Lifeline Ferries: Existential dimensions of ‘essential’ mobility

Grounded in an analysis of islanders’ ferry mobility between the Isle of Coll and mainland Scotland during the Covid-19 pandemic, this article argues for increased anthropological engagement with the existential dimension of mechanised mobilities. The pandemic restrictions on mobility rested upon the distinction between socio-economically framed ‘essential’ and existentially framed ‘non-essential travel’. However, islanders’ agentive navigation of restrictions gave rise to a locally specific regime of im/mobility that emphasised the existential dimension of those mobilities that policymakers understood as a ‘lifeline’ in a socio-economic sense. To show this, the article applies the concept of existential mobility, developed by Hage, to mechanised mobilities, which remain understudied in anthropology. It argues that thus attending to their existential dimension is crucial to overcome a remaining sedentarist bias in anthropological thinking on mobility, and to avoid unintentionally reproducing governing categories like ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ in our analyses.