ArticlePDF Available

Informalities in urban transport: Mobilities at the heart of contestations over (in)formalisation processes

Authors:

Abstract

This editorial introduces and contextualises the Special Issue on informalities in urban transport and mobility in cities across the Global South, East and North. It identifies a mutual misrecognition between the urban studies literature on informality and research on transport and mobilities, and proposes that urban mobility be understood as a critical site of contestations over (in)formalisation processes. The editorial suggests that the articles gathered in the Special Issue diversify and extend understandings of informality in both the transport and urban studies literatures. It outlines three specific contributions that the articles make. Drawing on conceptualisations of informality from across the social sciences and by offering empirical studies of informalities in urban mobility in the Global East and North, the articles confront the habit of dualistic thinking in relation to informalities in urban mobility. They move beyond the formal/informal binary and challenging the North/South division which associates informality predominantly with the South. The papers in the Special Issue also highlight how ‘informal transport’ is a highly dynamic sector at the vanguard of innovation, digitalisation and platform urbanism. Finally, the articles demonstrate that informalities in urban mobility offer a useful analytical lens onto questions of labour struggles and subject formation within ongoing urban transformations.
Informalities in urban transport: mobilities at the
heart of contestations over (in)formalisation
processes
Lela Rekhviashvili
Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig, Germany
Wojciech Kębłowski
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, COSMOPOLIS Centre for Urban Research, Brussels, Belgium
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Institut de Gestion de l'Environnement et d'Aménagement du
Territoire, Belgium
Claudio Sopranzetti
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Central European University
Tim Schwanen
Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford, UK
Rekhviashvili, L., Kębłowski, W., Sopranzetti, C., Schwanen, T. (2022), Informalities
in urban transport: mobilities at the heart of contestations over (in)formalisation
processes, Geoforum, in press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.05.008
1
CC BY-NC: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon
the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only
so long as attribution is given to the creator.
2
Abstract
This editorial introduces and contextualises the Special Issue on informalities in urban
transport and mobility in cities across the Global South, East and North. It identies a
mutual misrecognition between the urban studies literature on informality and research on
transport and mobilities, and proposes that urban mobility be understood as a critical site
of contestations over (in)formalisation processes. The editorial suggests that the articles
gathered in the Special Issue diversify and extend understandings of informality in both
the transport and urban studies literatures. It outlines three specic contributions that the
articles make. Drawing on conceptualisations of informality from across the social sciences
and by oering empirical studies of informalities in urban mobility in the Global East and
North, the articles confront the habit of dualistic thinking in relation to informalities in
urban mobility. They do this by moving beyond the formal/informal binary and
challenging the North/South division which associates informality predominantly with the
South. The papers in the Special Issue also highlight how ‘informal transport’ is a highly
dynamic sector at the vanguard of innovation, digitalisation and platform urbanism.
Finally, the articles nally demonstrate that informalities in urban mobility oer a useful
analytical lens onto questions of labour struggles and subject formation within ongoing
urban transformations.
Keywords: informality, mobility, transport, digitalisation, labour, platformisation
3
1. Introduction
This Special Issue (SI) examines informalities in urban transport and mobility across cities
of the Global South, East and North. It attempts to overcome the mutual misrecognition
between the urban studies literature on informality and research on transport and
mobilities, and makes a twofold general contribution. First, the articles in the SI draw on
critical conceptions of informality oered by post-colonial and post-structuralist
scholarship to further eclipse reductionist, Manichean, and economistic understandings of
informality that have dominated certain strands of literature on so-called informal
transport. Second, the contributions theorise informality by learning from transformations
in urban mobility practices, and so advance a broader understanding of urban
informalities. In eect, the Special Issue contends that transformations in urban mobility
cannot be examined without taking account of urban informalities more generally and that
studies of the latter can benet signicantly from engagement with emerging work on
informalities and informalisation in urban mobility.
The fragmented nature of the existing academic literature makes cross-fertilisation of
thinking and empirical research on mobilities and informality necessary. On the side of
urban mobilities, as explained below, informalities have been researched primarily in
(quantitative) transport geography, planning and engineering. In these elds, binary
conceptions of formality and informality prevail, economistic readings of transport remain
inuential, and engagement with recent social science thinking on informalities has
occurred only to a limited extent. In the mobilities turn (Cresswell, 2006; Jensen et al.,
2020; Sheller & Urry, 2006, 2016) and critical urban transport research (Cidell et al., 2021;
Kębłowski et al., 2019; Kębłowski & Bassens, 2018) the focus has predominantly been on
Northern cities. As a result, both bodies of scholarship have paid much less attention to
informality in, and of, the Global East or South.
The opposite has happened in the urban studies literature on informality (Marx & Kelling,
2019; McFarlane, 2012; Roy & AlSayyad, 2004). Here research has predominantly
concentrated on cities outside the North, and for good reasons, but urban transport and
mobility have been largely disregarded as either an empirical entry point or a site for
conceptual innovation. Building on the work of economic anthropologists on urban
4
informality since the 1950s, post-colonial urban scholars declared informality to be a new
way of life in the early 21st century, and predicted that the concept would alter the way
cities across the globe would be theorised (AlSayyad, 2004). Some researchers have
pointed out more recently that acceptance “of the pervasive, global character of
informality […] has not yet reshaped the way scholars think about urban development”
(Harris, 2018, page 268). Yet, informality can be seen as one of rare concepts that was
largely theorised from the experiences of the cities of the Global South, and has become a
“site for critical analysis” (Banks et al., 2019, p. 223) of urban processes in the Global East
(Polese et al., 2018) and North alike (Devlin, 2017; Hilbrandt et al., 2017). Nonetheless,
debates over informality in the urban studies literature have predominantly focused on
urban planning, land ownership and housing issues (Jordhus-Lier et al., 2019; Kamete,
2017), overlooking mobility as a frontier of (in)formalisation processes.
This oversight is particularly unfortunate in light of recent debates over informalisation
and digitalisation. Urban transport is possibly the domain where platform urbanism
(Barns, 2020; Leszczynski, 2020; Rose et al., 2021) has evolved and matured the most. The
platformisation of transport has been accompanied by multiple labour and social struggles,
which have been examined in multiple social science literatures (Gramano, 2018) but
garnered limited attention in urban, transport and mobilities research to date. Transport
researchers and mobilities scholars alike have hailed the digitalisation of urban mobility
(Canzler & Knie, 2016; Velaga et al., 2012) as a signier of innovation and modernisation
(Leviäkangas, 2016), and a means to achieve environmental sustainability (Sperling, 2018;
Sprei, 2018). Among the more critical accounts, the work of Stehlin and colleagues (2020)
stands out. They see the ways in which venture capitalism and ‘big tech companies are
subjecting urban life in general, and transport in particular, to digital mediation as a new
but fragile ‘spatial x’ (Harvey, 2001). However, whilst recognising local variations in the
eects that mobility platforms help to generate, they remain committed to rather general
and dualistic conclusions, arguing that platformisation induces “both the increasing
informalisation of infrastructure, particularly but not exclusively in Global North cities,
and the increasing formalisation of more ad hoc mobility infrastructures in the Global
South, often through the same platforms” (Stehlin et al., 2020, p. 1256). There is, we
suggest, a need for nuanced conceptualisations of informalities and (in)formalisation in
urban mobility across the planet that can speak to urban, transport, mobilities and other
social science literatures.
5
In response to the identied research gaps, we believe that the articles in the SI make three
more specic contributions to the literature on informalities in urban mobility. First, they
confront the habit of dualistic thinking in relation to informalities in urban mobilities by
moving beyond the formal/informal binary and by challenging the persistent North/South
division that locates informality predominantly in the latter. They do so by drawing on
conceptualisations of informality and informalisation from across the social sciences and
by oering additional case studies of informalities in urban mobility in the Global East and
North. Second, the articles show that what is often labelled ‘informal transport’ is a highly
dynamic sector where innovation and digitalisation abound. Third, they demonstrate how
informalities in urban mobility oer a useful analytical lens for examining labour struggles,
infrastructure and subject (re)formation, and urban transformation more generally. Below
we will elaborate each of these contributions and introduce the individual articles, but rst
we contextualise them by providing a brief, yet necessarily partial overview of the existing
literature on informalities in urban transport.
