Academic mobilities and spatial capital: is there a link between regional airports and universities? (The case of North East and Tees Valley, UK)

The universities are being challenged by two main streams of pressures in the last decades. On the one hand, they are expected to engage with local and regional actors and communities more intensively, to integrate in the local and regional development in particular, and stimulate the knowledge based economy in general. On the other hand, due to the processes of globalization of the higher education, universities invest more resources in expanding their internationalization agendas and development. The impact is seen by universities’ offshore expansion, as well as increasing international flows of students, academics, staff. Therefore, the production of mobilities has expanded and became a feature of a modern university. While the research on universities’ local and regional and international engagement, as well as on academic mobilities, is constantly growing, the gap lies in the understanding of balancing both integration agendas and its facilitation and the ways it can underpin mobilities. This combination of fixity and mobility, or ‘place plus mobility’ (Levy, 1994), is in the focus of the theoretical framework of spatial capital. At the same time, in the context of international integration, the role of transport infrastructure, and airports in particularly, which provide accessibility and connectivity and produce mobilities, has changed. The presented research follows a new path in developing the framework of spatial capital by the inclusion of transport infrastructure, e.g. (regional) airports. The research’s aim is to investigate an existence of a link between regional airports and universities and its role in underpinning academic mobilities and spatial capital. It acquires a (single) case study methodology, which is constituted by the expert interviews, survey (with university students), observation, and is supported by the additional universities’ enquiry via email. The responses from universities across England introduce the cases of a collaboration or link between higher education institution and its local airport, as well as highlight the challenges in investigating those cases. While in the context of North East and Tees Valley a link between these regional actors has generally an occasional character, the research analyses the benefits and challenges of a potential collaboration and its impact on academic mobilities. The benefits are mostly represented by advantages of joint research and teaching activities, spatial capital accumulation and the overall better interconnected regional development. The challenges include the ways to connect the actors and exchange data, which plays a significant role in the establishment of a prospective link. Thus, the research allows to reveal the effects of the link, which has a potential to underpin mobilities and spatial capital accumulation, in particular – of the university students.