The politics of stuckness: Waiting lives in mobile worlds

Abstract

This paper develops our geographical understanding of the gendered politics of (im)mobility by exploring the hidden politics of waiting experienced by some mobile working households. Reflecting on qualitative fieldwork with female partners of mobile workers in Australia who remain at home, we explain how ‘stuckness’ is a specific form of waiting that highlights a power-geometry where their immobility is exacerbated by the mobility of their partner. Its key contribution is to spotlight an overlooked durational aspect to immobility which supplements a previous focus on spatial immobility. Taking the self-governing activity of emotion management as our point of departure, we draw on qualitative interviews to highlight the multiple ways that our female participants become focused on short-term processes of getting by, leaving them stuck in the present. A more extensive immersion into the lifeworld of one woman through a photo diary and subsequent interview draws attention to the more passive, insidiously listless dimensions of stuckness which can compromise wellbeing for mobile worker partners.