As previous research stated for young people and adults, mobile phones simultaneously represent for children a tool of emancipation from domestic sphere and potentially reinforce their surveillance by adults. Whereas this tension between control and emancipation is at the heart of the regulation of children's presence in urban public space, the empirical study of the way parents supervise their urban practices is fruitful to understand the role played by mobility in children's equipment. The purpose of this paper, based on interviews conducted with parents of children aged from 8 to 14 in Paris (France) and Milan (Italy), is hence to empirically investigate the link between urban practices and access to mobile phones. Contrasts related to social characteristics of families will be extensively discussed: interviews suggest for example that parents' reluctance to mobile phones, strongly related with an elevated educational level, seems to foster the acquisition of urban skills.
