Copresence is a Problematic Resource for Leisure Mobility. One Hub, Multiple Passenger Experiences on a Sunday Evening Return Trip
Résumé
This paper analyses copresence patterns among travelers in a suburban station. The authors investigate how tourists and other travellers experience train travel to a suburban leisure destination and their social interactions. In a first part, a field study is introduced after a multidisciplinar theoretical background (sociology, geography, ethnology of stations). It helps selecting the best moment to develop the methodology, ie the moment in which the diversity of behaviours is maximized. In a second part, two field results are presented : first, the best moment to observe copresence is Sunday afternoon, and second, the configuration of social interaction obeys to a dualist structure. A third part questions the opposition between the experience of copresence as a polite and distant coexistence between some users, and as a much warmer interaction between others. The explanation for such a divide lays first in the unequal mobility skills tourists and non tourists may mobilize and, second, seems connected to the construction of community and social identity in the long term.