Area

ABSTRACT This article examines Tirana's recent urban transformation through the lens of the state‐architecture nexus, analysing how successive Albanian regimes have mobilised architecture as a political instrument of legitimation, identity construction and geopolitical positioning. Focusing on the Bulevardi i Ri as one of the contemporary sites of intervention, the study situates current development within the broader post‐socialist transition and the neoliberal restructuring of Central and Eastern European cities. Drawing on post‐socialist urban scholarship and a cultural political economy framework, the article argues that architecture in Tirana functions not merely as a material outcome of economic change but as a key medium through which the state produces and stabilises the economic imaginary of European modernity. Based on discursive analysis, desk research and interviews with experts and residents, the paper reveals how architecture, centralised planning and the displacement of informal settlements are intertwined in a hegemonic urban project that reinforces state power while generating socio‐spatial tensions.

ABSTRACT This paper draws from discussions arising during the 2024 RGS‐IBG Annual Conference session Historical Geographies of the Caribbean and critically contemplates the presence—or not—of Caribbean historical geographies across the historic and contemporary enterprise of British Geography. Given the significance of the Caribbean archipelago across the globe, we begin by exploring the presence of Caribbean historical geographies across British and North American geography publications. We follow by considering the histories of the British discipline and its cultural, contingent and contextual historiographical relationship with the Caribbean in comparison with other humanities and social science disciplines, across the United Kingdom and the Caribbean. Reflections are also made regarding the discipline of British geography and its relationship with Caribbean Studies before concluding how (historical) Geography itself might serve as a conduit for more nuanced, grounded and practical ways forward in centring the intellectual and pedagogical sensibilities for Caribbean histories and geographies going forward.

ABSTRACT In April 2024, the Indonesian government officially declared Jakarta a global city. Although scholars have noted that Jakarta's connectedness to the global system and the aspiration to transform Jakarta into a global city are not new, the lexicon was not yet substantively marshalled in Jakarta's policies and plans. Beyond shedding light on a relatively unique case in which the global city discourse has always been available but only tapped into later, I argue that this study can be used to highlight the usefulness of rethinking ‘global city’ as a category of practice , especially when the analytical adequacy of ‘global city’ has been put into question. Although not entirely new, attending to the global city as a category of practice arguably offers a ‘refreshed’ complementary vantage point for global city research, allowing us to be more sensitive to the politics that drive the emergence of global city aspirations, while also being reflexive about the analytical categories we use to understand social phenomena. Deploying such a framework, the article argues for three interrelated points. First, the plan to relocate the Indonesian capital city offered the ‘right’ timing, in which the ruling elite's legitimacy needs, the timeline pressure, government official interests and the availability of the global city lexicon coalesced, forming a specific conjuncture where the global city discourse could emerge. Second, the phrase global city is capacious enough to accommodate different interpretations, from ruling elites and the state‐sanctioned imperative of development to citizens' aspirations who see the global city as the ultimate form of progressive city. Third, early indications suggest there are problems with the plan and with how actors may understand the concept of a global city. Nonetheless, given the changing politics surrounding Jakarta and the new capital city, the outcomes of the global city plan remain uncertain.

This paper critically assesses the opportunities and challenges arising from localised forms of domestic energy advice (DEA) provision, within the context of emerging 'place-based' approaches to net zero governance. DEA will play a key role in achieving net zero by facilitating the installation and usage of low-carbon measures in homes, but there is little research that examines how the spatial configuration of advice programmes may influence their efficacy. This paper addresses this research gap, drawing empirical data from an in-depth workshop with 19 DEA professionals in northwest England and an analysis of evaluation reports from seven DEA organisations. The findings suggest that place should be considered a fundamental and active part of the DEA process, not merely a backdrop in which advice provision happens. Localised, place-based approaches can be advantageous for ensuring DEA is relevant to the circumstances of communities and individuals, and for helping to establish relations of trust between advisors and citizens. However, local DEA operates within a multi-scalar governance landscape, and existing national policies relating to the financing of home energy retrofits and the funding of energy advice organisations often hinder the capacity of local actors to translate advice into action. We conclude by arguing for a form of 'progressive relational localism', involving the establishment of a national energy advice network that would empower local actors and support equitable place-based decarbonisation.

