Introduction

In recent decades, independent mobility and children’s outdoor leisure time have been significantly reduced in Switzerland, as in most Western countries (Carver et al. 2013; Rivière 2016; Skår and Krogh 2009). However, the results published by Grize et al. (2010) in the trend study on active transportation to school in Switzerland between 1994 and 2005 showed that Swiss children still prefer to use soft or sustainable mobility (walking, cycling or scooter) to go to school. They travel alone or with friends using various means; 65% of children walk and 10% cycle. One in ten children is driven to school by their parents (Pedestrian Mobility Switzerland 2016). However, there has been a slight increase in the number of parents driving their children to and/or from school (or at least once a day). Around 70% of schoolchildren live less than 1.6 km from school (Corso Talento 2010) and this has changed very little over the years, mainly due to the district education system widely adopted in Switzerland, which encourages pupils to attend the school closest to their home. The system favours short journeys and promotes ‘a major integration of schools into the social fabric of neighbourhoods’ (Poretti 2016, 11). However, analysis of the data from various Swiss cantons reveals substantial differences; children in the German-speaking areas are the most significant users (80%) of soft mobility to go to school. This figure falls to 56% in French-speaking regions and to just 25% in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino (Grize et al. 2010).

Most studies conducted on the journey to school, especially in Switzerland, focus on road safety and health and are generally carried out by researchers for public bodies (see Association Transports et Environnement 2010; Interkantonale Lehrmittelzentrale 2011; Haberer 2010; Kehne 2011). They show that the main risk factors in road safety, from the parents’ point of view, range from the length of the journey to the mode of transport (McDonald 2008), or the number of road crossings to obstacles and problems such as the presence or absence of a pavement or cycle path, or the position of bus stops. However, less is known about how children – the principal users, rather than adults who are merely ‘non-active’ passers-by – commute between home and school.

The Journey to School as an Object of Study

The school journey is an important part of the daily lives of all children attending school. Various studies, from a wide range of disciplines, have highlighted benefits and risks related to children’s journeys to school, providing insightful data regarding modes of transportation, health and well-being issues, school organisation and legislation, safety, urban development, and so on. In the past decades, several researchers have shown the decline of children’s independent mobility, on the way to and from school too, and the increase in the number of children being driven to school by parents (Frauendienst and Redecker 2011; McDonald 2008; Pooley et al. 2005; Ross 2007). In a car, children barely have the opportunity to interact with the environment, nor to benefit from physical activity after sitting for several hours in a class. Others have highlighted the individual, social and health benefits of autonomous mobility on the way to school. Such a journey can support the links between the child and his or her social and natural environment (Hüttenmoser 2004). Realities, however, vary immensely depending on the context as well as parental fears, concerns, perceptions and attitudes towards children travelling without adult supervision. Most of these studies focus on issues related to road safety and health. Moreover, adults are the main subjects surveyed, while the voices of children are rarely heard on this object and their experiences are not seriously solicited. From the perspective of children’s rights and active participation, this book aims to highlight children’s views and voices on and about their school journeys, as a subject of study in its own right, as well as to shed light on what are the valuable inputs which can support the creation of child-friendly school journeys.

In this collective work, transitional space – also identified as third, intermediate or interstitial space – is one of the key unifying concepts through which we study the way to and from school. Such a concept allows both to make visible the conjunction of various spaces of life, often considered separate (Djaoui 2016; Flamand 2005), and to take their respective specificities into account. Transitional spaces thus testify to an otherness towards the places that frame and host them (Migliore 2014), underscoring the reciprocal relationship of influence between the individual and the environment.