Physical walls, invisible barriers: Palestinian women's mobility in Jerusalem

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of multi-layered transport exclusion on the mobility and accessibility of Palestinian women in Jerusalem. Ethnic segregation, hostile social climate, poor infrastructure and low levels of public transportation create multifaceted barriers to daily travel throughout the city. This research sheds light on the individual needs and decisions of women in making their travel choices in an exclusionary urban environment. This research is based on eight in-depth interviews and 38 participants in focusgroup of Palestinian women living in East Jerusalem. It examines their public transport and private car use, in light of physical and psychological barriers. Interviews find that cultural and social pressures and the sense of exclusion and fear pose significant limitations to public transport use and destination choice, alongside poor infrastructure, low service levels and discriminatory planning policies. Many women internalize expectations of violence and exclusionary linguistic and visual cues, which serve as fear-based barriers for public transport use. Women's responses fall into a number of categories: avoiding West Jerusalem and minimizing travel; adopting private cars as safer and more practical or, at times, accepting and barrelling through fears. Policy implications include both immediate changes to symbology and behaviour of transport personnel, and long term implications about consciously-inclusive route and infrastructure planning. ---. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rsp3 299 KEYWORDS fear-based exclusion, gender and mobility, Jerusalem, public transport, segregation 1 | INTRODUCTION Access to spaces and activities throughout a city is a crucial component of social inclusion and personal well-being, and the equity of transportation services has gained increasing attention. Research has focused not just on the distribution of services, but on the ability of individuals and groups to make effective use of them. Transport exclusion (Lucas, 2012) identifies multiple barriers to mobility, many of which are important particularly at the individual level.The new mobilities paradigm (Sheller & Urry, 2006) has come to foreground the significance of subjective personal experience in travel, but has not been previously applied to the model of transport exclusion to analyse mode choices and trip suppression. Focusing on women allows an exploration of intersecting barriers, both of gender in a patriarchal society and of minority status in a diverse city.The purpose of this paper is to characterize the experiences and travel habits of Palestinian women in Jerusalem and provide an empirical analysis of the mechanisms underlying fear-based exclusion. The study methodology uses focus groups and in-depth interviews to identify the structural, social and emotional issues that restrict accessibility.Jerusalem is a highly contested and divided city, and the political and social climate for marginalized minority women in the city can shed light on the daily experiences minorities in increasingly diverse ...

Measuring the impact of legal and administrative international barriers on regional growth

“…Despite these three steps forward, borders still represent a major hurdle to full economic integration in the EU (Scott, ), and the recent emergence of populistic movements has made (internal) borders more important than ever (Székely & Kotosz, ). In some cases, borders can be invisible and separate different portions of the same administrative unit, still causing major obstacles to the full exploitation of local assets (Kerzhner, Kaplan, & Silverman, ).…”

(Ad)dressing belonging in a contested space: Embodied spatial practices of Palestinian and Israeli women in Jerusalem

“…Singer and Bickel (2015) demonstrate that non-ultra-orthodox Jewish women in Jerusalem avoid ultra-orthodox territories due to concerns for safety and feelings of threat. From a different angle, a study about Palestinian women's travel choices in Jerusalem elucidates the multiple barriers that these women face, such as ethnic segregation, poor infrastructure and lack of accessible public transportation (Kerzhner et al, 2018). In the following section, we suggest that clothing practices are also an important arena in which segregation and mobility are experienced and expressed by women in contested cities.…”

“…However, these dynamics are nuanced and shift across specific neighbourhoods and locales, and are not always generalizable to the entire city-scale (see also Najib & Hopkins, 2019a). At the same time, the women's narratives (to a larger extent Palestinian women) do convey a sense of growing encounters with the Other (Kerzhner et al, 2018;Rokem & Vaughan, 2018;Shtern & Yacobi, 2019).…”

“…In recent years, a growing body of research seeks to better understand how segregation and mobility patterns are manifested in these cities in a twofold manner. First, by extending the study of segregation beyond residential one to account for diverse forms of segregation and/or encounter of different publics: in parks, workplaces, public transportation, and more (Gaffikin, Mceldowney, & Sterrett, 2010;Kerzhner et al, 2018;Shtern, 2016;Shtern & Yacobi, 2019). Second, by employing a range of methodological tools that can capture a better sense of people's daily experiences, such as mental maps, GPS tracking, and space syntax analysis (Greenberg Raanan and Shoval 2014;Rokem & Vaughan, 2018;Valentine, 2007).…”

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