Constraint and place attachment in navigation: a hybrid sense of place of Chinese boat crew on the Lancang-Mekong River

• The crew members’ sense of place in mobility is a hybrid sense of constraint and place attachment. • Place attachment among crew members is developed through embodied engagement with the watery world during navigation. • Environmental dynamics fundamentally shape human movement patterns and emotional structure. A growing body of research has focused on the sense of place in mobile contexts, yet the sense of place among crew members on cargo ships has been rarely studied. Drawing upon ethnographic participant observation and interviews with Chinese crew members in the transportation industry along the Lancang-Mekong River between 2021 and 2024, this paper explores their hybrid sense of place. This sense encompasses both constraint and place attachment. Although the fluvial space constraints crew members, they develop a sense of belonging as they become attuned to the watery world through their daily movements. This study further examines how crew members develop place attachment by foregrounding the body-subject and their embodied engagement with environmental dynamics. We present the polyrhythmic conjunction of boat crews, ships, and river flows, which is formed and sustained through a prolonged enskilment process of the navigation apprenticeship system. We also highlight the role of environmental dynamism—specifically, river flows—in shaping movement patterns and emotional structures of crew members. By foregrounding the constitutive role of embodied practices and environmental dynamics in meaning construction, this research integrates literature on sense of place, movement, and enskilment, thereby deepens the understanding of human-place experiences and relationships in the context of mobility.