Mobilities and the Construction of Peripherality in Coastal Communities

Peripheries are actively created through words, actions and power relations, rather than being absolute spatial entities (e.g. Eriksson 2008; Lang 2012). In this paper, we use the idea of multiple forms of mobilities and their assemblages, as laid out by Urry (2007), to consider the process of peripheralization of and within coastal communities. By bringing together the concept of peripheralization with a focus on multiple mobilities, it is possible to examine these communities in a dynamic manner, and consider the ways in which mobilities contribute to the processes of peripheralization. Furthermore, this opens up for an important temporal element to peripheralization as well, whereby a coastal community can be peripheralized in a short-term, long-term or seasonal manner. A mobilities view on peripheralization does not see places as ‘situated’ in the periphery, but as being constructed as peripheral or central in various shifting ways. The paper seeks to challenge current place-based discussions of peripherality regarding coastal communities by discussing the complex intersection of peripherality and mobilities. Drawing from empirical material from six case studies in the regions of New England, United States and Northern Jutland, Denmark, we examine the construction of peripherality through Urry’s five interdependent mobilities. These six coastal communities offer fertile ground for the examination because they are inhabited, visited, and imagined places highlighting different forms of mobility and the temporal dimension of peripherality.