The affects and emotions of everyday commutes in Kolkata: shaping women’s public transport mobility

Sanghamitra Roy, Ajay Bailey and Femke van Noorloos

Mobilities, 2025, vol. 20, issue 1, 125-142

Abstract: Public transport inherently involves encounters with other people. For women, negotiating everyday overcrowded, unsafe, and unreliable conditions is a major barrier to accessing public transport mobility that triggers emotions. Using qualitative research methods – in-depth interviews and visual surveys – this study delves beyond understanding the barriers and looks at the affective realm to comprehend how affects and emotions shape accessibility, acceptability, and affordability of public transport for women in Kolkata. The disruptive affects of overcrowded, unsafe, and unreliable conditions produce emotional ordeals, increase travel time and costs, and restrict mobility. The sense of despair that emerges compels women to adjust, accept, and even opt out of overcrowded, unsafe, and unreliable public transport more often than not. This paper argues that affects, emotions, reactions, and consequences are entangled and impact the accessibility, acceptability, and affordability of public transport. The contribution of this paper lies in bringing to the fore the need for feminist inquiries into gendered mobility inequalities and the role of affects and emotions therein.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17450101.2024.2389843 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:20:y:2025:i:1:p:125-142

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rmob20

DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2024.2389843

Access Statistics for this article

Mobilities is currently edited by Professor Kevin Hannam, Professor Mimi Sheller and Professor John Urry

More articles in Mobilities from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().