Cycling Research Board Annual Meeting

Cycling has gained increasing attention in many cities of the Global North due to its affordability, health benefits, and low environmental impact. However, despite its growing promotion, including in Switzerland, cycling participation remains unevenly distributed across social groups, with individuals with a migration background being less likely to cycle than non-migrant populations across high- and low-cycling countries.
Yet, research on inequalities in cycling remains relatively limited compared to other transport modes, and is largely concentrated in Anglo-Saxon contexts. European evidence remains scarce, particularly regarding migrant populations. Addressing this gap, our previous work shows that Portuguese immigrants in Switzerland are 53% less likely to commute by bicycle than their Swiss counterparts.
This contribution examines how cycling practices emerge, evolve, or fail to develop among Portuguese-origin populations in Switzerland, with particular attention to generational and gender differences.
The analysis is grounded in a conceptual framework inspired by the notion of velomobility, which approaches cycling as the outcome of the interaction between individual characteristics and territorial conditions. On the one hand, individual cycling potential refers to the resources and dispositions that enable cycling, including access to a bicycle, the acquisition of cycling skills, and representations and perceptions associated with cycling. On the other hand, territorial hosting potential captures the extent to which physical and built environments and social norms support or constrain cycling practices.
These dimensions are mobilised to analyse cycling as a multi-stage process, from early-life experiences to adult practices. The framework is further complemented by the concepts of travel socialisation and travel assimilation, which make it possible to account for the influence of migration trajectories, peers (e.g. friends and family), and generational dynamics in shaping cycling behaviours.
The study is based on original survey data collected by the authors at the national level between May and October 2025 (N = 1,651) and adopts a quantitative approach. It examines cycling both as a multi-stage process, ranging from early-life experiences (such as access to a bicycle and learning to cycle) to current practices, and through key structuring dimensions, including gender, generational belonging and migration background, as well as territorial conditions, socialisation across both countries, and representations associated with cycling.
The empirical strategy relies on multivariate analyses to examine the different dimensions outlined above, including early-life conditions, socio-demographic characteristics, territorial contexts, socialisation processes across countries, and cycling-related representations, in order to better understand how these factors jointly shape cycling practices across different social groups and contexts among the Portuguese-origin populations in Switzerland.