Globalised urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan examines urban youth’s practices of making do in digital economies, to understand how precarious working conditions reverberate in the coming of age in contemporary cities. Through a comparative analysis of the perspectives of young men working as air time sellers in Abidjan and food delivery riders and Berlin, the book provides innovative analytical lenses to understand urban inequalities against the backdrop of current digital urban developments. Essentially, this ethnography challenges the easy conflation of instability with insecurity, and overcomes the centrality of wage labour in research on urban livelihood, by looking at a broader set of economic practices and relational mechanisms. The analysis shows how accruing symbolic capital, a feel for the game in contexts of ambiguity and access to care are fundamental for explaining the unequal distribution of risks for socio-material insecurities in unstable work settings.
By:
Hannah Schilling Imprint: Manchester University Press Country of Publication: United Kingdom Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Spine: 14mm
Weight: 417g ISBN:9781526162090 ISBN 10: 1526162091 Pages: 232 Publication Date:01 March 2023 Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
In transition: the making of urban livelihood 1 Crossing views: airtime selling in Abidjan and food delivery in Berlin 2 Conceptual devices: inequality at work in comparative perspective 3 Hustling: the symbolic value of in-between work 4 Trust and rule: tying workers to work 5 Organizing care: distributive labour across private and public realms Not just of symbolic value: work to make oneself living -- .
Hannah Schilling is an urban sociologist and associated member of the Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. -- .