The Hustle Economy

Article Progress in Human Geography 1–20 ª The Author(s) 2017 The hustle economy: Informality, Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav uncertainty and the geographies DOI: 10.1177/0309132517690039 of getting by journals.sagepub.com/home/phg Tatiana Adeline Thieme University College London, UK Abstract This article deploys the conceptual frame of hustle to examine the everyday dealings associated with uncertainty and accepted informalities that pervade realms of everyday life amongst youth in precarious urban geographies. In doing so, the discussion advances the theoretical linkages between prolonged periods of ‘waithood’, alternative interpretations of work, and experiments within the everyday city more broadly. The article argues that the hustle economy is a localized but globally resonant condition of contemporary urbanism, coupling generative possibilities that emerge from everyday experiences of uncertainty and management of insecurities associated with ‘life work’ outside the bounds of normative social institutions. Keywords hustle, informal economy, precarity, uncertainty, waithood, youth I Introduction structural problems for those living in such precarity (Davis, 2006; Harvey, 2012; Standing, In the last decades, one narrative tying together 2011), this article foregrounds the everyday cities of the Global North and Global South has agentive struggle of a group of young people who been the acute confluence of austerity, dimin- self-identify with ‘hustling’ as a way to navigate ishing public welfare, and fragmentation of for- precarious urban environments beyond the (rule mal employment (Castells, 2012; Harvey, 2012; governed) ‘paid job’ and advance their own Honwana, 2012). This has suspended and/or (sometimes individual, sometimes shared) inter- reshaped work opportunities for many in the ests against the odds (Vigh, 2006). From empir- potentially working (‘economically active’) cal research conducted in Nairobi over the last 10 population, particularly young people (Comaroff years, I build an account of ‘hustle’ to braid and and Comaroff, 2005; Wilson, 2009). As a result, thicken scholarship on ‘making do’ and (or as prolonged periods of uncertainty characterize the experience of youth across cities, such that finding a ‘job’ and attaining other cultural markers of adulthood are increasingly asymptotic (Dhillon Corresponding author: and Youset, 2007; Honwana, 2012; Jeffrey, Tatiana Adeline Thieme, University College London, 2010; Thieme, 2013). Whilst some have focused 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AH, UK. on the political economic forces and associated Email: [email protected] 2 Progress in Human Geography central to) ‘making a living’ through urban that both normalizes and affirms experiences of uncertainties across the Global North and South. uncertainty. The article aims to connect experi- Hustling challenges dominant understand- ences of youth and precarious labour markets in ings of precarity and working uncertainties, not rapidly urbanizing cities of the Global South through new categorizations and ‘ontology- back to industrialized (or post-industrial) cities building’ (Gibson-Graham, 2003: 35), but of the Global North (Robinson, 2011), inviting rather through the reclaiming of a familiar – thinking across urban experiences of struggle in seemingly prosaic, certainly loaded – vocabu- relation (but not limited) to work, in a way lary. ‘The hustle’ is advanced as a collective that starts from the urban South (Myers, 2011; condition of individual insecurity disproportio- Pieterse and Simone, 2013; Richardson and nately distributed amongst young people navi- Skott-Myhre, 2012; Wacquant, 2008). gating uncertainty in irregular employment The article is structured in three sections. The through prolonged states of ‘waithood’ first section starts by introducing the empirical (Honwana, 2012). Hustling emerges from the context to which the rest of the conceptual dis- practices of Kenyan youth, who through enga- cussion is tied. From there, the discussion ging in informal waste labour in Nairobi, com- locates ‘hustling’ within broader urban scholar- bine hand-to-mouth survivalism, shrewd ship on youth and waithood, urban informality, improvisation, and a vibrant ‘ghetto-based’ and precarious work. I focus on postcolonial politics of struggle that contests various everyday approaches to the city to suggest that appearances of authority. These Nairobi youth ordinary and makeshift urban practices occur waste workers might characterize an ‘ordinari- across geographies (and increasingly in the ness’ in their urban struggle (Robinson, 2006; Global North), where ‘crises’ become unexcep- Myers, 2011), people who ‘get by’ rather than tional, and where coping with uncertainty is exotic slum dwellers