0

Feminist mobilit(ies) and climate injustice: What a bicycle, GoPro camera and flooded roads teach us

Lyndsey Hayhurst introduces her newly published paper:

“A group of us – young women in Nicaragua  – participated in programming by ‘Pedal Power’ (pseudonym) – as we explored how everyday mobilit(ies), gender inequality, and climate injustice intertwine. Our project involved GoPro cameras and community mapping. We wanted to better understand where young women co-researchers feel safe, where they don’t, and what stories their embodied movements relay. We call this digital participatory action research (DPAR).

At its heart, this work isn’t just about technology. As the young women co-researchers mapped places marked by sexual and gender-based violence, climate violence, and unsafe infrastructure, they revealed the everyday lived geographies of injustice on multiple scales that shape their lives. They also showed how powerful collective storytelling can be. The co-researchers’ maps and images became tools for promoting dialogue in their communities about safety, mobility and infrastructure change.

A decolonial feminist approach asks us to question our assumptions, and ground research in a “reflexive ethics of care.” In practice, what this meant for me was consistently asking: who benefits from these tools? What are the unintended consequences of their use? What responsibilities do I carry when making data public? Our work was therefore primarily in the practices of moving with one another, how we listen, and how we try to honour the knowledge that co-researchers generously share.

And so, my inquiry deepens: how do those working in the DPAR/feminist methodologies/mobility justice nexus (or in other related areas) navigate the promises and pitfalls of digital tools? How can we keep community voices, co-researchers and relational accountability at the core of this work?

I sit with an uncomfortable tension. While digital tools can open doors for advocacy, they can also unintentionally reinforce the very inequalities we hope to challenge. Technologies aren’t neutral, they carry colonial histories and inequitable access to infrastructure.

Open access forever link:

Hayhurst, L. M. C. (2025). (En)tangled Ethics and Relational Mobilities: Reflections on Decolonial Feminist Digital Participatory Action Research. Action Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/14767503251403419