Affective construction in motion: immersion in long-distance road travel

Long-distance road travel generates affective experiences of pronounced spatiotemporal complexity, yet the relational dynamics among mobility, immersion, and self-making remain insufficiently theorised. This paper extends the concept of territorial socialisation to explain how embodied travel along China’s National Highway 219 turns territory into a lived and affective experience of borderland space. Drawing on multimodal analysis of user-generated travelogues, photographs, and online narratives from 67 journeys, the study examines how affect emerges, accumulates, and transforms across continuous movement. The findings suggest that affect is not a discrete response to isolated scenic stimuli, but an accumulated resonance produced through altitude variation, bodily exertion, and shifting visual atmospheres. Blue, white, and grey landscapes are associated with awe, solitude, and immersive engagement, while red symbols such as flags, slogans, and boundary markers make state presence and territorial belonging visually salient. These experiences are further personalised and circulated through social media, turning the highway from a mobility corridor into a site of identity work and spatial meaning-making. The paper contributes to debates on mobilities, infrastructure, and the affective production of borderland tourism space.