2. From informal transport to informalities in urban mobility
The literature on informalities in urban transport and mobility is dispersed, disintegrated
and variegated. It is dispersed across many disciplines, from civil engineering via the new
data sciences or transport geography to anthropology. It is disintegrated in the sense that
dierent strands of research rarely communicate with each other and are sometimes
blissfully unaware of each other’s existence. It is variegated insofar that past work is
characterised by dierent philosophical, theoretical and methodological orientations, and
pursues dierent purposes. The latter include inter alia describing and rendering visible a
largely understudied set of transport-related practices and arrangements, contributing to
formalisation of those practices and arrangements, and using them as a point of entry for
studying certain processes such as marginalisation and exclusion in the contemporary city
or entrepreneurial responses to unmet need for intra- or interurban mobility.
6
Studies on so-called informal transport have a long history, especially when it is realised
that the term has often been conated with ‘paratransit (Rimmer, 1984; Shimazaki &
Rahman, 1996) . This term was rst used in the 1960s in the USA to denote demand-
responsive, door-to-door services for particular groups, such as the elderly and disabled
(Orski, 1975). In Southern contexts the category is often used to denote services that are
more exible than openly state-sanctioned public transport and operate in the borderlands
of legality as dened by rules and regulations in particular locales (see e.g., Behrens et al.,
2016; Phun & Yai, 2016). This is where the distinction with informal transport is blurred
(see below). However, paratransit is not the only term in use alongside informal transport.
‘Indigenous transport’ has been proposed to highlight the “vernacular and local qualities”
of the services in question “whose development is inuenced by local needs, appropriate
for local conditions and based on local cultures (Mateo-Babiano, 2016, page 133). The
term ‘artisanal transport’ is used in the Francophone literature from Sub-Saharan Africa
(Behrens et al., 2016; Zouhoula Bi, 2018) and the term ‘popular transport’ has also been
introduced. For Doherty et al. (2021), the latter term captures how certain transport
services are collectively produced by city residents as workers and passengers in ways that
lack clear leadership or ideology but reect a shared interest in making the city work for
themselves and their community.
It is dicult to summarise the informal transport literature without creating a caricature.
Nonetheless, at least three tendencies can be observed. First, there is a tendency to
understand informality through the prism of illegality even if the heterogeneity of informal
transport is widely appreciated. Cervero and Golub (2007) equate informal transport
services to illicitly plying one’s trade, and Kumar et al. (2016) understand informality in
terms of limited or no compliance with regulation on vehicle manufacturing and
operations, taxation and/or social security. At the same time, there is an inclination to
foreground that paratransit comes in many shapes and sizes (Cervero, 2001; Phun & Yai,
2016; Rimmer, 1984). Attempts to categorise the observed heterogeneity often focus on
physical characteristics such as the propulsion system (motorised/non-motorised), number
of wheels (2/3/4) and seat capacity (from 1 to a locally specic upper limit). They
sometimes also consider institutional and organisational characteristics such as route and
schedule (xed/exible), service (point to point vs rst/last mile, shared with other
passengers vs hire for exclusive use) and ownership (owner hiring out one or more vehicles
to individual drivers or driver collectives; individual owner-operator; cooperative/
7
association). A common analytical response to the observed heterogeneity in empirical
research on informal transport has been to concentrate on a particular type of informal
transport service, such as motor-cycle taxis (Diaz Olvera et al., 2012, 2020; Ehebrecht et al.,
2018).
Second, much of the literature analyses informal transport through logics of rational
markets and cost/benet trade-os, often with a Euro-American understanding of what
constitutes a properly functioning transport system as the “the silent referent”
(Chakrabarty, 2009, page 28). Thus, informal transport systems are reduced to
“consummate gap llers” (Cervero & Golub, 2007, page 456). In new-institutionalist
fashion à la De Soto (De Soto, 1989, 2000), they respond to a ‘transport crisis’, where, in a
context of lax and inadequate market regulation, demand for mobility by far exceeds the
supply of ‘ocialpublic transport in the form of public bus, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) or
urban rail systems (Chalermpong et al., 2016; Diaz Olvera et al., 2012; Ehebrecht et al.,
2018; Oteng-Ababio & Agyemang, 2015). ‘Ocial’ public transport is represented as being
unable to adapt to the changing demand patterns, which allows ““petite entrepreneurs”
[to] captur[e] niche business opportunities” (Chalermpong et al., 2016, page 89). Binary
oppositions underpin this mode of representation: where ‘conventional’, openly state-
sanctioned public transport is rigid and slow to respond, informal transport is demand-
oriented, agile, adaptable, entrepreneurial and thus in keeping with neoliberal
understandings of desirable practice.
And yet, the logic of cost/benet trade-os ties the “heroic entrepreneurship framing
(Roy, 2005, page 148) to understandings of crisis and poor governance. Such an approach
naturalises deciencies in ‘ocial’ public transport systems and overwrites the complex
history of how publicly provided transport services decayed during the neoliberal ‘roll
back’ (Peck, 2002) across cities in the global South and East in the 1980-90s (Rizzo, 2017;
Sgibnev & Vozyanov, 2016). Despite providing potential benets, informal transport is also
seen “to impose signicant costs”, to the extent that “the general perception of ocialdom
is that informal transport’s costs exceed benets”(Cervero & Golub, 2007, page 448).
Although Cervero and Golub are quick to point out that this perception does not exist
everywhere, the narrative of signicant costs is reproduced throughout the literature. The
most commonly recognised costs include increased road congestion (because of ad hoc
stopping to pick up/drop o passengers); poor safety records and frequent trac accidents;
8
inecient business, investment and insurance practices; exploitative labour relations;
disproportionate contributions to air and noise pollution; and incompatibility with
modernisation and world city ambitions. For Kumar and colleagues (2016, p. 103), the
“poorly understood cost-benet nature of informal transport is the key factor behind why
policymaking and plan-making processes generally ignore this sector” or try to ban them,
at least from those parts of the city that are believed to be most integrated into global city
networks, or most aligned with modernisation narratives.
Third, the past decade has witnessed a strong tendency towards diversication in the
informal transport literature. Studies have sought to understand what makes city residents
use paratransit or popular transport modes (e.g., Das & Mandal, 2021; Guillen et al., 2013;
Hossain & Susilo, 2011). They have also examined various modes of self-governance within
the paratransit sector (e.g., Agbiboa, 2018; Heinrichs et al., 2017), and the diverse ways in
which the (local) state seeks to regulate, professionalise and integrate these services into
openly sanctioned public transport systems such as BRT (e.g., Paget-Seekins, 2015;
Schalekamp, 2017; Sunio et al., 2021). This general diversication has started to break
down easy distinctions between transport studies and other disciplines, including political
science, development studies and anthropology, where attempts to ‘formalise’ paratransit
have also been studied (e.g., Doherty, 2017; Goodfellow, 2015; Mains & Kinfu, 2017; Rizzo,
2017; Sopranzetti, 2018). These and other studies (e.g., Agbiboa, 2018b; Doherty et al.,
2021; Hasan & Dávila, 2018; Turner, 2020) tie the state’s attempts to professionalise,
regulate, and sometimes outright ban so-called informal transport provision to the way
these services are seen as contravening modernisation narratives and the interests of
politically powerful road user groups, such as middle-class private motorists. In the light of
the limits of the informal transport concept and the recent critical reappraisal and
diversication of approaches to the topic, this Special Issue shifts attention from informal
transport to the multiple ways in which informalities and (in)formalisation processes
manifest in urban mobility.
9
3. Beyond dualism
Despite the diversication, much of the literature continues to be framed and underpinned
by dualistic thinking. Informalities in transport are mostly studied in and indeed
associated with the Global South. However, Cervero and Golub (2007) recognise that
cities in the ‘developed’ world have informal services too, and these have been examined
empirically in a small number of studies (e.g., Best, 2016; Cervero, 1997; Cervero & Golub,
2007b; Goldwyn, 2020; Suzuki, 1985). There is also an emerging strand of work on
marshrutkas, minibus popular transport in post-Soviet countries (Rekhviashvili & Sgibnev,
2018b, 2019; Sgibnev & Vozyanov, 2016), even though the association of informalities in
urban mobility with Southern cities is resilient. The same holds for the association of such
informalities with illegal – and, at least in certain social milieus, illicit – practices, although
there are notable exceptions. Drawing inter alia on the urban studies literature (McFarlane,
2012), Heinrichs et al. (2017) develop an institutional bricolage perspective on the
regulation, organisation and practices of various public transport systems in Dar es Salaam,
including motorcycle taxis, in Dar es Salaam. These authors highlight how formal/codied
and informal/social rules are constantly merged and reassembled into a uid meshwork
that dees identifying a given system as either formal or informal. Using a rhythmanalysis
framework, Xiao (2019, p. 147) also draws attention to the ways in which not only transport
practitioners but also passengers improvise a mesh where so-called “formalised systems
are always intervened by informal actions, while informal transport is formalised by
certain rules”.