This paper examines citational politics as a site through which erasure and silencing are reproduced in academic publishing. Bringing together insights from art curation and geography, it reimagines academic citation as a form of critical curation that fosters more deliberate, generous and grounded citational practice. To this end, the paper outlines six curatorial principles for reorienting approaches to citation and offers role-specific prompts for authors, reviewers, editors and editorial boards. The result is a framework for advancing ethical citation in ways that support more accountable and rigorous scholarship across publishing and educational contexts.

Short Abstract Climate‐related displacement is analysed as forced and voluntary migration, intricately connected to a web of complex geopolitical, economic, social and environmental dynamics. Framing climate change displacement simply as a voluntary or involuntary migration ignores the underlying power dynamics and historical colonial influences, perpetuating inequalities in governance and policies aimed at resilience. We argue that the narratives of climate change, displacement and resilience are built on a colonial legacy that requires a plurality of understanding and a multiplicity of practices across various spatial and temporal contexts.

ABSTRACT This article examines blockades targeting the phosphate‐processing industry in the Gabes region of Tunisia following the uprisings of 2010–2011, questioning their contributions and limitations. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2019, it foregrounds the spatial dimensions of blockades, conceived as ‘generative refusals’ that simultaneously intervene in industrial flows and produce socio‐political space. By focusing on territorially embedded and relational spatial practices, the article examines various cases of blockades involving fishermen, unemployed residents and inhabitants of particularly exposed areas, showing how protesters mobilise situated spatial knowledge to intervene in material and logistical flows, while grounding claims in locally differentiated experiences of industrial harm. The article demonstrates that blockades generate political effects along three registers: creating visibility for otherwise marginalised grievances, opening negotiation channels with state actors and, under specific conditions, securing concrete concessions. It also challenges approaches that interpret blockades primarily through the logic of strategic chokepoint targeting, showing that actors frequently engage in opportunistic or substitutable targeting focused on sites that maximise political leverage. Finally, it complicates readings of blockades as fostering broad anti‐extractivist or anti‐capitalist solidarities, highlighting how territorial anchoring both enables mobilisation and generates fragmentation and impaired collective negotiating power—dynamics further exacerbated by selective state responses. The article thus advances debates on blockades by providing a grounded and politically nuanced understanding, attentive to socio‐spatial inequalities, legitimacy claims and the ambivalent effects of territorialised mobilisation.

This article revisits Hardill and Raghuram's 1998 paper, Diasporic Connections, to explore how the dynamics at the heart of the paper, including gendered labour, cultural inheritance and transnational entrepreneurship, resonate within a dramatically different fashion landscape of 2025. Grounded in reflective engagement with original study and collaborative dialogue with two Australia-based independent designers and co-authors, we examine how diasporic sensibilities continue to shape creative practices amid intensifying economic, environmental and technological pressures. Juxtaposing the past and present, the paper highlights the enduring relevance of Diasporic Connections, exploring how core theoretical frameworks can account for contemporary conditions of creative precarity, sustainability imperatives and platform-dependent work. While today's designers operate within a digitally mediated and increasingly precarious industry defined by ultra-fast fashion, algorithmic-mediated visibility, and volatile supply chains, their narratives reveal persistent threads of care, reciprocity and cultural continuity. Both navigate hybrid forms of mobility, uneven geographies of market access and emotional forms of digital labour, while sustaining ethical commitments grounded in personal heritage and long-term artisanal relationships. Their experiences illustrate how diasporic entrepreneurship unfolds through digital platforms rather than local communities, and how survival strategies are shaped by creativity, constraint, volatility and determination.

This article presents empirical evidence from the UK to explore where 'civic geographies' emerge and how they are enacted. Responding to Jenkins and Blunt's call in Area for 'geography as a discipline to revisit its civic scope and ambition' in the context of universities' civic engagement, it draws on scholarship on care ethics and evidence from recent research with civic universities in England to propose that institutional place-based civic activities are bound up with attitudes and practices of care. By following care practices, it argues, already-existing civic geographies can be identified and utilised to guide institutional and sector-wide approaches, extending beyond traditional knowledge exchange partnerships to ecological and bioregional engagement. A case study of an environmental initiative in South Yorkshire signposts how this can happen, drawing together transdisciplinary networks of academics into an epistemic community shaped by a common care for place.

