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Who's got time for social reproduction?: Migrant service workers as embodied infrastructures of the algorhythmic city
Mid Sweden University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Economics, Geography, Law and Tourism.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6176-3595
Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet.ORCID iD: 0009-0003-6858-871X
Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8796-7756
2024 (English)In: Journal of ethnic and migration studies, ISSN 1369-183X, E-ISSN 1469-9451, Vol. 50, no 15, p. 3805-3821Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This article, working within the ‘infrastructural turn’, combines social reproduction and Lefebvrian rhythm analysis to examine the everyday labour and life of migrant cleaners and delivery service gig workers in Stockholm. Using in-depth interviews, we demonstrate how this highly mobile and flexible workforce makes the city ‘tick’ by keeping its inhabitants clean, fed, healthy and cared for. Specifically, we highlight a contradiction: workers extricating free time for others through reproductive labour, are themselves systematically deprived of the (paid and unpaid) time necessary to meet their own reproductive needs. The conditions of work in the urban on-demand and just-in-time service economy, we show, produce spatiotemporal (dis)orders of living and labouring in the algorhythmic city, as workers are required to be both on standby, waiting, whilst also fulfilling customer orders at an ever-increasing speed. Migrant gig workers who appear on the doorstep, on demand and just in time, form a kind of human infrastructure, serving the urban population whilst nonetheless being subject to disinvestment – unrepaired and unmaintained. This article, then, contributes to the literature on gig work, migration and social reproduction, by theorizing the algorhythmic city as reliant on the constant transformation of gig labour into an urban infrastructure for social reproduction.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2024. Vol. 50, no 15, p. 3805-3821
Keywords [en]
Rhythmanalysis, city, migrant, gig workers, service work
National Category
Human Geography
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-52010DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2024.2379647ISI: 001276056400001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85199482465OAI: oai:DiVA.org:miun-52010DiVA, id: diva2:1885978
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2020-00332Available from: 2024-07-29 Created: 2024-07-29 Last updated: 2024-08-29Bibliographically approved

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Zampoukos, Kristina

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