While research on informalities in urban mobilities has begun to challenge and rework the
dualisms that characterise most of the informal transport literature, multiple articles
gathered in this SI advance the agenda of dismantling binary thinking. Thus, in his study of
three-wheeled autorickshaws – called Vikrams – in Dehradun, northern India, Mittal (2022)
exposes the limits of using informality as a descriptive label to characterise and map
dierent urban mobility practices as violating or remaining beyond state regulation. This
treatment of the concept, he argues, shifts attention away from the state’s role in producing
informalities. Through his Vikram case study that spans over forty years, Mittal shows that
the regulatory authorities have taken on multiple roles and repeatedly reframed their
denitions of (in)formality to privilege or discriminate against certain actors at dierent
points in time. Their approach has ranged from implicit support to overt repression, and
10
later also included legal accommodation of Vikrams. Mittal’s analysis reveals the state as
an incoherent unit, and an assemblage of dierent actors in complex entanglements of
practices far beyond the state institutions” (page 8). Its variable but always ad hoc handling
of informality is grounded in colonial legacies and a perceived need to keep the Vikram
operators under control.
Olma’s (2022) account of Tashkent’s informal taxis also emphasises the state’s productive
role and shifting approach to informality. Contributing to the literature on informality as
pursued in-spite of or ‘beyond’ the state in the post-socialist East (Polese, et al., 2018),
Olma shows that informality can also thrive ‘under the auspicesof the state. The state’s
conscious choice to ease or freeze enforcement “can serve diverse politico-economic goals,
ranging from covering gaps in the state’s provision to giving the chance to unregistered
individuals to earn income to avoiding unrest” (Olma, 2021, page 4). This account also
challenges the prevailing reduction of informality to unregistered, unlicenced, or
unregulated operation of transport providers (Cervero & Golub, 2007). Olma instead
denes drivers’ informality in reference to their precarity, self-exploitation, and insecurity.
He visibilises a complex lifeworld of informalities - kin-based networks and community-
level resource pooling strategies - that allow drivers to access loans, and to cope with road
accident-induced costs or other uncertainties.
Weicker’s (2022) study of the public transport reform in two Russian cities suggests that
political elites strategically utilise binary conceptions of informality vs formality and
associations of informality with backwardness and underdevelopment to suppress
marhsrutka paratransit. This results in further deterioration of labour conditions and
deepening of socio-spatial inequalities. He denes discursive strategies of demonizing
informality as “a mighty but improper misuse of power, concealing very complex operation
practices in a formal/informal continuum of the established transport assemblages” (p. 3).
In the given cases of Volgograd and Rostov on Don, simplied and binary notions of
informality have been “consciously used as a power instrument of exclusion as a strategic
use of a state of exception” (p. 3).
11
Finally, Sopranzetti (2022) oers a longue durée anthropological study of motorcycle taxies
in Bangkok. He conrms that attempts to deconstruct the formal/informal binary in
transport and mobilities research have expanded the understanding of informality as a
complex planning tool, practice or a heuristic device. Yet, he also observes the continued
discursive power of the binary construct of informality, illustrating how not just authorities
but also drivers and mobility operators engage with informality as a binary label in their
struggle over dignity, legitimacy, right to employment and survival. Sopranzetti therefore
oers a dual conceptualisation of informality that recognises the continuous interaction
between codication and actual praxis as well as the ways in which the formal/informal
binary is deployed tactically by a variety of actors trying to act in their life-worlds. He thus
illustrates how the label ‘informal transport’ can be re-appropriated as a badge of honour
by mobility providers on the margin.
4. Innovation and digitalisation
So-called informal transport systems have long been hailed for their adaptability and
creativity, across multiple literatures. To emphasise how vehicles in their original form are
modied to meet local mobility needs, Phun and Yai (2016) dene paratransit as LAMAT:
Locally Adapted, Modied and Advanced Transport. Paratransit is thus seen as a site of
frugal innovation under nancial, technological, spatial, and other constraints. Doherty et
al.’s (2021) study of ‘saloni’ motorised tricycle taxis in Abidjan, Ivory Coast aptly illustrates
this form of innovation. Originally imported from India and slightly adapted for local use,
saloni taxis started operating in 2019 in Abidjan’s periphery where dirt roads are unsuitable
to most other forms of popular transport in the city.
The digitalisation and platformisation of urban mobility have induced innovation
processes in paratransit that are of a dierent order of magnitude. Digital technologies
have to some extent facilitated the elaboration of non-capitalist, collaborative and socially
oriented urban mobility services(Stehlin et al., 2020). However, those technologies have
particularly enabled the platformisation of urban mobility by prot-seeking capital that has
“render[ed] mobility a potent entry point through which to more broadly reorganize urban
services and extract new sources of value from their intermediation” (Ibid, page 5). To
12
create the conditions for expanding digital mediation of urban mobility, ride-hailing
companies have mobilized vast resources for pursuing legal cases and unsettling local
urban and national regulations. This has resulted in dual regulatory regimes, beneting
digitalized mobility providers over pre-existing, usually dispersed actors involved in
exible mobility service provision or taxi sector (Collier et al., 2018).
Several papers gathered in the SI explore these issues. Lanamäki and Tuvikene (2021)
analyse the debate in the Estonia’s national parliament about the so-called ‘Uber law’. The
approval of the ‘Uber law’ led to the establishment of a two-tier regulation scheme,
legalising previously informally operating digital ride-hailing services yet exempting them
from existing taxi sector regulations. The authors show how the narratives of the alleged
innovativeness and superiority of digitalised mobility justify privileging digital ride-hailing
over regular taxi services in the process of law-making. They understand the case of digital
ride-hailing as exemplifying the selective formalisation of informality, or ‘elite informality’
(Moatasim, 2019; Roy, 2005). They show that focus on digitalisation can enrich debates
about the elite informality by “noting the ways in which informality in the name of the
digital future can be justied and eventually legalized” (Lanamäki and Tuvikene, 2022, p.
9).
In his contribution to the SI, Doherty (2022) investigates how platformisation of urban
mobility intersects with pre-existing social infrastructures and moral landscapes of ethical
personhood in Kampala. Drivers of boda-bodas, the motorcycle taxies of Kampala,
predominantly construct their ethical personhood through embeddedness in location-
based social institutions. In this way they establish order within drivers’ communities and
trust with customers. While the state’s eorts to register boda-boda drivers have failed,
ride-hailing companies succeeded in enlisting drivers as they understood the importance
of addressing trust and safety issues. In contrast to socially embedded ethical personhood,
ride-hailing apps address the safety issue through rating systems and individualisation
techniques. Yet, as Doherty argues, platforms are not simply technologies of disembedding
because their success “depends on the extent to which they accommodate, complement,
and extend existing practices and institutions” (Doherty, page 8). This means that digital
ride-hailing is less disruptive and innovative than is often suggested.
13
Doherty’s observation that platforms succeed in registering, standardising and disciplining
pre-existing dominantly informal services when public authorities fail resembles Olma’s
(2022) ndings in Tashkent. In fact, Lanamäki and Tuvikene, Doherty and Olma all
illustrate that digital mediation of urban mobility and urban services more broadly is
intertwined with the issues of governance in various ways. While some public authorities
(e.g., in Estonia) may perceive platforms as superior governance tools, others (e.g., in
Tashkent) give up their eorts at formalising mobility services and contribute to
reproducing informality when supporting ride-sharing companies, as long as the latter
provide the authorities with a share of monetary value extracted from informal transport
workers. All three cases indicate the need for further research on understanding how
digital platforms complement, supplement and/or replace public services and regulations.
5. Lens onto labour struggles and subject formation in urban transformation
As cities across the planet continue to grow rapidly in both population and areal size,
informally provided transport services can be expected to expand in a similar vein. This
alone justies calls “to make informal urban transport and the kinds of mobility it enables
more visible within debates concerning the future of cities” (Evans et al., 2018, page 674).
