Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo Exploring the right to mobility through the 2013 mobilizations in Rio de Janeiro Ersilia Verlinghieri a,⁎ , Federico Venturini b a Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford, England b Independent Activist-Researcher, Via della Viotta 17, 33100 Udine, Italy ABSTRACT In this paper we explore the unfolding of the right to the city through a focus on urban mobility. We analyse the way urban social movements (USMs), which play a crucial role in shaping the right to the city, frame their struggles in relation to mobility. We argue that their use of the concept of the ‘right to mobility’ has two meanings. First, the concept gives USMs a framing discourse to advocate and shape transport policy changes. Second, it enables USMs to bring together different actors with different urban agendas. We base this argument on a study of Rio de Janeiro, a paradigmatic case of mobility-based claims of the right to the city. Looking at the practice of a protest-oriented and a knowledge-oriented USMs that contest the Rio de Janeiro's mobility crisis, we outline an agenda for academics and practitioners willing to work towards the construction of sustainable and just mobilities. 1. Introduction In June–July 2013 Brazil was shocked by a wave of intense mobi- lizations with millions of people in the streets (Maricato et al., 2013; Cava, 2013; Cava and Cocco, 2014; Jennings et al., 2014). Begun as protest to an increase in the public transport fare, these mobilizations quickly expanded their claims to contest the entire mobility system and model of urban development. There have been claims for cheaper and higher quality public transport, and at the same time critiques of in- vestments planned for the mega-events, making a strong case against the governance of mobility and public services highly involved in fi- nancial scandals. These protests merged long-lasting work of grassroots and activist in the city (Cava, 2013; Fernandes and De Freitas Roseno, 2013; Nobre, 2013; Judensnaider et al., 2013), who have been framing their struggle increasingly around the idea of the ‘right to the city’ and ‘the right to mobility’. Rio de Janeiro, city in which the 2013 mobilizations took place on an exceptional scale, represents an optimal case study to investigate urban contestation and the right to mobility in the Latin American context. As both a city and region, Rio de Janeiro has faced a particu- larly sharp mobility crisis for many years. With the broad aim to con- tribute to the understanding of contested mobilities, this paper looks at the way Rio de Janeiro's urban social movements (USMs), a key if un- derstudied actor in urban mobility politics, engage in contestation in the mobility realm. We argue that a key way of seeing USMs' engagement is through a dual use of the concept of ‘right to mobility’. First, the concept gives USMs a framing discourse to advocate and shape transport policy changes, and second, it enables them to bring together different actors with different urban agendas. Specifically, this paper analyses two USMs from Rio de Janeiro, the Forum de Lutas and the Mobility Forum, that, with different strategies of protest-oriented and knowledge-oriented, played a key role in the 2013 mobilizations and in the general contestation of transport inter- ventions and policies in the city. Focusing on how they frame and use the concept of the right to mobility, we aim to broaden the debate on the right to mobility, and to more strongly assert the role of USMs as actors of change into the transport geography literature. The paper is based on the data collected during twelve months of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro (Venturini, 2016; Verlinghieri, 2016), using qualitative methods and inspired by an action research approach (Fals- Borda and Rahman, 1991; McTaggart, 1997; Breitbart, 2003; Coghlan and Brannick, 2005; The Autonomous Geographies Collective, 2010) and the need to decolonize knowledge (Chakrabarty, 2008; Sheppard et al., 2013; Smith, 2013; Venturini, 2016). Specifically, the data on which we rely upon are our fieldwork notes, 29 semi-structured inter- views conducted with the members of the two USMs and local transport practitioners, and original documentation produced by the USMs themselves. The paper is structured in four parts. Drawing from Lefebvre's work, we firstly introduce the concept of the right to the city. We then discuss http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.09.008 Received 30 June 2016; Received in revised form 13 September 2017; Accepted 13 September 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ersilia.verlinghieri@ouce.ox.ac.uk, ersilia.verlinghieri@ouce.ox.ac.uk (E. Verlinghieri). Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0966-6923/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Verlinghieri, E., Journal of Transport Geography (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.09.008