ABSTRACT

What difference did increasing spatial mobility make to British society between the 1950s and the 1980s? This article represents an historical response to the challenge of the ‘mobilities turn’ in the social sciences. It brings together the study of migration, personal mobility and transport to reflect on the ‘high-speed mobile society’ emerging in parts of Britain by the 1960s. The article analyses the very different forms of mobility evident in the period: flows of international and internal migration, patterns of residential mobility and commuting, the relationship between spatial and social mobility. It charts the changes to urban form stemming from mass automobility and the emergence by the 1970s of immobility as a focus of policy concern, located above all in the ‘inner city’. Integrating an awareness of movement (and, as its obverse, fixity) into contemporary British history, the article suggests, has the potential to throw new light on the categories of class, race and gender and debates about ‘affluence’, individualism and inequality which have characterised recent historiography.

摘要

在 1950 年代和 1980 年代之间，日益增加的空间流动性对英国社会有何影响？本文代表了对社会科学中“流动性转向”挑战的历史回应。它汇集了对移民、个人流动性和交通的研究，以反思 1960 年代英国部分地区出现的“高速移动社会”。本文分析了这一时期明显不同的流动形式：国际和国内移民流动、住宅流动和通勤模式、空间流动与社会流动之间的关系。它描绘了源自大众汽车的城市形态变化，以及 1970 年代作为政策关注焦点出现的不动性，尤其是位于“内城”。整合运动意识（并且，作为其正面，