This article examines how blockades of extractive infrastructure operate as political acts of resistance and territorial reappropriation in the context of authoritarian extractive governance. Focusing on Sudan and Morocco, it explores how marginalised actors in mining peripheries use targeted disruptions-of roads, permits, tax systems or flows-to contest exclusion, negotiate visibility and assert claims to sovereignty and redistribution. While extractivism is often studied through its environmental or economic impacts, less attention has been paid to blockades as spatial and political interventions. This paper addresses that gap by analysing blockades not as spontaneous interruptions but as strategic, localised practices embedded in specific socio-political contexts. It engages with scholarship on logistical disruption, environmental resistance, and informal governance and contributes to debates on infrastructure as a site of contested authority. Drawing on fieldwork in Sawarda and Abidiya (Sudan) and Jerada and the Midelt basin (Morocco), we ask: how do local communities politicise extractive infrastructure? How do blocking practices reveal the differentiated presence of the state in authoritarian contexts, and what do they tell us about the governance of resource flows? We argue that in both cases-despite differing regimes and mining economies-blockades function as tools of 'conflictual territorialization'. In Sudan, they challenge securitised gold infrastructures and lead to tangible institutional shifts. In Morocco, they disrupt informal circuits and contest access to rents, permits and recognition. In both settings, extractive infrastructure becomes a key site through which claims to justice and autonomy are articulated from the margins. Ultimately, the article shows how blockades reveal, contest and reconfigure the extractive order in North African peripheries, where authoritarian governance and informal practices intersect. They highlight the political centrality of logistical infrastructures in contemporary extractivism and the capacity of peripheral actors to reshape power relations from below.

Imposter participants are participants who falsely claim to meet inclusion criteria. They are an increasingly recognised issue in the interdisciplinary methods literature, an issue which has been exacerbated by the development of online research methods. This existing work recognises imposter participants as a frustration in the research process and provides important interventions that raise awareness and provide strategies of detection and prevention. However, this paper flips the dominant narrative in academia on fraudulent, imposter or 'fake' participants. Drawing on the authors' experience of imposter participants and Generative AI in online methods, this paper provides a series of ethical arguments around incentives, trust and power imbalances. The paper provides a critical lens through which to examine wider questions of trust in online research, making wider contributions to debates on research methods and ethics. Indeed, the paper argues that imposter participants raise urgent questions, not just for the validity and research integrity of individual projects, but for revealing wider structural inequalities and how to potentially navigate this going forward.

This paper examines the atmosphere of stagnation that has become characteristic of the contemporary Bengal Delta, particularly the Sundarbans. Although often framed as a climate crisis hotspot, this perspective risks naturalising a crisis that is historically produced. This paper argues that the region's present condition is rooted in its colonial past that systematically disrupted its dynamic and amphibious landscape, where seasonal floods, tides and human-non-human interdependencies were integral to life. Colonial interventions such as rigid hydraulic engineering, legal reforms and the imposition of the state border sought to contain this dynamic space and turn it into a governable territory. Through an analysis of colonial interventions and ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that these not only reshaped the delta materially but also reordered knowledge, erased relational practices and disciplined mobility, leaving the region and its inhabitants vulnerable. We conceptualise this as atmospheric bordering to capture the material, epistemic and affective dimensions of this containment. These bordering practices produced an atmosphere of stagnation that continues to shape postcolonial governance and climate adaptation strategies. They often reinforce the very vulnerabilities they claim to address. Despite these historical and ongoing processes of bordering, the amphibious ways of living endure in the delta through everyday negotiations and acts of resistance. This suggests that a sustainable future requires dismantling these inherited borders and cultivating forms of adaptation that are attentive to their relational flows and dynamic ecologies.

This article explores the complexities of my reflexive ethnography, stemming from my shifting subjectivities as a researcher. Drawing on the notion of discomfort, I delve into my contested positionality, situated in the nexus of underlying political and historical forces. My multilayered identity-both as an insider due to my national and religious identity and as an outsider for my ethnicity-constructs a liminal space for me as a Bengali researcher researching the Bihari minorities in Bangladesh. Drawing on my epistemological and personal encounters with the research context, I engage in a critical dialogue with the discourse of reflexive ethnography regarding power dynamics among researchers, participants, and the context. I explore the fluidity of boundary-making by conceptualising 'significant otherness' as a relationship marked by distance and proximity between the researcher and the researched. I resonate with the critique that the use of reflexivity is often reduced to validating data and familiarising the unfamiliar instead of challenging the status quo. Therefore, this paper does not promise any definite, comfortable answer but aims to provoke uncomfortable thoughts while practising reflexive positionality in the context of multivocal research.

