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 pre- carity (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 find- ing 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 that they are expected to pay for by, significance. Misleading in its nebulous and once again, depleting life savings, each an presumed illegitimate connotations, hustling in example that occurred to one or more research Nairobi ghettos encompasses an assemblage of participants in the time I spent in Nairobi. The everyday struggles, dealings, and opportunistic non-linear and unpredictable vicissitudes of practices in the absence of formal institutional hustling that move in ebbs and flows between support of any kind. For street children, hustle is opportunity and set-back, hope and disappoint- tied to daily survival and short-term gains to ment, are inextricably linked with the period of secure the next meal (referred to as ‘feeding limbo experienced by ‘youth’, and with spatio- my stomach’) or shelter for that night. For orga- temporalities of the the informal economy, nized youth groups who have become estab- developed below. As the empirical vignette lished (albeit informal) waste workers in their above demonstrates, as an urban condition, neighbourhoods, hustle combines the daily graft practice, and performed identity, ‘hustle’ of garbage collection with the long-term becomes mobilized as a kind of choreographic 4 Progress in Human Geography practice in which aptitudes for navigating vari- have been portrayed as a troubled, dangerous, ous rhythms and states of emergency become and vulnerable demographic, stuck in persistent critical to the skills associated with the uncer- un(der)employment, depicted as either victims tainties of living on the edge (Pieterse and of structural injustice, or the ‘ticking time Simone, 2013; Vigh, 2006). bomb’ that poses potentially significant risks Thus, the temporalities and geographies of to urban order (Finn and Oldfield, 2015; Som- ‘hustling’ observed in Nairobi present affinities mers, 2010; Venkatesh and Kassimir, 2006). with but also depart from various literatures This section suggests that conceptualizations related to geographies of uncertainty. This sec- of ‘youth’ as a period of suspended transition tion advances three frames for experiences of connect the experiences of youth in the Global urban uncertainty to make the case for travelling South to those in the North. Firstly, across geo- across geographies: youth, informality and pre- graphies, youth are part of a disaffected and carity. The forms of ‘getting by’ that sustain disenfranchised social group that is simultane- each of these experiences can emerge as nega- ously off-grid in relation to work but also highly tion, ‘merely’ a mode of survival. Setting the connected to (ICT) networks of solidarity. Sec- stage for the rest of the discussion, I foreground ondly, they are caught in a state of ‘protracted such urban uncertainties more positively for the liminality’ and ‘waithood’ which assumes a forms of adaptation that they engender. The deferral of (but also a challenge to) normative suggestion is that processes of working with and cultural, social and economic structures. through uncertainty in cities of the South (such Thirdly, youth experience alternative interpre- as Nairobi) resonate with experiences of precar- tations and ways of making a living that do not ious work in the North, which together might be necessarily fit within formal economic norms. understood through ‘the hustle’, as I will go on The changing role of state welfare since the to develop. 1980s, economic liberalization policies, and the shifts in labour conditions have increasingly undermined young people’s efforts and criteria 2 Youth associated with adulthood (Diouf, 2003; Jeffrey, The category of ‘youth’ has been a means for 2013; Mabala, 2011; Thieme, 2013). Austerity examining the cultural expectations and pres- measures aggravate the confluence of penalties sures that have shaped youthhood and transi- young people face as they tackle insecurity of tions to adulthood across geographies housing and service provision, rising inequality, (Honwana and De Boeck, 2005; Jeffrey and and especially the growing realities of insecure Dyson, 2009; Mead, 1928; Willis, 1977). Urban labour and systemic under-employment. And scholars, anthropologists, and development while they witness the dissolution of these struc- geographers have been studying youth in the tures of support, this generation of youth finds Global South where general structures of insti- itself reproduced via ‘new’ and apparently tutional support have been unevenly distributed decentred networks of information and commu- and with varying effects within the broader rea- nication technologies. The intensification and lities of rapid urbanization. Increasing eco- acceleration of global social media have nomic uncertainty for youth in particular has turned seemingly isolated qualms into wide- elicited a variety of competing but often spread geographies of outrage, through the for- homogenized responses to the ‘youth bulge’ mation of global movements of solidarity and (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2005). Low-income shared struggle animated across