Another compelling reason for greater visibility is that motorcycle taxis, rickshaws and
minibuses oer an analytic entry point into understanding (changes in) urban experiences
and struggles as well as broader urban transformations. This point is perhaps best
illustrated with reference to questions of labour. Traditionally attracting limited attention
in both transport and labour studies (but see e.g., Etherington & Simon, 1996; Rimmer,
1982), paid work in transport has emerged as a topic of some research interest in recent
years. Informal transport occupies a privileged position in this research, for various
reasons. These include exploitative labour relationships, precarity, processes of
stigmatisation and discrimination, as well as the sector’s role in many cities across the
planet as absorbing a surplus of labour constituted by typically male and low-educated
urbanites or rural-to-urban migrants (e.g., Agbiboa, 2018b; Baker, 2021; Doherty, 2017;
Ference, 2016; Rekhviashvili & Sgibnev, 2018a; Sopranzetti, 2014). Here too, world-wide
platformisation of urban mobility has redened the terms of the debate (Collier et al., 2018;
Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev, 2019).
14
The new ‘spatial x’ (Stehlin et al., 2020) concocted by venture capitalists and tech rms
has triggered labour unrest and social discontents in cities across the Global South, East
and North alike. Alongside the more traditional protests and strike actions of public
transport workers, recent years have witnessed increasing mobilisation of taxi drivers
against the competition they face from app-based mobility oers. Drivers working for
mobility platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo followed, protesting against precarious
working conditions and decreasing returns per time unit of labour (Trappmann et al.,
2020). Existing literature has recognised that platformisation of urban mobility produces
divergent and heterogeneous labour struggles in dierent locales but details on localised
political processes are largely missing from previous studies (Behrens et al., 2021). The SI
contributes to the existing literature by showing how the processes of digitalisation, labour
struggles and informalisation interact and by challenging easy distinctions between
innovation (often applied to the global North) and informalisation (understood as
emerging in the global South). For instance, Rink’s (2022) analysis of the South African
amaphela, a form of local transport named after cockroaches, directly challenges the
distinction between innovation and informalisation. By providing a phenomenology of the
everyday uses of amaphela what he calls capturing’ them-and putting to work the
etymology of their name and the relation it marks between human and non-humans – Rink
shows that this form of transport can be understood both through utopian and dystopian
lenses: as threat to order, formality, safety and reliability or celebrated for the unique and
creative demand-driven service.
Kębłowski and Rekhviashvili (2022) show that working for navettes, informally operating
taxis in Brussels, hinges on labour precarity and self-exploitation. Although the navettes
operate within a highly regulated context, the so called ‘negative externalities’ of
informality remain unresolved, and the challenges faced by the drivers closely resemble
those experienced by informal transport workers across the cities of Global South and East.
In line with the observations by Lanamäki and Tuvikene (2022), the authors illustrate that
in a Global Northern city such as Brussels the state relies on selective privileging of
informal practices (Moatasim, 2019; Roy, 2005) in a similar fashion as described in relation
to municipal authorities in the cities of the global South. They expose how the local
authorities endorse corporate digitalised ride-sharing practices, while marginalising and
15
criminalising subaltern “low-techsharing practices” (Kębłowski and Rekhviashvili, 2022,
page 9).
Many of the contributions to the SI thus demonstrate how informalities in urban mobility
generate precarious and vulnerable subjectivities for transport workers, a process that as
Doherty suggests in particular is intensied through digitalisation and platformisation of
transport services. However, it is important to avoid merely representing transport workers
as victims at constant risk of exclusion. Recall that Sopranzetti’s (2021) article highlights
how mototaxi drivers in Bangkok appropriated the ‘informal transport’ label with pride.
Further to this discursive strategy, Xiao (2021) shows how drivers and passengers in danfo
minibuses in Lagos, Nigeria temporarily challenge the structural inequality and exclusion
they face. They do so in the midst of trac relying on skill and knowledge to navigate the
city in a way that gives them advantage over private car drivers, allowing them to
experience ‘situational inequality,’ a situation in which structural inequalities are
temporarily suspended or reversed in favour of lower classes. Although unable to add up to
collective action or structural changes, these experiences provide danfo drivers and
passengers with aective elements that help them to make sense of (im)mobility, urban life
and Lagos as a city.
6. Conclusions
This SI draws attention to the signicance of informalities in urban mobility across the
planet in an attempt to bridge the hiatus between research on urban informality and
studies of urban mobility. Addressing the disconnect between those elds requires that
thinking from transport research and mobilities scholarship is cross-fertilised with evolving
understandings of various processes and formations in contemporary cities, including – but
not limited to urban governance, digitalisation, labour dynamics, and subject formation.
At the same time, further attention to urban mobility can help urban scholarship to not only
advance critical (re)conceptualisations of urban informality but also understand how urban
moral economies and the subjectivities of working urban dwellers are transformed by state
16
intervention and ‘an explosion in the digital mediation of everyday urban life’ (Stehlin et
al., 2020, page 1250).
The SI articles also hint towards new avenues for future research. The question of how
platformisation of mobility intersects with urban governance stands out as one that would
benet from further conceptualisation. This issue could be addressed by integrating urban
mobility research with broader discussions on smart cities and technocapitalist urbanism
(Strüver et al., 2021). The SI contributions reveal how various urban authorities attempt to
regulate and discipline transport workers. When these attempts fail, platformisation
becomes a particularly appealing solution to local governance challenges. These
observations also signal a need for engagement with recent studies on the trend of re-
municipalising essential services (Voorn, 2021). In eect, they open space for exploration
into whether, where, for whom, and on what terms urban mobility can be framed as
essential infrastructure in need of public reclaiming and commoning.
Finally, although the eects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not discussed in the SI because
the articles were written before its outbreak, emerging debates on how the pandemic has
reshaped perceptions and experiences of urban mobility (Tuvikene et al., 2021; Weicker &
Sgibnev, 2020) indicate an increased presence of informality in transport provision
(Calnek-Sugin & Heeckt, 2020). For instance, the pandemic-induced lockdowns have
exacerbated the precarious labour conditions, inequalities and injustices experienced by
the workers of delivery and transport services (Trappmann et al., 2020). While not
addressing these emerging phenomena directly, the SI oers relevant background
knowledge about current contestations and transformations in urban mobility by oering a
theoretical reappraisal of informalisation processes and practices, changing labour
relations and subjectivities, and ongoing platformisation of urban life.
17
Acknowledgements
The Special Issue has benetted from critical conversations with a great deal of fellow
researchers and friends—none of whom, needless to say, bears any responsibility for the
arguments presented above. We would like to thank the colleagues who participated in the
summer school and writers' workshop of the Marshrutka project, during which this paper
emerged. Lela’s acknowledgement… Wojciech Kębłowski‘s research was supported by
Innoviris (The Brussels Institute for Research and Innovation) and FWO (Research
Foundation - Flanders). Claudio Sopranzetti’s contribution was made possible by nancial
support from the Oxford Fell Fund and the All Souls College Research Grant. Tim
Schwanen’s contribution to this article and work on the Special Issue was made possible by
nancial support from the UKRI's Global Challenge Research Fund (grant reference: ES/
P011055/1).
References
Agbiboa, D. E. (2018a). Informal urban governance and predatory politics in Africa: The role of
motor-park touts in Lagos. African Aairs, 117(466), 62–82. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adx052
Agbiboa, D. E. (2018b). Conict Analysis in ‘World Class’ Cities: Urban Renewal, Informal
Transport Workers, and Legal Disputes in Lagos. Urban Forum, 29(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/
10.1007/S12132-017-9312-5
AlSayyad, N. (2004). Urban Informality as a ‘New’ Way of Life. In A. Roy & N. AlSayyad (Eds.),
Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South
Asia (Reading Hall II / Sociology 307.7/6 ROY). Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.
Baker, L. (2021). Everyday experiences of digital nancial inclusion in India’s ‘micro-entrepreneur’
paratransit services. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 53(7), 1810–1827. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211026320
18
Banks, N., Lombard, M., & Mitlin, D. (2019). Urban Informality as a Site of Critical Analysis. The
Journal of Development Studies, 0(0), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2019.1577384
Barns, S. (2020). Platform Urbanism: Negotiating Platform Ecosystems in Connected Cities.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Behrens, R., Chalermpong, S., & Oviedo, D. (2021). Informal paratransit in the Global South. In The
Routledge Handbook of Public Transport. Routledge.
