Dual exclusion: Mobility poverty and democratic representation in participatory governance

Abstract

Those with the fewest mobility options are often the least heard in decisions about mobility. We call this “dual exclusion”: mobility poverty and democratic underrepresentation are co-constituted and mutually reinforcing, obstructing a sustainable mobility transformation. We show how participation formats can be redesigned to break this cycle.Vulnerable populations often face exclusion from democratic processes in the context of sustainable mobility transformations. We introduce the notion of “dual exclusion” to capture how barriers to political articulation and everyday mobility reinforce each other to obstruct democratic representation in citizen deliberations on mobility policy. Drawing on democratic representation theory and intersectionality, we redefine participatory formats as requiring proactive inclusion. Through qualitative interviews, we explore prevailing representation practices, identify structural limits, and derive design principles for participation formats capable of overcoming dual exclusion. The paper offers practice-oriented recommendations linking participatory governance and democratic theory to disrupt cycles of social exclusion and mobility poverty.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 2026 · DOI ↗