Food insecurity is not only experienced within space but is also actively shaped by spatial relations. This article argues that understanding the lived experience of food insecurity requires methods that capture this spatial co-construction. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in Havana, Cuba, I demonstrate that by employing queueing as an ethnographic method, I made productive use of food queues as spatial-temporal and social spaces through participant observation, yielding detailed insights into the lived experiences of food insecurity. First, I show how, by applying ethnographic queueing, I was able to access a plurality of voices that collectively made sense of their experience of food insecurity, by reflecting on food scarcity and quality, exchanging food coping strategies and expressing shared frustrations. Second, I demonstrate how this collective sense-making was mediated by the public space in which the queue was set and crossed spatial scales. Through queueing, I therefore learned how experiences of food insecurity serve as a lens for understanding and interpreting broader socio-political struggles. Given certain conditions, such as the length of queues and varying crowd behaviours across cultural contexts, employing queueing as an ethnographic method to explore the lived experiences of food insecurity could be a promising avenue for data collection for other scholars in the field.

Ageing-in-place is a strategy for enabling quality of life among older people who age in their own homes and neighbourhoods instead of care institutions. Various forms of bodily mobility and leisure are recognised as essential for successful ageing-in-place strategies. However, such strategies would be improved via the integration of culturally specific understandings of well-being with human geography work on mobilities. This would further emphasise the importance of internal bodily mobilities to older people, the related role of place and the culturally specific forms of leisure performed by older people to facilitate such mobilities. Internal bodily mobilities refer to the combination of physiological and cultural processes of movement within the body. Based on interviews and observations among older people in two districts in Hong Kong, we found two mobile leisure practices were of deep importance-walking and Tai Chi. Both were highly valued not only for the physical and social benefits they enabled, but also for enabling the circulation of blood and qi. Significantly, certain environmental features such as pebbled walking tracks, greenery, habitat for local wildlife and shaded areas were required of public open spaces in order to facilitate blood and qi circulation via leisure mobilities. Such internal bodily mobilities extend theoretical notions of corporeal mobility that have overemphasised the interactions between moving bodies and their surroundings at the expense of mobilities inside the body. The paper also extends the theory of therapeutic mobilities by highlighting that what is required to maintain well-being is not just mobility for the purposes of medical treatments or physical exercise, but facilitating circulations within the body itself. Successful ageing-in-place strategies must recognise culturally specific notions of well-being and the role of place in facilitating internal bodily mobilities.

This invited commentary responds to the power and residues of Irene Hardill and Parvati Raghuram's 1998 Area article 'Diasporic Connections'. It makes three interlinked points on connection/disconnection and visibility/invisibility of female labour that trace the development of British South Asian and modest fashion. First, increasing complexity in migratory patterns alongside a hardening of right-wing and anti-immigration politics means a turn away from more hopeful narratives of transnational diaspora that foregrounded connectedness and exchange. Second, intersections of sexism and racism continue to shape transnational supply chains and labour hierarchies in the fashion industry, extending into the territorial return to onshore production championed in the UK: 'Made in Britain'. Third is a wider point on gender, labour and agency that gives articulation to the transformation of fashion and migration studies through digital technologies. Digital platform labour explored through the vector of modest fashion offers opportunities for minority female fashion careers by amplifying voices and tools to build networks and cosmopolitan spaces of belonging. I use the term creative activism to refer to the circulation of cultural artefacts including fashion and digital content that enhance knowledge of difference, resist discrimination and mobilise international marketplaces for income security. However, this commentary advances that digital platform labour used for marketing fashion generates greater visibility and exposure to online abuse particularly for racialised minority Muslim women. Since the writing of Hardill and Raghuram's Area piece, digital technologies have intensified the body and home as spaces of production and consumption within a broader context of gender and racial injustice.