Behrens, R., McCormick, D., & Mnanga, D. (2016). Paratransit in African cities: Operations,
re gu lat ion an d r ef orm (Ab ing don ). h tt ps ://s ea rch .e bs co ho st .c om/ lo gin .a sp x?
direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1061372
Best, A. (2016). The Way They Blow the Horn: Caribbean Dollar Cabs and Subaltern Mobilities.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106(2), 442–449. https://doi.org/
10.1080/00045608.2015.1120148
Calnek-Sugin, T., & Heeckt, C. (2020). Mobility for the Masses: The essential role of informal
transport in the COVID-19 recovery. London School of Economics and Political Science. https://
www.lse.ac.uk/Cities/publications/blogs/Mobility-for-the-Masses.aspx
Canzler, W., & Knie, A. (2016). Mobility in the age of digital modernity: Why the private car is
losing its signicance, intermodal transport is winning and why digitalisation is the key. Applied
Mobilities, 1(1), 56–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/23800127.2016.1147781
Cervero, R. (1997). Paradigm shift: From automobility to accessibility planning. Urban Futures
Journal, 22, 9–20.
Cervero, R. (2001, May 1). Informal Transit: Learning from the Developing World. ACCESS
Magazine. http://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2001/informal-transit-learning-developing-
world/
Cervero, R., & Golub, A. (2007). Informal transport: A global perspective. Transport Policy, 14(6),
445–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2007.04.011
Chakrabarty, D. (2009). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Dierence.
NJ Princeton University Press. https://www.degruyter.com/doi/book/10.23943/9781400828654
Chalermpong, S., Ratanawaraha, A., & Sucharitkul, S. (2016). Market and Institutional
Characteristics of Passenger Van Services in Bangkok, Thailand. Transportation Research Record,
2581(1), 88–94. https://doi.org/10.3141/2581-11
19
Cidell, J., Acosta-Córdova, J., Pimentel Rivera, A., & Zapata, R. (2021). Critical geographies of
transport and mobility: Studying power relations through practice, academia, and activism.
Geography Compass, 15(12), e12600. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12600
Collier, R. B., Dubal, V. B., & Carter, C. (2018). Disrupting Regulation, Regulating Disruption: The
Politics of Uber in the United States (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3147296). Social Science Research
Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3147296
Cresswell, T. (2006). On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. Taylor & Francis.
Das, D., & Mandal, P. (2021). Comparative evaluation of commuters’ preferences and expectations
for sharing auto-rickshaw. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 9(4), 1567–1581. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.cstp.2021.08.006
De Soto, H. (1989). The other path: The invisible revolution in the Third World (1st ed). Harper &
Row.
De Soto, H. (2000). The mystery of capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails
everywhere else. Basic Books.
Diaz Olvera, L., Plat, D., & Pochet, P. (2020). Looking for the obvious: Motorcycle taxi services in
Sub-Saharan African cities. Journal of Transport Geography, 88, 102476. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.jtrangeo.2019.102476
Diaz Olvera, L., Plat, D., Pochet, P., & Sahabana, M. (2012). Motorbike taxis in the" transport crisis"
of West and Central African cities. EchoGéo, 20. https://doi.org/10.4000/echogeo.13080
Doherty, J. (2017). Life (and limb) in the fast-lane: Disposable people as infrastructure in Kampala’s
bo da bo da in du st ry. Cr it ic al Af ri ca n St ud ie s, 9( 2) , 19 22 09 . ht tp s: //do i.or g/
10.1080/21681392.2017.1317457
Doherty, J. (2020). Motorcycle taxis, personhood, and the moral landscape of mobility. Geoforum.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.04.003
Doherty, J., Bamba, V., & Kassi-Djodjo, I. (2021). Multiple Marginality and the Emergence of
Popular Transport: ‘Saloni’ Taxi-Tricycles in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Cybergeo: European Journal of
Geography, 964. https://doi.org/10.4000/cybergeo.36017
Ehebrecht, D., Heinrichs, D., & Lenz, B. (2018). Motorcycle-taxis in sub-Saharan Africa: Current
knowledge, implications for the debate on “informal” transport and research needs. Journal of
Transport Geography, 69, 242–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2018.05.006
20
Etherington, K., & Simon, D. (1996). Paratransit and employment in Phnom Penh: The dynamics
and development potential of cyclo riding. Journal of Transport Geography, 4, 37–53. https://
doi.org/10.1016/0966-6923(95)00044-5
Evans, J., O’Brien, J., & Ch Ng, B. (2018). Towards a geography of informal transport: Mobility,
infrastructure and urban sustainability from the back of a motorbike. Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers, 43(4), 674–688. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12239
Ference, M. (2016). “Together We Can”: Redening Work in Nairobi’s Urban Transportation
Sector. Anthropology of Work Review, 37(2), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/awr.12098
Goldwyn, E. (2020). Anatomy of a new dollar van route: Informal transport and planning in New
York City. Journal o f Transport Geography, 88, 102 309. https://doi.org/10.1 016/
j.jtrangeo.2018.08.019
Goodfellow, T. (2015). Taming the “Rogue” Sector: Studying State Eectiveness in Africa through
In formal Transpor t Politics. Comparative Politics, 47(2), 127 –147. https://doi.org/
10.5129/001041515814224462
Gramano, E. (2018). Digitalisation and Work: Challenges from the Platform-Economy (SSRN
Scholarly Paper ID 3183067). Social Science Research Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/
abstract=3183067
Guillen, M. D., Ishida, H., & Okamoto, N. (2013). Is the use of informal public transport modes in
developing countries habitual? An empirical study in Davao City, Philippines. Transport Policy, 26,
31–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2012.03.008
Harris, R. (2018). Modes of Informal Urban Development: A Global Phenomenon. Journal of
Planning Literature, 33(3), 267–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412217737340
Harvey, D. (2001). Globalization and the “Spatial Fix”. Geographische Revue: Zeitschrift Für
Literatur Und Diskussion, 3(2), 23–30.
Hasan, M. M. U., & Dávila, J. D. (2018). The politics of (im)mobility: Rickshaw bans in Dhaka,
Bangladesh. Journal of Transport Geography, 70(C), 246–255.
Heinrichs, D., Ehebrecht, D., & Lenz, B. (2017). Moving beyond informality? Theory and reality of
public transport in urban Africa. In T. P. Uteng & K. Lucas, Urban Mobilities in the Global South
(pp. 134–154). Routledge.
Heinrichs, D., Goletz, M., & Lenz, B. (2017). Negotiating territory: Strategies of informal transport
operators to access public space in urban Africa and Latin America. Transportation Research
Procedia, 25, 4507–4517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2017.05.346
21
Hilbrandt, H., Alves, S. N., & Tuvikene, T. (2017). Writing Across Contexts: Urban Informality and
the State in Tallinn, Bafatá and Berlin. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
41(6), 946–961. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12583
Hossain, M., & Susilo, Y. O. (2011). Rickshaw Use and Social Impacts in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Transportation Research Record, 2239(1), 74–83. https://doi.org/10.3141/2239-09
Jensen, O. B., Lassen, C., Kaufmann, V., Freudendal-Pedersen, M., & Gøtzsche Lange, I. S. (2020).
Handbook of Urban Mobilities. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Handbook-of-Urban-
Mobilities/Jensen-Lassen-Kaufmann-Freudendal-Pedersen-Lange/p/book/9780367491567
Jordhus-Lier, D., Saaghus, A., Scott, D., & Ziervogel, G. (2019). Adaptation to ooding, pathway to
housing or ‘wasteful expenditure’? Governance congurations and local policy subversion in a
ood-prone informal settlement in Cape Town. Geoforum, 98, 55–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2018.09.029
Kamete, A. Y. (2017). Governing enclaves of informality: Unscrambling the logic of the camp in
urban Zimbabwe. Geoforum, 81, 76–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.02.012
Kębłowski, W., & Bassens, D. (2018). “All transport problems are essentially mathematical”: The
uneven resonance of academic transport and mobility knowledge in Brussels. Urban Geography,
39(3), 413–437. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2017.1336320
Kębłowski, W., & Rekhviashvili, L. (2020). Moving in informal circles in the global North: An
inquiry into the navettes in Brussels. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.08.014
Kębłowski, W., Van Criekingen, M., & Bassens, D. (2019). Moving past the sustainable perspectives
on transport: An attempt to mobilise critical urban transport studies with the right to the city.
