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This paper problematizes the neglect of spatiality and materiality of international branch campuses in extant studies and challenges the predominant representation of transnational education students merely in terms of their corporeal immobility. Based on a case study of a UK international branch campus in China, this paper incorporates interview narratives and ethnographic observations to reveal the students' experiences and imaginations, and to delineate the unique texture of the spatiality of the campus. In examining the dynamic interrelations between imagination, materiality, and (im)mobility in transnational educational spaces, this paper highlights the students' imaginative process, in which spatial imagination and imaginative space (re)produce each other and are complicated by the various sources of power at play. The international branch campus thus functions as an infrastructure of im/mobilities, which is both locally embedded and transnationally connected; it enables students' imaginative mobilities, transforming them into 'imaginative travellers' who have never physically been abroad but whose being and belonging are constantly negotiated by their everyday experiences in a mobile educational space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on mental health geographies and housing has focused on pattern and distribution, rather than social and cultural constructions of home. Here we attempt to understand meanings and roles of home for individuals with mental illness in the UK within the context of a deep-seated housing crisis. The discussion is sharpened by the notion of the ambiguous home, ranging from a place for retreat, separation or even isolation from the world, with experiences of recovery, stability or wellness, to home as something more negative, in which distress or illness flourished, and in which people became entrapped or from which they sought relief. Three themes crosscut this range of experiences: home as material object; home as relational; and home as rhythm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within writing on walking practices, walking has often been presented as pleasurable, relaxing, and even liberatory. Research using walking interviews has recognised that different kinds of bodies can be excluded from mobile methods, impacting upon place-based knowledge production. However, the social and cultural politics of the walking interview remains underplayed, an omission that is acutely apparent in a context of urban diversity. This article investigates the ways in which walking practices intersect with social difference, particularly in relation to faith, ethnicity and gender. It argues for the need to pluralise mobile methods in order to more subtly address social distinctions, and further offers empirical observations on the embodied experiences and socio-spatial practices of Muslim women in the city of Birmingham, U.K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, states have sought to repress the nomadic way of life, as evidenced by various policies that seek to displace, criminalize, or assimilate them. This practice continues today, as the situation of Gypsies and Travelers in Ireland and Britain attests to. This paper examines how Gypsies and Travelers are repeatedly denied the right to practice a nomadic way of life. This occurs through various measures, each corresponding to a particular understanding of how culture operates. I identify two dominant discourses: 'culture as choice' and 'culture as nature.' The former seeks to assimilate and sedentarize while the latter wishes to prevent Gypsies and Travelers from 'settling down' as it does not see any option but for nomadism to continue. Both are similar, however, in that they misunderstand nomadic practices and wish to erase Gypsy and Traveler ways of life. I then delineate how a cultural politics of mobility avoids the pitfalls of seeing culture as a choice or as essential and unchanging, as well as not ignoring culture as acultural approaches do, but instead recognizes how Gypsies and Travelers themselves utilize cultural discourses to navigate through legal constraints and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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