digital plat- youth in cities across geographies, particularly forms and ‘hashtags’ (Castells, 2012). This from marginalized or minority backgrounds, generation of youth are super-connected yet Thieme 5 disaffected, super-informed yet expressing The similarities between infrastructures, ser- their aspirations and identities through new vices, and planning available to cities of the mediums and vernaculars. Though expressions North and those of the South should not be exag- of revolt and the dramatic effects of ‘austerity gerated, but there are remarkable parallels in urbanism’ (Tonkiss, 2013) on geographies and how young people globally are increasingly insecurities of work are not limited to youth, experiencing a state of normalized uncertainty these technologies connect youth across local- related to housing, employment and service pro- ities, as situated yet global disaffection becomes vision across social classes, migrant or citizen- apparent through social media reporting ship status, despite variations in life chances and (Castells, 2012). modes of belonging (Cooper and Pratten, 2014; It is against this backdrop that some scholars Tonkiss, 2013; Vasudevan, 2014). Reflecting have articulated the notion of ‘waithood’, on ‘hustle’ as an urban condition opens up described as the prolonged period of suspension opportunities for ‘comparative gesturing’ with between childhood and adulthood, which has increasingly fragile advanced capitalist econo- affected an entire generation ‘in waiting’ mies (Robinson, 2011) and for questioning nor- (Dhillon and Yousef, 2007; Jeffrey, 2010; Hon- mative understandings of adulthood. ‘Hustle’ wana, 2012). Although the concept of waithood challenges situated cultural expectations of at first emerged in relation to Middle-Eastern adulthood that have been echoed in the concep- and African contexts where youth unemploy- tion of ‘waithood’, which have tended to refer to ment was especially high, similar employment the dramatic deferral or prolonged suspension insecurities and experiences of limbo affect from particular aspirations. These are, across youth across geographies, particularly since the social contexts, often contingent on culturally financial crisis. It was telling that, in 2015, the prescribed milestones such as marriage, a stable BBC Radio 4 produced a three-part series on job, and the ability to afford property in some ‘waithood’, with voices from Ghana, Spain, and form (Honwana, 2012; Sommers, 2012). Wait- the US featured to describe what it meant across hood, therefore, describes a suspension from different cultural contexts to deal with deferred particular expectations, perhaps giving way aspirations.1 Of course, cities in the North have to alternative interpretations and realization always harboured marginalized communities of goals, when former conceptions of work, and individuals who have experienced poverty life, love, and property are increasingly being and precarious living conditions. Hobbs’ (1988) reconfigured. In particular, the state of uncer- work on young entrepreneurs in London’s tainty associated with youth and their unstable ‘dodgy’ East End and Willis’ (1977) study of futures expose different working practices and working-class young men dealing with social relationships between work and life. Clearly, conflict with middle-class peers in school only geographies of youth in the Global South shed to later assume low-paid work and perpetuate light on the noteworthy coping mechanisms the class-based cycle of inequality, are remin- and strategies for dealing with everyday crises ders that struggles to find one’s place in (despite and waithood and merit increasing attention as of) the labour market have long been an urban urban phenomena in their own right (Jeffrey, reality of industrial capitalism. But we might 2010; Honwana, 2012). But the climate of aus- reasonably ask, given the noted high rates of terity urbanism provokes study and connections youth unemployment, how (and with what across the Global North/South divide, where see- implications) the cultural-economic experience mingly fixed categories across cultural spheres and production of youth has altered since the are being redefined, as a result of necessity, late 20th century. crisis, and suspension of various sorts. 6 Progress in Human Geography

As an increasing number of young people makes three key points. Firstly, depictions of enter the labour market with diminishing oppor- informality emphasizing what is absent, transi- tunities to even think about chasing the ‘cruel ent or defective require counter-narratives to optimism’ and false promise of a particular conceptualize what actually is taking place ‘good life’ (Berlant, 2011), new parameters, (Roitman, 1990). Secondly, makeshift urban aspirations and goalposts are being built. So practices are increasingly also taking place in here it becomes especially useful, theoretically the Global North where uncertainty is increas- and empirically, to look towards what has been ingly normalized. Thirdly, if youth are structu- happening for decades in cities that are ‘urba- rally excluded from formal realms of political nizing without industrializing’ (Davis, 2006). In and economic organization not only in the South cities