Transport Policy, 81, 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.05.012
Kumar, M., Singh, S., Ghate, A. T., Pal, S., & Wilson, S. A. (2016). Informal public transport modes
in India: A case study of ve city regions. IATSS Research, 39(2), 102–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.iatssr.2016.01.001
Lanamäki, A., & Tuvikene, T. (2021). Framing digital future: Selective formalization and
legitimation of ridehailing platforms in Estonia. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.geoforum.2021.01.016
Leszczynski, A. (2020). Glitchy vignettes of platform urbanism. Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, 38(2), 189–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819878721
Leviäkangas, P. (2016). Digitalisation of Finland’s transport sector. Technology in Society, 47, 1–15.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2016.07.001
22
Mains, D., & Kinfu, E. (2017). Governing three-wheeled motorcycle taxis in urban Ethiopia: States,
markets, and moral discourses of infrastructure. American Ethnologist, 44(2), 263–274. https://
doi.org/10.1111/amet.12477
Marx, C., & Kelling, E. (2019). Knowing urban informalities. Urban Studies, 56(3), 494–509. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0042098018770848
Mateo-Babiano, I. (2016). Indigeneity of transport in developing cities. International Planning
Studies, 21(2), 132–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2015.1114453
McFarlane, C. (2012). Rethinking Informality: Politics, Crisis, and the City. Planning Theory &
Practice, 13(1), 89–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2012.649951
Mittal, G. (2020). The state and the production of informalities in urban transport: Vikrams in
Dehradun, India. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.10.003
Moatasim, F. (2019). Entitled urbanism: Elite informality and the reimagining of a planned modern
city. Urban Studies, 56(5), 1009–1025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018767011
Olma, N. (2021). Under the auspices of the state: Examining the endurance of Tashkent’s informal
taxis. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.08.010
Orski, C. K. (1975). Paratransit: The coming of age of a transportation concept. Transportation
(Netherlands), 4(4), 329–334.
Oteng-Ababio, M., & Agyemang, E. (2015). The Okada War in Urban Ghana: A Polemic Issue or
Policy Mismatch? Undened, 15(4), 25–44.
Paget-Seekins, L. (2015). Bus rapid transit as a neoliberal contradiction. Journal of Transport
Geography, 48, 115–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2015.08.015
Peck, J. (2002). Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations, and Neoliberal
Wo rk fa re *. Ec o no mi c G e og ra ph y, 7 8( 3 ), 3 3 1 36 0. h tt p s://d o i. or g/ 10 .1 1 1 1/
j.1944-8287.2002.tb00190.x
Phun, V. K., & Yai, T. (2016). State of the Art of Paratransit Literatures in Asian Developing
Countries. Asian Transport Studies, 4(1), 57–77. https://doi.org/10.11175/eastsats.4.57
Polese, A., Kovács, B., & Jancsics, D. (2018). Informality ‘in spite of or ‘beyondthe state: Some
evidence from Hungary and Romania. European Societies, 20(2), 207–235. https://doi.org/
10.1080/14616696.2017.1354390
23
Polese, A., Rekhviashvili, L., Kovács, B., & Morris, J. (2018). Post-socialist Informalities: Power,
Agency and the Construction of Extra-legalities from Bosnia to China. Routledge, Taylor & Francis
Group. http://www.tandfebooks.com/isbn/9781351585194
Rekhviashvili, L., & Sgibnev, W. (2018a). Placing Transport Workers on the Agenda: The
Conicting Logics of Governing Mobility on Bishkek’s Marshrutkas. Antipode, 50(5), 1376–1395.
https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12402
Rekhviashvili, L., & Sgibnev, W. (2018b). Uber, Marshrutkas and socially (dis-)embedded
mo bi li ti es. Th e Jo urn al of Tr an sp or t H ist ory, 3 9( 1), 7 2 91. h tt ps: //d oi .o rg /
10.1177/0022526618757203
Rekhviashvili, L., & Sgibnev, W. (2019). Theorising informality and social embeddedness for the
study of informal transport. Lessons from the marshrutka mobility phenomenon. Journal of
Transport Geography. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2019.01.006
Rimmer, P. J. (1982). Theories and techniques in third world settings: Trishaw pedallers and
towkays in Georgetown, Malaysia. Australian Geographer, 15(3), 147–159. https://doi.org/
10.1080/00049188208702810
Rimmer, P. J. (1984). The role of paratransit in Southeast Asian countries. Singapore Journal of
Tropical Geography, 5(1). https://trid.trb.org/view/270116
Rizzo, M. (2017). Taken For A Ride: Grounding Neoliberalism, Precarious Labour, and Public
Transport in an African Metropolis. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/
9780198794240.001.0001
Rose, G., Raghuram, P., Watson, S., & Wigley, E. (2021). Platform urbanism, smartphone
applications and valuing data in a smart city. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
46(1), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12400
Roy, A. (2005). Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning. Journal of the American
Planning Association, 71(2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360508976689
Roy, A., & AlSayyad, N. (2004). Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the Middle
East, Latin America, and South Asia (Reading Hall II / Sociology 307.7/6 ROY). Lanham, Md.:
Lexington Books.
Schalekamp, H. (2017). Lessons from building paratransit operators’ capacity to be partners in Cape
Town’s public transport reform process. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 104,
58–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2017.08.002
24
Sgibnev, W., & Vozyanov, A. (2016). Assemblages of mobility: The marshrutkas of Central Asia.
Central Asian Survey, 35(2), 276–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2016.1145381
Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A, 38(2),
207–226. https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268
Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2016). Mobilizing the new mobilities paradigm. Applied Mobilities, 1(1), 10
25. https://doi.org/10.1080/23800127.2016.1151216
Shimazaki, T., & Rahman, M. (1996). Physical characteristics of paratransit in developing countries
of Asia. Journal of Advanced Transportation, 30(2), 5–24.
Sopranzetti, C. (2014). Owners of the Map: Mobility and Mobilization among Motorcycle Taxi
Drivers in Bangkok. City & Society, 26(1), 120–143. https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12030
Sopranzetti, C. (2018). Owners of the Map: Motorcycle taxi drivers, mobility, and politics in
Bangkok. University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520288508/owners-
of-the-map
Sopranzetti, C. (2021). Shifting informalities: Motorcycle taxis, ride-hailing apps, and urban
mobility in Bangkok. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.007
Sperling, D. (2018). Three Revolutions Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a
Better Future. Island Press. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-906-7
Sprei, F. (2018). Disrupting mobility. Energy Research & Social Science, 37, 238–242. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.029
Stehlin, J., Hodson, M., & McMeekin, A. (2020). Platform mobilities and the production of urban
space: Toward a typology of platformization trajectories. Environment and Planning A: Economy
and Space, 52(7), 1250–1268. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19896801
Strüver, A., Saltiel, R., Schlitz, N., Hohmann, B., Höehner, T., & Grabher, B. (2021). A Smart Right
to the City—Grounding Corporate Storytelling and Questioning Smart Urbanism. Sustainability,
13(17), 9590. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179590
Sunio, V., Argamosa, P., Caswang, J., & Vinoya, C. (2021). The State in the governance of
sustainable mobility transitions in the informal transport sector. Research in Transportation
Business & Management, 38, 100522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2020.100522
Suzuki, P. T. (1985). Vernacular cabs: Jitneys and gypsies in ve cities. Transportation Research Part
A: General, 19(4), 337–347. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(85)90069-X
25
Trappmann, V., Joyce, S., Neumann, D., Stuart, M., & Umney, C. (2020). Global labor unrest on
platforms: The case of delivery workers. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, International Trade Union
Policy. https://library.fes.de/pdf-les/iez/16880.pdf
Turner, S. (2020). Informal motorbike taxi drivers and mobility injustice on Hanoi’s streets.
