Name
Collective narrative cartographies of mobility and poverty in rural Québec
Date & Time
Wednesday, May 21, 2025, 3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Description

Being able to travel or to get about freely, efficiently and without compromising other basic needs is essential to social inclusion, to make choices and to exercise control over one’s own life. The organization of transportation in the province of Quebec, heavily focused on individual vehicles, perpetuates situations of precarious mobility for people living in poverty, leading to broader violations of their human rights (e.g., right to health, to education, to culture, etc.). These precarities are exacerbated in rural areas, where concentration of services in regional centres increases distances to be traveled, and public transportation services are generally unaffordable, insufficient and inadequate to meet the needs of daily life. In this context, mobility in rural areas is of critical importance for researchers, community groups and activists advocating for an ecological transition anchored in greater social justice. This contribution discusses the processes and challenges, as well as the findings, of a project of online narrative cartographies documenting the precariousness of mobility in rural Quebec. Based on the results of participatory mapping workshops conducted with people living in poverty in two rural regions of Quebec, the cartographies are made with ArcGIS StoryMaps. Combining geolocated maps, drawings and texts, they chronicle the obstacles to mobility encountered by workshop participants, the impacts of these obstacles on their lives, and the collective changes they need to see happening. They also tell stories of multiple and intertwined experiences of rurality and poverty in Quebec.

Location Name
Nicol (NI) 3020
Session Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract ID
244
Speaker Name
Laurence Simard-Gagnon
Speaker Organization
Université du Québec à Rimouski - campus de Lévis
Session Name
CS108-B Feminist Geographies in Transdisciplinary Dialogue