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By analyzing the relations of communities and places in sparsely located rural areas, this article argues that rural community is not a stable unity tied to a place, but a phenomenon closely tied to its members’ connections to the interdependent concept of urban/rural, especially in terms of their mobility practices. In this study, the new mobilities paradigm was applied to reveal how everyday relational and routine aspects connected to material, structural, socio-cultural and economic conditioning dynamically intertwine to form a rural community. The analysis is based on three regional case studies in Estonian sparsely populated areas, which are diverse in terms of geographical location, demographic composition, type of settlement, history, and welfare conditions. By using qualitative in-depth interviews with people (N=60) who were involved with the locations, the article analyses everyday mobilities in these communities, especially in terms of interrelatedness to structural, social and material factors. The study has brought out interrelated themes that are connected to the use of rural representations in terms of individual and social self-reflection, the importance of social and material infrastructures, and the dynamics of these borders in communities and shaping community relations.

As formas de mobilidade associadas ao turismo contemporâneo são ilustrativas de uma “vida social móvel”, definida cada vez mais pela lógica da “hipermobilidade” – não raro glamourizada e quase sempre excludente – em diversas escalas, com efeitos variados e implicações nos campos ambientais, fisiológicos, psicológicos, emocionais, atitudinais, identitários, sociais e teórico-metodológicos. Nestes termos, este ensaio pretende identificar, organizar e analisar algumas contribuições teóricas que permitam leituras sobre expressões e perspectivas das mobilidades turísticas no bojo de um “paradigma das novas mobilidades”. Discute-se uma suposta tendência de “de-diferenciação” da atividade, em que o ordinário (cotidiano) e o extraordinário (turismo) se confundem. De maneira ilustrativa, trata-se de aspectos das mobilidades turísticas no contexto brasileiro, em face de transformações socioeconômicas e seu rebatimento na dinâmica do turismo. Mobilities associated to contemporary tourism illustrate a “mobile social life”, increasingly determined by “hypermobility” – often glamourized and almost always excluding – in diverse scales, with varied effects and implications on environmental, physiological, psychological, emotional, attitudinal, identitarian, social and theoretical-methodological domains. In this context, this paper aims to identify, bring together and analyze theoretical contributions that enhance readings on expressions and perspectives of tourism mobilities in a context of a “new mobilities paradigm”. Even though it is yet under debate, it has been discussed a trend of “de-differentiation” of tourism, in which the ordinary (everyday life) and extraordinary (tourism) are merged. In an illustrative way, it has been discussed tourism mobilities aspects in the Brazilian context, vis-à-vis socioeconomic transformations and its impacts on tourism.