Negotiating the curve of a new narrative. Journal of Transport Geography, 85, 102728. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2020.102728
Velaga, N. R., Beecroft, M., Nelson, J. D., Corsar, D., & Edwards, P. (2012). Transport poverty meets
the digital divide: Accessibility and connectivity in rural communities. Journal of Transport
Geography, 21, 102–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2011.12.005
Voorn, B. (2021). Country, sector and method eects in studying remunicipalization: A meta-
analysis. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 87(3), 440–460. https://doi.org/
10.1177/00208523211007915
Weicker, T. (2020). Marshrutka (in)formality in southern Russian cities and its role in contentious
transport policies. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.08.015
Weicker, T., & Sgibnev, W. (2020, June 9). Public transport in times of Covid-19: Disruption and
continuity in urban mobility. Geography Directions. https://blog.geographydirections.com/
2020/06/09/public-transport-in-times-of-covid-19-disruption-and-continuity-in-urban-mobility/
Xiao, A. H. (2019). “Oyinbo, Wole!”: Urban Rhythms and Mobile Encounters in the Lagos
Transport Systems. Urban Forum, 30(2), 133–151. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-018-9345-4
Xiao, A. H. (2021). The congested city and situated social inequality: Making sense of urban
(im)mobilities in Lagos, Nigeria. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.012
Zouhoula Bi, M. R. (2018). The Woro-Woro Gares Routieres of Abidjan: Artisanal Transport and
Local Governance in Cote d’Ivoire’s Largest City. Africa Today, 65(2), 23–34.
26
... This adaptability may be due to informal transport's social embeddedness. While informal transport is not vertically embedded through state regulations, it can be horizontally embedded, i.e., rooted in reciprocal networks in particular places (Rekhviashvili et al., 2022;Rekhviashvili & Sgibnev, 2020). For instance, Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev (2020) show the importance of personalised and non-economic considerations in the operations of marshrutka mobility in the capital cities of Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, including the relationships developed between local drivers and passengers which can result in flexible prices and services based on personal connections (and even the level of need of the passenger). ...
... Much of the research on informal transport is underpinned by dualistic thinking which associates informality with marginalisation, the Global South, and underdevelopment (Rekhviashvili et al., 2022). Recent work has challenged these problematic binaries, also in Global North contexts (Best, 2016;Goldwyn, 2020;Kębłowski & Rekhviashvili, 2020;Rekhviashvili & Sgibnev, 2018). ...
Article
Full-text available
Nation‐wide cuts to bus subsidies have led to reduced service in rural communities in the UK, leaving those who do not have access to a car – most of whom are older, have a disability, or have a low income – with few other options to meet their travel needs. This has resulted in greater demand on community transport, small‐scale, local, and community‐based transport schemes that are run by the not‐for‐profit sector and are primarily volunteer‐run. Drawing on 28 interviews conducted with volunteers and staff from community transport schemes across Oxfordshire, this paper describes the provision of community transport schemes at the intersection of informal transport and an ethics of care. This sector is posited as informal, however; unlike many informal transport schemes, community transport is non‐entrepreneurial. Instead, these schemes emerge from the community and are care‐driven. Volunteers who run these schemes all provide skilled labour that is a practice of caring about, caring for, or care giving. This framing highlights the undervaluing of community transport. Indeed, the labour and schemes are underfunded and lack recognition. This study therefore emphasises the socio‐political nature of community transport and shows the importance of supporting caring transport services. It concludes by discussing how this undervalued sector might be re‐valorised so that it can continue to support those with few other transport options.
... However, smart urban infrastructure projects exert control over citizens' physical movements and mundane activities while supporting or sustaining an array of dominant institutions and power relations (Cook and Karvonen, 2024;Wiig, 2016). In some instances, these projects have been criticised for legitimising excessive platform capitalism and exacerbating social inequality, resulting in uneven distributions of externalities among residents, whose opinions, perspectives, and attitudes tend to be excluded from the implementation of smart urban infrastructure (Latonero and Kift, 2018;Rekhviashvili et al., 2022). ...
Article
While the notion of the smart city has grown in popularity, the backlash against smart urban infrastructure in the context of changing state-public relations has seldom been examined. This article draws on the case of Hong Kong's smart lampposts to analyse the emergence of networked dissent against smart urban infrastructure during a period of unrest. Deriving insights from critical data studies, dissentworks theory, and relevant work on networked activism, the article illustrates how a smart urban infrastructure was turned into both a source and a target of popular dissent through digital mediation and politicisation. Drawing on an interpretive analysis of qualitative data collected from multiple digital platforms, the analysis explicates the citizen curation of socio-technic counter-imaginaries that constituted a consent of dissent in the digital realm, and the creation and diffusion of networked action repertoires in response to a changing political opportunity structure. In addition to explicating the words and deeds employed in this networked dissent, this article also discusses the technopolitical repercussions of this dissent for the city's later attempts at data-based urban governance, which have unfolded at the intersections of urban techno-politics and local contentious politics. Moving beyond the common focus on neoliberal governmentality and its limits, this article reveals the underexplored pitfalls of smart urban infrastructure vis-à-vis the shifting socio-political landscape of Hong Kong, particularly in the digital age.
... These statistics indicate that while African cities urbanise rapidly and governments commit to creating liveable human settlements and cities where urbanites are connected to vibrant transport systems and networks, the realities are a stark contrast to the plans and aspirations [4]. Yet, in most instances, livability of African cities is compromised by the inability to meet the mobility needs of an increased population, mainly the urban poor [7]. The significance of urban mobility has been "…rarely do planners of major transport projects consider their social impacts on local populations. ...
Article
Full-text available
Applying an exploratory case study design, the study analyses urban mobility along the Main North 1 Road. We argue that urban mobility in Maseru, Lesotho is compromised by a complex web of issues including inconsistent urban transport policies, inadequate road infrastructure, and land use activities along some roads. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources, including key informant interviews, direct observations, and a review of policy documents on urban mobility. We show that urban mobility along the Main North 1 Road is jeopardised by outdated land use planning schemes and legislation that are out of sync with local realities as they support vehicular movement while neglecting pedestrians’ needs, compromising their safety. The state of the infrastructure also contributes to urban mobility inefficiencies. The study concludes that the urban mobility system needs to be understood holistically to identify leverage points critical for interventions and planning for sustainable urban mobility.
... Informal transport services are often the only means of transportation for many people in developing countries, especially in areas where formal public transportation systems are limited or insufficient (Rekhviashvili, et al., 2022;Xiao, 2022). They provide a unique service by filling the gaps left by the formal transportation system, often serving areas and communities that would otherwise be neglected. ...
Article
Introducing this special issue on public transport as public space, we discuss challenges in approaching public transport as public space and outline how incorporating approaches from different disciplines associated with urban studies is essential for this ambition. We offer an account of the multi-dimensional aspects of public transport as public space, including concepts of public space, questions of encounters and conviviality, linkages between micro- and macro-practices, regulations, discrepancies, conflicts and associated negative encounters, historicised experiences and political perspectives. We stress the need to expand existing perspectives on public space by embracing mobile spaces such as public transport. This entails scrutinising spaces inside public transport vehicles and stations as well as analysing the various ways across the sometimes physical and sometimes invisible barriers defined in written rules, separating public transport space from the remainder of the city’s public spaces, notably that of the street. Thus, the special issue: explores questions about the spatiality of publicness; attends to public space as a normative ideal; considers critical aspects of passengering as related to conviviality and contested encounters; and, addresses how the publicness of public transport is affected by modernisation, post-colonialism and urban politics. As we strongly feel that these questions require learning from across disciplines, the special issue includes contributions from diverse fields across the realm of urban studies and humanities alike.
Article
Full-text available
While transport and mobility studies have focused on diverse challenges related to improving the quality of public transport (PT) for its passengers, they have hardly examined the well-being and livelihoods of PT workers. To address this gap, we explore the work spaces and times of bus drivers employed in PT in Gothenburg and Stockholm (Sweden), where PT operations are procured from private companies to ensure service quality and financial efficiency. Drawing upon studies on capitalist temporalities of work, we observe that the bus drivers are obliged to perform fatiguing work tasks under constant time pressure, which generates daily conflicts between bodily, personal, and work rhythms. The drivers’ time wealth is severely constrained, as they have limited capacity to control their own time and experience a near-constant work-life imbalance. Our findings indicate that such hindrances are not simply a product of work rhythms marked by the rigidity of the PT timetable. Rather, they emerge from the operational and financial logic of procurement that contradicts the well-being and livelihoods of PT workers. We conclude with a plea to place workers as essential actors for future reflections on inequalities and injustices related to transport and mobility.
Article
Full-text available
Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.
