Tim Cresswell
University of Edinburgh
While significant attention has been given to critical accounts of borders and bordering in recent decades, the same cannot be said of routes and routing. People and things do not move at random across an isotropic plain. This is the first lesson of mobility – people and things follow, and create, routes. This presentation argues for a critical account of routes and routing through a series of connections, digressions and short cuts that explore how routes create infrastructures of power as well as the use of self-made routes – desire lines – to trace out possible alternatives to the infrastructural present. Where you start, how you get there, what direction you take, and where you end up are all part of this equation. The analysis of routes and routing forms a key part of a wider politics of mobility separating citizens and vagabonds – key figures in the histories and geographies of mobility.