Going on a ride with Lefebvre: everyday contestation of platform mobilities in Mumbai

ABSTRACT

Given the growing power and proliferation of digital platforms, urban research has been investigating the complex entanglements of platforms with urban social and material processes, highlighting the deeply political nature of platformization. By linking spatial theory and mobilities research, this contribution aims at offering a dialectical approach to study contested platform mobilities in Mumbai. Adopting a mobile view and research practice in the application of Henri Lefebvre’s concepts, I observe how mobilities assume different meanings in (platform) taxi drivers’ lives: on the one hand in mediating their own biographies and constraints with the urban reality, and on the other negotiating the increasingly repressive platform regimes in their everyday lives. This research approach detects differential space in the sense of Henri Lefebvre, in the way drivers appropriate or circumvent platform mechanisms beyond notions of overt resistance, thereby seeking to carve out meanings and notions of the political in the urban everyday. Besides adding to a growing body of literature under the umbrella of platform urbanism, this paper contributes to debates about empirical applications of Lefebvre’s concepts and recent engagements with his rhythmanalytical project. It also critically engages with applications of mobilities research and mobile methods beyond Europe and North America.

KEYWORDS:

• Platform urbanism
• platform mobilities
• mobile methods
• Henri Lefebvre
• digital labour
• South Asia

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank his research participants and field assistants in Mumbai. He is also grateful to his PhD supervisors and also to the journal’s editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and feedback on earlier drafts, which helped to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Statement regarding ethical standards

I hereby declare that ethical standards were followed during the study and all interviewees gave their informed consent (oral or written). All interviews conducted and reported in this paper are pseudonymed.

Notes

1. It was seen as a response to growing customer dissatisfaction as a result of increasing ride cancelations by drivers. The fleet model also exposes growing urgency of platform firms to make their operations profitable after a period of aggressive market penetration achieved by low end user costs and high bonuses for drivers (see also Kuttler 2022).

Additional information

Funding

The Ph.D. research this article is based on was funded by the Hans-Böckler-Foundation in the context of the Doctoral Research Group mobil.LAB [Hans Böckler Stiftung Promotionskolleg 032].