who are differentiated normalized. The second section positions hustle and negated by their informal socio-economic as a situated cultural economic practice, but one practices (Ferguson, 2006; Roitman, 1990; that transcends geographies in its logics. I trace Said, 1978). a genealogy of the term ‘hustle’, then demon- By conceptualizing the affirmative possibili- strate how hustle pushes us to ‘think from the ties of hustle as a situated activity in Nairobi and South’, drawing more explicitly on the empiri- a travelling concept, this article contests tropes cal insights from the Nairobi hustle economy. across North and South that portray uncertainty The third section argues that the conceptual and precarious labour markets (including infor- contribution of hustle is two-fold: it mal economies) as either pathologies of despair encourages youth geographies to turn to the and deviance to be fixed, or as enhanced flexi- ordinary and oft overlooked individual agen- bility and innovation. Theory here emerges cies and experiences that challenge dominant from Nairobi youth subaltern voices, whose conceptions of progress and adulthood. Addi- descriptive and analytical skills typically escape tionally, it necessitates alternative accounts of formal political and economic recognition. geographies of (precarious) work that emerge I argue that empirical material born out of an through diverse forms of making do, distribu- urban ethnography in an East African ‘slum’ tion and accumulation that turn devalued or may have broader resonance elsewhere, offer- invisible practices into meaningful though ing a useful analytical frame for understanding perhaps unorthodox social and economic wider conditions of uncertainty for young peo- experiments (Carr and Gibson, 2016; Ferguson, ple across geographies. Therefore the ‘hustle’ is 2015). I conclude with reflections on the political mobilized as an analytical and political frame implications of hustling. Thieme 3 II Hustle and urban uncertainties strategies to secure their economic zone and 1 Theorizing from Nairobi ghettos customer-bases, and keep diversifying their sources of income to manage the inherent risks Hustling is played out through conditions of of volatile and unpredictable local economies. youth beyond demographic categorization. On some (if not most) days, hustling involves Rather, for the ‘youth’ (re)produced through defying rules and finding alternative routes to and producing the hustle economy, generative accessing and even distributing both basic ser- possibilities emerge from everyday experiences vices (like electricity and water) and ‘nice to of uncertainty across urban spheres whilst var- haves’ (like the latest Timberland shoes or a ious forms of micro-exploitation and competing smart phone) that equip ‘local’ struggles with interests are continuously negotiated and ‘global’ consumer cosmopolitanisms. For cer- managed (Cooper and Pratten, 2014; Di Nunzio, tain individuals within youth groups, hustling 2014; Dolan and Roll, 2013; Jeffrey, 2010; involves navigating eclectic constellations of Meagher, 2013; Thieme, 2013). Through this potential ‘sponsors’ (NGOs, social enterprises, contradictory condition, hustling illustrates how and local politicians) for forms of support that the unofficial ‘real economy’ (MacGaffey, would benefit the local commons. The hustle is 1991) works to (re)produce youth as a process thus an economic performance that might enact of making do that negotiates the entanglements yet also undo appearances of urban marginal- of crises and waiting, while moving towards the ity, as entrepreneurial hustlers strain to raise asymptotic horizons of ‘adulthood’. Thus, hus- funds to build a state-of-the-art football pitch tling frames urban youth as uncertain, off-grid, in the middle of the ghetto and a community and vulnerable, yet not without logics and social hall. agency that can simultaneously combat and per- Hustlers then are caught in a web of ‘pro- petuate conditions of adversity (Jauregui, 2009; tracted liminality’ (Thieme, 2013) as the harsh Saitta et al, 2013; Vigh, 2006). realities of urban life have come to muddle the For Nairobi youth who are the first post- cultural constructions of life stages. Through independence generation born and raised in this they become versed in starting over, in reco- urban informal settlements (and refer to their vering from crises of all sorts, from the mun- neighbourhoods as ‘the ghetto’), ‘hustling’ is dane black-outs disrupting a job, to rebuilding integral to everyday vernacular. Over the years, their inventory of recovered waste plastic the my research has paid closer attention to this day after a theft, to relatives’ unforeseen hospi- under-examined local street argot and its deeper tal bills

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