Pratim Sengupta
Pratim Sengupta is a Professor of Learning Sciences and a Graduate Faculty of Computational Media Design at the University of Calgary, where he also served as Research Chair for STEM Education. His research on democratizing computational modelling was recognized by an NSF CAREER Award, and his work on public computing was recognized with a Paul D. Fleck Award from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Canada. His ongoing projects, in collaboration with sociologists and medical scholars are focused on centring voices and participation of newcomer youth (and families) of colour in the context of urban sustainability, especially active mobilities. He is a year-round cyclist and a cycling activist in Calgary, Canada and Kolkata, India.
Sesión
Objectives and Scholarly Significance
In this talk, we will report initial findings from a research project (Yr 1 of 4) that seeks to centre participation of refugee youth of colour in urban cycling in Calgary, Canada. Despite the extensive cycling infrastructure in Calgary, we show that refugee youth face significant constraints shaped by gentrification and resettlement policies, and also how this can be addressed through youth-centred co-design. We present a case study of four youth participants from Africa, Middle East and South Asia (two boys and two girls). Our work contributes to the growing literature on mobility justice that critiques infrastructural thinking (Hudde, 2022; Anjaria, 2024; Soares & Glaser, 2025) and argues for adopting decolonial perspectives that must necessarily desettle static notions of space (Scheller, 2020).
Research Questions
We ask the following research questions:
RQ1) What are the constraints faced by the youth in their experiences of cycling?
RQ2) How can these constraints be negotiated through a youth-centred, co-design approach?
Method
Our project uses a co-design approach in which researchers meet regularly with youth to explore urban sustainability, including active mobility. For this presentation, the data we focus on consists of audio recorded interviews with the youth about their experiences of active mobility, and video recordings of our co-design workshops focused on active mobilities. In these workshops, we (the researchers and the youth) watch and reflect on videos of both the youth and the researchers riding in the city, critique routes and infrastructure, and design routes for future rides.
Analysis & Findings
Our analysis using constructivist grounded theoretical methods (Charmaz, 2017) reveals the following: In terms of answering RQ1, the structural constraints include resettlement policies that in turn are tied to racialized and economically marginalizing patterns of gentrification and employment. This, in turn, has forced these youth and their families to move to racially segregated neighbourhoods that are farthest from the city centre, which also has implications for access to, as well as the quality of bike infrastructure. In terms of answering RQ2, our co-design approach identifies the importance of establishing a youth-centred cycling community for newcomers of colour, renders visible the otherwise hidden, “maintenance labour” of identifying and addressing technical and infrastructural concerns prior to, and during the rides, and also reveals the need for developing new technological supports for navigation specifically designed to address intersectional marginalization.
References
Anjaria, J. S. (2024). Mumbai on two wheels: cycling, urban space, and sustainable mobility. University of Washington Press.
Charmaz, K. (2017). The power of constructivist grounded theory for critical inquiry. Qualitative inquiry, 23(1), 34-45.
Sheller, M. (2020). Mobility justice. In Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities (pp. 11-20). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Hudde, A. (2022). The unequal cycling boom in Germany. Journal of Transport Geography, 98, 103244.
Soares, B. O., & Glaser, M. (2025). Beyond infrastructure: Unpacking the complexity of exclusion and implications for just mobility transitions. Journal of Transport Geography, 126, 104202.