Place as a Practical Concern of Mobile Workers

Abstract

In this paper we examine the spatial practices of mobile workers—how mobile workers manage their use of technology and place. Data from interviews with highly mobile workers and ‘hot-deskers’ are used to explore the reciprocal relationship between practice and place: how places change work, but also how work changes places. Mobile workers often need to configure their activities to take account of the different places in which they find themselves. This can involve considerable ‘juggling’ of their plans, humble office equipment, and their coworkers. In turn mobile workers change places, as they appropriate different sites for their work. Specifically, technology allows for the limited reappropriation of travel and leisure sites as places for work (such as trains and cafés). Time is also an important practical concern for mobile workers. Although mobile work may be seen as relatively flexible, fixed temporal structures allow mobile workers to ‘accomplish synchronicity’ with others. Although this paper focuses on the specific practices of mobile workers, it also explores how ‘grand social theory’ can help us understand the practical details of mobile work, yet how practice cannot be simply reduced to theory.