of the Global South, livelihoods take on but also in the North, closer attention needs to be diverse forms of ‘work’ that not only operate paid to the alternative strategies and practices of outside capitalist industrial modes of production suspension and struggle of those who ‘hustle’ but also often outside regulated spheres. There- and deal with everyday uncertainties. fore, in order to understand the plural experi- Keith Hart’s seminal work in Accra, Ghana, ences of suspended transition through the made the case for investigating and theorizing various calculated strategies related to both the increasingly prevalent diverse micro- work and social experiments, we must look at economic practices of new urban migrants in one of the dominant frames through which live- this recently independent African city (Hart, lihoods in the Global South have been theorized 1973; ILO, 1972). King conducted a longitudi- to date: informality. Against the backdrop of nal ethnography of Jua Kali in Nairobi (King, post-Fordism, the oil crisis, and structural 1996) to demonstrate that the urban informal adjustment programmes, the informal sector has economy was contingent on the arrangements been the major repository of work opportunities between an absentee post-colonial state and cit- and income generation in the Global South since izens for whom vast opportunities associated the 1970s (Ferguson, 2006; Hart, 1973; Roy with work and income generation continued to and Alsayaad, 2004). Informality has come to develop outside the formal labour market. More describe all modes of urban practice from recently, apocalyptic scenarios associated with infrastructures that are centrally unplanned but a ‘planet of slums’ depict informality as a locally cobbled together into makeshift failure of capitalism to absorb a growing sur- arrangements of provisioning (Amin, 2014; plus urban labour (Davis, 2006). The infor- Simone 2004; Vasudevan 2014), to the diver- mal sector, under this light, is regarded at sification of income opportunities being a best as piecemeal, survivalist, and akin to a matter of everyday common sense and risk poverty trap (Marx et al., 2013). At worst, it mitigation (Collier et al., 2009; Moser, 1998; serves as a breeding ground for an increasingly Thieme, 2015). abject and fractured urban sub-proletariat class waiting to erupt. In contrast, optimistic accounts of informal- 3 Informality ity speak of rapidly growing informal cityscapes Since the 1970s, debates amongst scholars have as ‘arrival cities’, not to be abhorred or feared ensued concerning the relationship between but rather viewed as rational and inevitable rapid rates of urbanization in the Global South, forms of 21st-century urbanization (Saunders, the growth and diversity of the informal sector, 2010). Similarly, Huchzermeyer’s (2011) com- and the roles of both the state and formal market parative study of 19th-century Berlin and 21st- economies in enabling informality. This section century Nairobi argues that slum dwellers are Thieme 7 often willing to live in slums because of the Challenging depictions of informality that flexibility it gives in terms of affordable rent focus predominantly on what is missing, and the ability to negotiate the price of most accounts of ‘System D’ and ‘pirate modernity’ things in a local economy adapted to the vola- offer important counter-narratives, emphasizing tility of household income streams. These con- the ways in which these urban practices may be ditions provide forms of support that would not off-grid but nevertheless engage intimately with be available in more permanent and up-market wider global markets and commercial pro- neighbourhoods, as explored in Holston’s work cesses. As such, they inhabit urban life across in Brazil (2009) and Bayat’s work in Iran (1998), geographies. In ‘thinking from the South’, where slum dwellers’ everyday ‘encroachments’ where System D and piracy may be more pro- become a form of political practice in their nounced and integral to the way a city (like own right. Dehli or Nairobi) operates, we might see alter- Neurwirth (2012) offers a different reading of native regimes of ordering and provisioning informality all together, moving away from (Amin, 2014; Valverde, 2011) that rely on familiar terminologies and their normative con- moments of piracy, System D and ‘do it your- notations (Potts, 2007), and re-appropriating the self’ urbanism in cities of the Global North term ‘System D’ – D standing for de´brouillar- where it is increasingly difficult to access ser- dise to connote making do, thinking fast, and vices and waged work (see Kinder, 2016). managing under adverse conditions. Neurwirth These depictions of creative ‘provisional moves away from debates concerned with agency’ (Jauregui, 2014) and accepted inform- whether the informal sector is a ‘good’ or a ality at play in the face of precarious urban ‘bad’ thing, or a form of ‘popular empowerment environments is what Simone has described as or political exclusion’ (Ferguson, 1994; ‘cityness’, or the city’s plural capacities to Meagher, 2011). Instead, System D depicts the reshape the ways in which people, places, mate- diverse resourceful and frugal capacities of rials and ideas come together (Simone, 