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Mobilities and commons unseen: spatial mobility in homeless people explored through the analysis of GPS tracking data

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the spatial mobility of homeless people in urban areas, exploring homeless mobility, its drivers, limits and links to personal attributes, and whether there is an association between the extent of spatial activity and an individual’s housing situation. To our knowledge, there has been no prior exhaustive attempt to explore the spatial mobility of homeless people using Global Positioning System (GPS) location devices. The theoretical background of the research was based on time-geography approaches. The research used a mixed method approach involving participatory GPS mapping. Spatial mobility was measured by GPS location devices. GPS tracking made it possible to capture the precise location of a person in time and space, and subsequently to identify the daily and weekly mobility rhythms of such people. The GPS data were further contextualised by conducting interviews with homeless people and asking about their daily mobility. The groundwork for the interviews resulted in printed maps of the participants’ daily spatial mobility (n = 598). The combination of time-location data and ethnographic methods presented several technical and organisational difficulties, but the pilot study provided valuable knowledge about the everyday-life mobility of homeless people in cities. A novel understanding of the links between homeless mobilities, urban commons and the life conditions of homeless people can inform current welfare policies relating to the poor.

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Fig. 1

Note: Rare cases of mobility beyond 60 kilometres are excluded from the figures in order to improve visual readability

Fig. 2
Fig. 3

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Notes

  1. Obviously, this numerical data is also socially constructed and its seeming objectivity is therefore only relative. To highlight this issue, we placed the word ‘objective’ in quotation marks.

  2. The map interviews will be analysed in detail in a separate article, that will complement this one.

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Acknowledgements

The article is output of the research project Time and Space of Homeless Persons in a Post-socialistic City: A Comparison of Prague and Pilsen, funded by the Czech Science Foundation.

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This work was supported by The Czech Science Foundation (Grant Number GA15-17540S).

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  1. Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilska 1, 110 00, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Martin Šimon, Petr Vašát, Hana Daňková, Petr Gibas & Markéta Poláková

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  1. Martin Šimon
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Correspondence to Martin Šimon.

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Šimon, M., Vašát, P., Daňková, H. et al. Mobilities and commons unseen: spatial mobility in homeless people explored through the analysis of GPS tracking data. GeoJournal 85, 1411–1427 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-019-10030-4

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