Regimes of logistics, pauses in the flow, stillness in (near) industrial non-places and mobility infrastructure

Abstract

REGIMES OF LOGISTICS, PAUSES IN THE FLOW, STILLNESS IN (NEAR) INDUSTRIAL NON-PLACES AND MOBILITY INFRASTRUCTUREThe article is based on the ethnographic mobile fieldwork carried out among Polish tractor unit drivers employed in West European forwarding companies. It is focused on truck drivers' mobility, whose inherent quality is the contradiction between movement and stillness, multi-sitedness and specific localisation, and access to protected and monitored industrial zones as opposed to spatial exclusion. The starting point of the reflections are the categories of a non-place and mobility, which in practice appear to less obvious and one-dimensional in the context of trans-local and cross-border activities of tractor unit drivers. It is the stillness a phenomenon that reveals the regimes of distribution and transport logistics.