“Earning Money as the Wheels Turn Around”: Cycle-rickshaw Drivers and Wageless Work in Dhaka

Prins, Annemiek

doi:10.1332/policypress/9781529208931.003.0009

Cited by 2 publications

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“…While rickshaw labor in no way guarantees definitive or durable trajectories of change, it allows drivers to keep certain aspirations and life projects afloat by functioning as an avenue of endurance amidst the uncertainties of the here and now. As I have shown elsewhere (Prins, 2021), the rickshaw industry has long provided working-class men in Bangladesh with something to fall back on in times of crisis. The fact that operating a rickshaw requires few formal skills and no investment capital, as the vehicle can simply be rented on a daily basis, makes it an accessible form of labor for temporary workers.…”

Section: Economic Endur An Ce and Temp Or Alitie S Of Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…For rickshaw drivers, realities of mobility and work are intimately intertwined, considering that they literally “earn money as the wheels turn around ( chaka ghurle taka )” (Prins, 2021). This intertwinement of labor and mobility is often overlooked in discussions on urban transport and infrastructure (Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev, 2018), which do not always take into account that traffic and roads enable forms of work as well as circulation (Bize, 2017, 61).…”

Section: Economic Endurance and Temporalities Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fast Futures and Everyday Endurance: Mobility, Temporality, andCycle‐Rickshawsin Dhaka

Prins

2023

City & Society

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This article takes the cycle‐rickshaw industry in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as a point of departure for examining the discrepancy between the everyday rhythms and embodied realities of Dhaka traffic and the idealized image of mobility that drives imaginations of the urban future. The cycle‐rickshaw is often excluded from such imaginations, as the vehicle is not only blamed for obstructing the flow of traffic but also for impeding trajectories of urban change. I argue that such exclusionary notions of the urban future, which build on linear and epochal notions of urban change, obscure the many ways in which everyday mobilities gesture to temporal experiences of endurance rather than transformation. I employ the notion of endurance to capture both the physical effort of navigating Dhaka traffic and the distinct temporality of rickshaw labor. I show that rickshaw labor, although arduous, allows drivers to keep on going amidst the various needs of the present by providing them with “instant cash.” Rickshaw mobilities thus highlight the friction between epochal notions of urban change and the durability and contingency of the imperfect safety nets and practices that people rely on for the time being.

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Section: Economic Endur An Ce and Temp Or Alitie S Of Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Economic Endurance and Temporalities Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast Futures and Everyday Endurance: Mobility, Temporality, andCycle‐Rickshawsin Dhaka

Prins

2023

City & Society

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“…With an estimated 1.1 million cyclerickshaws operating in Dhaka (Karim and Salam, 2019), the rickshaw industry constitutes an important source of (seasonal) labor for rural-urban migrants. The fact that rickshaws can be rented on a per diem basis, makes for a relatively accessible avenue of work that requires no investment capital and enables workers to come and go according to their needs and wishes (Prins, 2021). The only real requirement for prospective rickshaw pullers is that they have a neighbor or family member, usually someone from their home village, who can vouch for them with the so-called rickshaw malik (owner).…”

Section: Situating Garage and Mess Spaces As Part Of Shifting Periphe...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting peripheries: Dhaka's rickshaw garages and mess dormitories as spaces of work and movement

Prins

Dasgupta

2023

Environ Plan D

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This article considers how urban peripheries are made and unmade by forms of “shifting”. We examine these shifts from the perspective of rickshaw garages and mess dormitories in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which both offer makeshift working and living arrangements to rural–urban migrants. By explicitly situating these spaces as part of the movements and crisscrossing trajectories that animate urban peripheries, we challenge the tendency in urban scholarship to analyze peripheral and marginalized spaces primarily through the lens of habitation. Breaking with residentialist and sedentarist approaches to urban space, we present rickshaw garages and mess dormitories as spaces that are enabling and undergoing various forms of shifting, as their occupants move and alternate between different places, neighborhoods, and spatial arrangements to establish a continuity of work and income. We argue that these forms of manoeuvring are made possible by a degree of spatial malleability that reflects the territorial impermanence of the periphery itself, which is continuously pushed sideways through tandem processes of precariousness and improvement. By directing attention to the “shifting” in “makeshift”, we contribute to a less static understanding of how labor migrants try to hold their place in the city amidst wider processes of exclusion, expansion, and densification.

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“Earning Money as the Wheels Turn Around”: Cycle-rickshaw Drivers and Wageless Work in Dhaka

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Fast Futures and Everyday Endurance: Mobility, Temporality, andCycle‐Rickshawsin Dhaka

Fast Futures and Everyday Endurance: Mobility, Temporality, andCycle‐Rickshawsin Dhaka

Shifting peripheries: Dhaka's rickshaw garages and mess dormitories as spaces of work and movement

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