Mobility—both literal and metaphorical—is a powerful determinant of individual opportunity, collective resilience, and political stability. The ability to move, to change one’s circumstances, or to withdraw from harmful environments underpins many of the assumptions embedded in liberal democracy, market capitalism, and social theory. But what happens when that ability is constrained, or altogether absent?

Most resource-rich communities, especially in the Global South, are not only subjected to environmental harm and economic marginalization—they are also systematically prevented from escaping, adapting, or asserting their agency through movement.

The Mobility-Augmented Stability Index (MASI) incorporates this insight into a formalized model of subnational political fragility. At the heart of MASI lies a recognition that structural stability depends not only on how burden is distributed or how institutions function, but also on whether people can move in response to injustice.

Defining Mobility in Context

Mobility is often understood in physical terms: the capacity to move from one place to another. But in political economy, mobility takes several interrelated forms:

• Geographic Mobility: The ability to physically relocate to safer, more prosperous, or more inclusive regions.
• Economic Mobility: The ability to shift occupations, enter new labor markets, or gain access to credit and capital.
• Social Mobility: The capacity to climb the socio-economic ladder, often through education, skill acquisition, or migration.
• Cultural and Identity Mobility: The freedom to integrate into other regions without sacrificing one’s identity, language, or way of life.

Each of these dimensions matters for how communities experience the burdens of resource extraction. Where one or more forms of mobility are constrained, people cannot simply “vote with their feet.” They must instead endure or resist. And when institutional pathways for redress are weak, resistance often turns to unrest.

Mobility – The freedom to move, adapt, and escape hardship

Why Mobility Matters for Political Stability

In traditional political economy models, conflict is explained by income disparities, resource dependence, or institutional failure. But these models often miss a critical intermediate variable: whether burdened populations can exit systems that fail them. When communities are unable to move away from harm or toward opportunity, they are more likely to view the status quo as permanent, illegitimate, and intolerable.

In this context, mobility is not simply a demographic pattern—it is a political capacity. It determines how pressure accumulates, whether grievance intensifies, and how risk is distributed across space. Mobility affects:

• The spread or containment of conflict
• The viability of state presence and service delivery
• The effectiveness of policy interventions
• The legitimacy of democratic institutions

MASI treats mobility not as an outcome, but as a driver. It helps explain why two regions with similar burdens may experience very different levels of unrest: in one, people can leave or adapt; in the other, they are trapped.

Why “M” Changes the Conflict Equation

In standard models, regions with high poverty or exclusion are expected to exhibit instability. Yet many such regions remain peaceful. MASI suggests that one key difference is mobility. Where people can move, adapt, or express their discontent through formal channels, burden does not always produce conflict. But where people are immobilized—by structure, culture, or cost—grievance has no outlet but resistance.

The MASI framework thus reorients policymakers and analysts toward prevention through mobility enhancement. It suggests that stability can be achieved not only by increasing revenue sharing or reforming institutions, but also by:

• Investing in regional infrastructure
• Supporting voluntary migration and urban integration
• Protecting cultural identity in resettlement planning
• Removing legal and bureaucratic barriers to movement

Where mobility is viable, communities can reshape their futures. Where it is denied, conflict becomes a rational alternative.

Conceptualizing the “M” in MASI

Mobility interacts with each of these. When burden (S) is high and voice (A) is low, mobility (M) becomes the decisive variable: can people leave, adapt, or transform their conditions?

The “M” score in MASI measures the degree of constrained exit for a given region. A high “M” score indicates low mobility—i.e., people are trapped. A low “M” score indicates that individuals have meaningful options to move or adapt.

Components of the “M” Score

To capture the complexity of mobility, the MASI framework disaggregates “M” into five dimensions:

Physical Mobility (M₁):

Availability of transportation infrastructure, public transit, and connectivity to other regions.

Economic Mobility (M₂):

Household income, access to credit, employment opportunities outside the extractive sector, cost of relocation.

Legal Mobility (M₃):

Presence of formal ID, land tenure documentation, migration restrictions, security checkpoints.

Cultural/Identity Mobility (M₄):

Degree of attachment to land, language, religion, or ethnic identity that constrains voluntary movement.

Social Network Access (M₅):

Presence of diaspora, extended family, or community networks in receiving regions that facilitate resettlement or occupational transition.

Each sub-dimension is scored on a scale of 0–1, where 1 represents the highest constraint. The aggregate “M” score is calculated as a weighted average of these components, adjusted for context-specific relevance (e.g., cultural constraints may carry more weight in Indigenous regions).