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This paper uses social network analysis methods to explore how the spatial mobility of students to attend university creates regional divisions and socio‐spatial hierarchies of schools and universities. Using community detection methods as our methodological lens we stitch together regional economic geography, the student mobilities literature and the sociological and geographical analysis of elite education. Combining these statistical techniques with qualitative data from our broader study, we explore student flows between different geographical areas in the UK for universities. The clusters or 'communities' of areas underline how student migration to attend university in the UK is a moment which reflects and re‐creates regional and national boundaries. The second part of the paper examines school to university student flows, highlighting a distinctive, predominantly English cluster of elite schools and universities. Examining student mobility patterns with network methods allows us to distinguish a distinctive archipelagic geography of elite formation through higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National borders are often considered to constrain the international flow of products, services, people and capital. However, borders and differences between countries could also promote cross-border mobility. This contribution investigates what discourages and encourages cross-border shopping mobility. This is done by categorising differences between countries into more ‘rational differences’ on the one hand and more ‘emotional differences’ on the other hand. Furthermore, the ‘bandwidth of unfamiliarity’ concept is introduced to scrutinise how the interpretation by shoppers of both rational and emotional differences generates (im)mobility. In so doing, a ‘border paradox’ is discussed, where increasing cross-border integration (e.g. in the form of regional ‘homogenisation’) could coincide with decreasing cross-border mobility. This paradox is used here to reveal a possible flipside of the European Union policy to promote international mobility, by trying to dissolve borders between member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of spatial mobility to the creation of profitable livelihood strategies for women in Porto Novo, Benin. Drawing on 522 surveys and 15 life-history interviews conducted with women who use a wide array of strategies, this paper demonstrates that under some circumstances mobility may be as important to increasing women's income-generating opportunities as access to capital. Moreover, I argue that focusing on women's access to spatial mobility will not only increase the profitability of their livelihood strategies, but may also create spaces in which issues of autonomy and independence can also be addressed. In so doing, this research contributes to work on gender and development by demonstrating the importance of considering the spatial aspects of social and economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]