Walking, waiting, relying: The everyday mobilities of older people in an Indonesian City

Abstract

Indonesia is ageing, yet the quality of later life depends as much on everyday mobility as on longevity. This study examines how older adults in Malang, East Java, navigate and make sense of daily movement in moral, social, and practical terms. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with forty-five seniors across kampung neighbourhoods and formal housing estates, it employs an interpretive phenomenological approach combining semi-structured interviews, walking observations, and iterative manual analysis. Findings show that mobility justice is lived through three intertwined practices, i.e., walking, waiting, and relying, that reveal how recognition, distribution, and participation unfold in everyday life. Recognition arises through visibility and affirmation in short neighbourhood trips; distribution is experienced through uneven access to safe streets, crossings, vehicles, and ride-hailing services; and participation occurs less in formal planning than through family negotiations of care, safety, and autonomy. Across cases, moral adaptation and local ethics of gotong royong, nrimo, and ikhlas help people cope with infrastructural gaps, though they cannot substitute for material provision. The study reframes mobility justice as relational and embodied, arguing that slower mobilities should be valued as civic assets for cities where people can age well, not simply grow old.