Translated from…
This book is a Korean translation of the book titled Slices of (Mobile) Life by Emmanuel Ravalet･Stéphanie Vicent-Geslin･Vincent Kaufmann･Jean Leveugle (LOCO, 2014).
Investigation and Solution to the High-Mobility Phenomenon
Long-distance commuting has both benefits and costs brought about by the development of mobility technology. 《Slices of (Mobile) Life》 is a graphic novel that peeks in the lives of long-distance commuters, seeking solutions for people who travel for business trips or stay overnight in order to work. While in the past, just a small handful of privileged people could afford jet travel around the world, today we often see and meet “high-mobility” people who travel more than 100 kilometers a day. Slices of these lives are portrayed in the form of graphic novel, showing by whom, why, and how long-distance travels are carried out. Based on the results from the research on “Work-Related Mobility and Home Life” conducted in six countries such as Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Poland, and Switzerland in 2006, the graphic novel presents a starting point for sociological mobility studies on changes in social conditions and personal lives due to high mobility and individual responses to the phenomenon of high mobility.
Highly Mobile People Are Around Us.
The six characters portrayed in this graphic novel are not completely fictional, based on the statistics and data from 2000 interviews collected across six European countries in 2006 and 2012. These characters represent many of the workers in our society, who spent a significant amount of work-related time. Their personal experiences created high-mobility lifestyles. The readers may find themselves asking several questions while following their life journeys: How do they afford to have and raise children despite having little time to be at home? Can they still live in their hometowns while going to work? Do they need to commute for long hours in order to live in newly acquired house? Ultimately, does finding a job mean embracing a high-mobility lifestyle?
Social Challenges Triggered by Long-Distance Commuters.
Regardless of the distance, spending long hours on travel helps to shape personal experiences and lifestyles. Work in the era of high mobility reveal new relations between time and space. To find the balance between work and personal lives, it is time for us to academically explore the relationship between “mobility and (our social and personal) life”, which is still an unfamiliar topic in Korea. “Behind the Drawings” and “Political Designs” followed by graphic novel present social analysis of personal conditions and experiences of highly mobile people and propose new political tasks regarding gender, networks, economy in the era of high mobility.