Grounding Mobility: Protest Atmospheres at Hong Kong International Airport

Protest immobilities have political potential because of the affective atmospheres they produce. In 2019, the Hong Kong protest movement targeted Hong Kong International Airport in a series of sit-ins resulting in a two-day shutdown and cancellation of more than 1,000 flights. This article is based on participant observation and interviews with thirty-two people—aviation workers, tourists, expatriates, and demonstrators—who were present at one or more of the sit-ins, and it uses a perspective informed by work on affective atmospheres and social movements in geography. We demonstrate the political potential of four forms of embodied mobility– arrival, friction, waiting, and departing from the airport on foot. Arriving to unexpected scenes produced micropolitical change among passengers, as the fatigue of air travel heightened the emotional impact of the sit-ins. Frictions were politically generative because they forced passengers to slow down and notice the assembly. Waiting produced solidarities between different factions of the protest movement and generated animosity from previously apathetic passengers who were stuck. Walking was an anxious ordeal for those forced to depart the airport on foot after public transport was suspended. The article shows how demonstrators can resist, alter, and transmit affective atmospheres through the grounding of aeromobilities.