This reflective article revisits a classic Area article on Asian women's entrepreneurship, examining its enduring significance through the lens of personal experience and three decades of research on ethnic minority enterprise. Hardill and Raghuram challenged simplistic cultural and structural explanations of entrepreneurship by demonstrating how gender, class, ethnicity and migration history intersect to shape business strategies. Drawing on lived experience in a British Asian family business and ethnographic research in the West Midlands, this article explores how their intersectional approach anticipated key developments in diaspora entrepreneurship research. The article examines how these entrepreneurs strategically mobilised transnational connections and cultural knowledge to create distinctive market niches, revealing internal heterogeneity within Asian business communities often obscured by research funding priorities and policy frameworks. Contemporary challenges including Brexit, COVID-19, digital transformation and the rise of fast fashion are assessed against their foundational insights. The article argues for more nuanced, intersectional approaches to enterprise policy that recognise diversity within ethnic minority communities and position diaspora connections as strategic resources rather than cultural remnants. By grounding theoretical insights in personal narrative and longitudinal research, this reflection demonstrates how case study methodologies can illuminate the complex negotiations through which entrepreneurs work with identity, opportunity and constraint.

Mobile interview methods have been widely used for engaging with different places while actively 'going along' with participants. However, invariably, these research methods are conducted during daytime conditions, leaving scope for further investigation into the underexplored 'every night'. This paper contributes to the discourse on mobile methodologies by presenting a case for the use of darkness both as a research method and as a sensory and therapeutic landscape in a rural context. While conducting research after dark is often avoided for safety reasons, this study demonstrates how it can be harnessed to produce valuable findings by drawing the researcher out of controlled environments. The introduction of Walking Interviews In Natural Darkness ('WIIND'), posited as an innovation to existing qualitative research strategies, supports the theoretical dimensions of introducing darkness to mobile research methods. Using data collected from a study on dark sky tourism in a dark sky park in the west of Ireland, this paper examines how WIIND contributes to the understanding of therapeutic landscapes in a rural context with insights on access and gender perspectives of outdoor recreation after dark. It concludes by advocating for further discourse on conducting research under the disappearing phenomenon of a natural nightscape, and suggests that with careful application, adding the dimension of darkness to walking interviews can provide rich opportunities for researcher-participant engagement.

This article examines the roadblocks that emerged in Jujuy Province, Argentina, during the 2023 regional protest against a constitutional reform that facilitated the expansion of lithium mining on public lands. Led by Indigenous communities across the province, many of them directly affected by the reform, the protest revealed a central paradox: it brought together groups with differing relationships to mining, some of which were not necessarily opposed to it. Drawing on historical and ethnographic material, the article analyses these heterogeneous positions by examining how landscapes shaped by distinct historical, economic and labour trajectories relate differently to mining, and how the growing presence of tourism has influenced these dynamics. A second key focus is the role of Route 52, the province's main east-west corridor, which spans 260 km of diverse Andean landscapes and served both as the main site of the protest and a material basis for coordination across these areas. In doing so, the article addresses a gap in the literature by analysing how communities with divergent positions managed to act collectively. It concludes that Route 52 has, since its construction, enhanced interaction across these landscapes, helping to amplify specific local demands while enabling communities to appear publicly as a unified Indigenous bloc. Thus, the analysis suggests that the road was not only the main setting of the mobilisation but also a key agent of articulation, enabling collective action across communities with distinct trajectories.

The primary objective of this article is to examine the relationship between violence and the sense of insecurity in urban public spaces, using the Algerian city of Biskra as a case study. Two contrasting types of public spaces are analysed: Martyrs' Square in the historic downtown and Independence Square in a newer suburban district. The article proposes and further develops the concept of Personal Risk Assessment (PRA), defined as the socially embedded and dynamic process through which individuals interpret environmental cues, social interactions and available support networks in order to evaluate potential threats and mobilise coping strategies. Unlike the narrower notion of perceived risk, PRA emphasises the assemblage of built environments, gendered interactions, collective imaginaries and socio-cultural narratives of danger. Methodologically, the study is grounded in 51 semi-structured interviews and is complemented by field observations, photographic documentation and local statistical data. The findings demonstrate that insecurity is shaped not only by actual incidents of violence but also by social stigma, anticipation, rumour and ambiguity. They further highlight how everyday strategies of avoidance, reliance on commercial infrastructures and gendered experiences reflect broader dynamics of socio-spatial inequality. By situating Biskra within its postcolonial, socio-economic, climatic and geopolitical context, the article contributes both conceptually and empirically to critical debates on urban insecurity in the Global South.