Page - 82 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

82 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Samantha Wilkinson, Catherine Wilkinson | Night-Life and Young People’s Atmospheric Mobilities argues that certain assemblages emerge from multiple practices which collaborate and gather together to control a time and place, producing particular ‘affective atmospheres’, of which the sale, regulation, and governance of alcohol is just one part. To provide an example, Shaw (2014) notes how taxis have a fundamental role in bringing people and objects into a particular area. Taxis enable people to make their way to the city centre late at night or in the early hours of the morning, having consumed alcohol elsewhere. Consequently, these practices contribute to the emergence of a bustling, flexible atmosphere, intensified within a small time-space. Taxis, then, assemble the bodies required to generate an atmosphere. An affective atmosphere is best understood as a form of “placed assemblage” (Shaw 2014, 87). Whilst Shaw’s (2014) paper does not move beyond the night-time city centre, the author recognises that there is a need for more studies of places and spaces, which are not the city centre streets or the bars that surround them. The research upon which our paper is based engages with this, through a focus on suburban drinking mobilities. With a focus on the alcohol-related mobilities and experiences of young backpackers, Jayne et al.’s (2012) research goes some way towards redressing a lack of engagement with the em- bodied, emotional and sensory aspects of mobilities, bound up with alcohol consumption. The authors provide an in-depth consideration of the embodied aspects of alcohol-related walking, contending that alcohol can help to soften a variety of (un)comfortable embodied and emo- tional materialities linked with budget travel; act as an aid to ‘passing the time’ and ‘being able to do nothing’; and heighten senses of belonging with other travellers and ‘locals’. For instance, some participants in Jayne et al.’s (2012) study describe alcohol as allowing them to generate memorable moments of backpacking travel, through behaving badly with the locals, whilst others discuss alcohol as a means of erasing tensions with fellow travellers. Engaging with mobilities theory thus holds potential for an understanding of the lived experiences of young people’s alcohol-related geographies, recognising that mobile engagements with space provide different experiences, performances and affordances (Sheller and Urry 2006). Moreover, Duff and Moore (2015) explore vehicular atmospheric mobilities in Melbourne’s night-time economy. According to the authors, inner-city participants, who take trams, walk, or cycle to nearby venues, described ‘fun’, ‘comfortable’ journeys. Meanwhile, participants from periurban communities (communities immediately adjoining an urban area) spoke of ‘boring’, ‘unpleasant’ journeys on trains, buses, or taxis when travelling to, and from, venues in the city. These divergent affective atmospheres ‘prime’ young people to act in particular ways, having direct and indirect impacts on alcohol-related problems in the night-time economy (Duff and Moore 2015). To elaborate, the more congenial atmospheres described by inner-city young people appeared to mitigate the likelihood of problems; whereas the atmospheres of boredom and unpleasantness described by periurban young people appeared to increase the potential for harm. Duff and Moore (2015) point out that there is a need to pay closer attention to the ways affective atmospheres are enacted and transformed in encounters in, and through, spaces of mobility; something this paper seeks to address. Further, in the context of an electronic music venue in Copenhagen, Denmark, Bøhling (2014) takes into account the emotional, bodily and spatial dimensions of alcohol and drug use spaces. The author examines how alcohol and drug practices and experiences are affectively cultivated by masses of people in spaces. Bøhling (2014) also recognises the role of sensorial