Article
Full-text available
A growing literature demonstrates increasing remunicipalization of local public services. Yet, while this literature is becoming extensive, many debates still exist about remunicipalization’s causes. This article reports the findings of a meta-analysis of the remunicipalization literature, focusing on the question: how do country, sector and method effects affect the findings of remunicipalization studies? I include articles on remunicipalization under different terms (‘remunicipalization’, ‘reverse privatization’, ‘insourcing’ and ‘contracting in’), using a large range of methods (case studies, surveys and document analysis) and covering a large period (1995–2019). I find 30 causes of remunicipalization that are considered and found in the literature. Political and pragmatic factors appear to be most frequently considered and found as causes of remunicipalization in the literature; environmental factors are less often considered but seem highly relevant. Moreover, I uncover large differences between the qualitative and quantitative literatures. I offer a research agenda to allow greater future synthesis in the remunicipalization literature. Points for practitioners The literature on remunicipalization is highly fragmented and remunicipalization can have many different causes. Remunicipalization appears to be both a political and a pragmatic trend, but the literature is still too fragmented to know for sure. Be aware of the potential biases and limitations in current research on (causes of) remunicipalization.
Article
Full-text available
Sharing auto-rickshaws is an environmentally-friendly and economical mode of transportation and can address congestion in urban areas. Its informal structure and lack of studies are causing significant challenges in its integration and policy push towards commuters’ adoption. Therefore, the present study is one of the first studies on sharing auto-rickshaw. The study compares non-users (solo trips in auto-rickshaw) with users of sharing auto-rickshaw. Data is collected from 503 users and non-users in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The Ranking method identifies the most critical indicators that form non-users’ expectations: safety issues and drivers’ characteristics. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) are used to develop constructs of a conceptual framework for satisfaction among users and to test hypothesized relationships among the dimensions. The results indicate that behavioral intentions (BEI) and perceived values (PEV) are the most crucial dimensions in adopting sharing auto-rickshaw. Projecting sharing auto-rickshaw as an environmentally friendly option and developing a recommendation system for users will produce maximum benefits. Mediated relationships indicate that vehicle and management improvements without a parallel focus on improving BEI and PEV will not yield significant positive results. The research’s findings can provide policymakers with information for designing effective policies to attract non-user to sharing auto-rickshaws and retain current users.
Article
Full-text available
Self-employed labour in transportation is a notoriously precarious form of employment that occurs throughout many developing countries. In order to offset high-cost and insecure vehicle procurement arrangements, paratransit fare structures are formulated on the basis of a set of logics designed to maximise revenues. Although entrepreneurial, when these logics occur in conflict with public fare legislation, they are undertaken illegally, or informally, and are perceived as undesirable by policy makers and transport users. However, the underlying structures that necessitate these practices are seldom examined despite their significant effect on mobilities and the livelihood experiences of male entrepreneurs. This paper engages with critical literatures on the financialisation of poverty reduction to present financialisation as a class-based mechanism that, with the rapid increase of digital payment and ‘alternative’ credit scoring, structures micro-entrepreneurship and precarity in the neoliberal context of India. The paper argues that digitally enhanced financial inclusion techniques may steer low-income workers toward mainstream finance institutions modelled on the global economy. They enable profit to be generated by investors and private microfinance companies. However, new financial technologies do not do little to reduce the risk and expense of microfinance, nor do they increase micro-entrepreneurs' profit margins. Moreover, they threaten the informal practices entrepreneurs use to self-manage their financial precarity.
Article
Lagos is often depicted as a city of immobility and inequality. Based on a micro-sociological study in the public transit system and an ethnographic study in an urban neighborhood, this article provides a nuanced analysis of situational inequality. Given the enduring traffic congestion and prevailing social inequality in the city, moments of aggressive cutting in line on roads and disputes over light collision accidents demonstrate a spontaneous unequal power relationship that is at odds with the existing social inequality structure. These moments can impose a sense of frustration on the private car drivers who are assumed to have a higher social status while bringing delight to minibus (danfo) drivers and passengers who have lower status. This emergent situational inequality, the paper argues, provides lower-class people with affective elements which can contribute to making sense of (im)mobilities, urban lifestyle, and conceptualization of Lagos. However, the effects of situational inequality are limited to the individual level, as it cannot largely transform the spatiality and temporality of traffic congestion, the socioeconomic class structure, and the traffic governance in Lagos. This dialectical situational inequality does not become a practical living strategy but reifies their individual philosophies of living in Lagos embodied through narratives. The sociological account of situational inequality in this paper showcases an approach to interpret the meaningfulness of micro mobility experiences with regard to macro urban conditions, thereby enriching our understandings of the relationship between mobility and inequality.
Article
Over the last decade, there has been increasing interest among geographers in a critical perspective on studies of transportation and mobility, or studies that take into account the power relations within systems of transportation that produce space, place, mobility, and/or identity. This ever-growing body of work includes people who might not consider themselves as transportation geographers per se, but nevertheless are expanding geographies of transportation beyond the traditional focus on vehicles, infrastructure, and economics. In this article, we review such work from three different perspectives: critical studies of professional practice, the interdisciplinary approach of Caribbean Studies, and the work of activists and scholar-activists to connect environmental justice with mobility justice.
Article
At a time when most large cities across the post-Soviet space have effectively formalised or eradicated their once ubiquitous fleets of informal taxis, in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, thousands of private car owners continue to offer paid trips to their fellow residents on a daily basis. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the remarkable endurance of this practice, locally known as taksovanie. It eschews popular conceptions of informal mobility as a token of institutional failure and attributes the non-formalisation of Tashkent’s informal taxis to the local authorities’ politically-driven active permissiveness on account of the taxis’ social embeddedness and the authorities’ striving for appeasement and social peace. This so-called “appeasement policy” relies on the delegation of the exertion of regulatory pressure to traffic police officers, whose habitual elasticity towards informal taxi drivers allows the authorities to meet their double goal of exhibiting regulatory power, on the one hand, and retaining an important survival strategy and a popular and affordable means of urban transport, on the other. The article thus uncovers the role of various levels of state authority in the production and endurance of Tashkent’s informal taxis, introducing the notion of the informality “under the auspices of the state” and illustrating how the state simultaneously produces informality by determining what is formal and consents to it whenever that serves its political goals.
Chapter
This chapter synthesizes current knowledge of informal paratransit services in cities of the Global South, and discusses prevailing policy issues and emerging trends. The scope of the chapter is limited to unscheduled public transport and for-hire services operating in whole, or in part, within the informal economy. The chapter focusses on three regions of the Global South: Africa; Asia; and Latin America. It reviews current knowledge in relation to business models, regulatory regimes, and operating practices. While illustrating that the sector is heterogeneous across, and within, these regions, this review shows that informal paratransit services are usually operated by small businesses, organised into associations that exert varying degrees of self-regulation. Service operations are seldom free of state regulation, but the extent can vary. Operating environments often have considerable infrastructure deficits, and driver employment conditions can be exploitative. Services are, in many cases, a response to gaps left by formal public transport undertakings. Prevailing business models, however, make operators demand responsive, often providing the only service available to vulnerable groups. It is argued that important policy issues relate to integration with other public transport modes, and service quality and safety improvement. These challenges are compounded by poorly resourced regulatory authorities, often subjected to pervasive corruption. An important emerging trend identified takes the form of potentially disruptive technologies, most commonly in the form of ride-hailing apps. These platforms may have a significant impact on operating practices, and few cities have regulatory frameworks in anticipation of this change. Experience suggests that attempts to change business models and operating practices can be met with resistance. Policy intervention in this sector therefore requires careful analysis of local contexts and options.
Article
This article reconstructs the shifting uses of local concepts of “informality“ (nqk rabop) over the last 35 years in the streets of Bangkok, with a particular attention to the birth of the motorcycle taxi business in the 1980s, its development after the 1997 economic crisis, and its transformation since the arrival of ride-hailing apps in 2016. Based on more than 10 years of qualitative and quantitative research with motorcycle taxi drivers, state officials, city planners and everyday users in Bangkok, this archaeology of informality expand on contemporary theorizations of informality as a logic of planning, a heuristic device, and a practice. I do so by focusing on the highly relational, contingent, and ultimately contested nature of informality, the role of non-state actors in shaping it and, the performative power of informality as a categorical label. In this sense, I propose a double conceptualization of informality: on one side as an ever-shifting relationship between established and codified practices (whether regarding land, labor, property rights, or everyday actions), a governmental and legal system, and people who control and interact with these practices; on the other, as a label, often deployed tactically by actors trying to make sense and make do with the world around them. In this duality between a shifting set of relationships and an almost intuitive and referential label that allow for categorical assessments resides, I show, the central efficacy of “informality” as a concept good to think with, to govern with, and to resist with.