation of childhood and mobility that gave meaning to young children’s mobile experiences and practices. The research question acknowledges children as positioned in relation to phenomena beyond their immediate space of perception, but at the same time it highlights the necessity to empirically explore how these connections are made and experienced, rather than taking them for granted. Therefore, the ‘from’ and ‘to’ on this title do not denote a progressive and linear movement through life cycle stages. Instead, it highlights the diverse range of overlapping and interdependent means and scales of movement that I encountered.