Katherine Gough
Professor
Later life mobilities at the margins of urban geography
Författare
Summary, in English
The projected increase in older people within the African population, alongside rapid urbanisation, points to the growing importance of understanding how older people navigate towns and cities across the continent. This aligns with wider concerns that geographical scholarship needs to pay more sustained attention to ageing in Global South contexts. Rather than treating these developments as problems or absences, we approach them as opportunities to explore how geographies of later life can generate new ways to conceptualise the urban experience. To this end, the paper draws on the local vernacular of older residents in the Ghanaian cities of Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi to decentre, contextualise and expand the vocabulary used to depict and interpret urban mobilities. The findings reveal ‘hidden geographies of ageing’ through three forms of mobility practice: Mpanyinfo ho hia (respectful mobilities), YƐ mboa nkoa (collective mobilities) and Me te fie (retired mobilities). These insights enrich conceptual understandings of city life by showing how older people navigate, engage with and shape social hierarchies, communal support networks and economic rationalities. By amplifying the voices of a population often overlooked in epistemological and policy deliberations, this intervention supports interdisciplinary efforts to reimagine how knowledge is produced with and about cities in the Global South. Crucially, the paper challenges the Southern urban critique to better reflect the plurality of marginality that influences everyday life in the Majority World.
Avdelning/ar
- Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi
Publiceringsår
2025
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Wiley-Blackwell
Ämne
- Human Geography
Nyckelord
- Africa
- ageing
- everyday
- mobilities
- qualitative
- Southern urban critique
Aktiv
Epub
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0020-2754