Introduction

John Urry has been one of the prominent visionaries of futural social and material worlds as a nexus of mobilities in the social sciences and beyond. His work developed in spaces of collaboration and exchange with colleagues, among whom are the contributors to this special section. In this introductory article I provide a brief genealogy of the “new mobilities paradigm,” outlining its relationship to social ontologies of belonging that inform and are informed epistemologically by new spatial and temporal configurations of life. Its formation and development have always been a collaborative international venture of scholars, activists, and policymakers, wishing to map the ways cultures and societies race to the future. From these groups I introduce the section's contributors as prominent academic examples.