2009; countless individuals making up, in aggregate Vasudevan, 2014). In his work on squatting in terms, a rapidly rising ‘real’ shadow economy Berlin, Vasudevan conceptualizes the ‘make- that has been the largest generator of jobs in the shift city’ as a paradoxical interplay of ‘unjust post-2008 economy, across post-industrial and structures of dispossession, exclusion and vio- industrializing countries alike. Similarly, Sun- lence that define and shape the experiences of daram (2010) examines the diversity of activi- many of the world’s urban dwellers’, but also ties that hinge on various forms of jugaad the ‘possibilities – complex, makeshift and (Jeffrey, 2010; Radjou et al., 2012), improvisa- experimental – for extending, improvising and tion and ‘piracy’ in Delhi, that often blur the sustaining life in settings of pervasive margin- lines between legality and illegality, and may ality’ (Vasudevan, 2014: 16). Here it is impor- at times trigger claims to urban citizenship and tant not to romanticize portrayals of the visibility, and at other times become part of improvisational nature of informality (Varley, underground practices that evade surveillance 2013). The point is that for most urban residents and being seen. Despite the significant risks who live and work in conditions of resource scar- associated with these practices, piracy has city and adversity, the needs and possibilities are become, to many urban dwellers cut off from subject to the paradoxes of makeshift urbanism access to basic goods and services, a way to that go beyond tensions with or avoidance of facilitate resources for the urban poor unable formal labour markets and legal systems. to enter (or cut off from) the legal city (Datta, If informality, as Roy (2004) has argued, has 2012). become a ‘mode of practice’, this mode of 8 Progress in Human Geography practice is increasingly common across not only excluded from realms of representational poli- rapidly growing cities in the Global South but tics and economic opportunities are a major part also in the shrinking, de-industrialized, or in- of urban experience, in African cities, but also recession cities of the Global North. Informality across numerous other geographies. Whilst inhabits a spatial and temporal category, often comparing their experiences and the contexts associated with low-income neighbourhoods in which they find themselves risks glossing where formal service provision is outstripped over some of the stark contrasts in the scale of by demand. It takes on an organizational form urban demographic shifts inversely proportion- through formally unregulated labour relations, ate to available resources, access to support and and it can be a governmental tool for the alloca- safety nets, there are noteworthy nodes of simi- tion of resources (McFarlane et al., 2012). But it larity in their narratives of struggle and disaffec- is also a negotiable tool, continuously perform- tion, and how they construct livelihood ing but also contesting and redefining the under- strategies in the face of uncertainty. In the last stated codes that govern conduct in any given few years, the notion of precarity has pervaded informal practice (Anderson, 1999; Pieterse, the performance of protest and categorizations 2008; Venkatesh, 2006). As Saitta et al. of vulnerability associated with uncertain labour (2013) argue in relation to informal economies markets and futures. Yet, ‘precarity’ has been in Italy, and as reflected in debates concerning predominantly associated with the Global North. the recent Eurozone bailout and the Greek cri- Through the hustle, precarity can be understood sis, informality does not only take place outside as having resonnances with informality. the purview of the law and state, it is often inte- gral to the way things work across public/pri- vate spheres. Questions of informality are as 4 Precarity much a concern of politics and social policy as Precarity or ‘pre´carite´’ has since the 1990s been they are about economics, and about how ‘dif- associated with conditions of exploitation in ferent classes of citizens practice informality in contexts of urban adversity and scarcity of relation to available structures of opportunity’ waged employment (Bourdieu, 1998). Since the (Saitta et al., 2013: 1) broadly defined. early 2000s, precarity has grown as a conceptual There is a notable parallel between the tropes and political platform for social struggles asso- of youthhood and the informal sector, both gen- ciated with times of austerity across industria- erally stigmatized as transient states. Youth lized and post-industrial contexts (Neilson and navigating uncertain urban terrain today must Rossiter, 2008). Associated with the structural be examined as a phenomenon not only preva- inequalities of neoliberalism, particularly the lent in makeshift urbanism of post-colonial retreat of a welfare state and the casualization cities but also in austerity urbanism of post- of labour (Vosko, 2000), precarity has become a industrial cities. Therefore, in ‘thinking from proxy for in-work poverty. the South’, we might see familiar things in dif- Standing (2011) in particular has received ferent ways (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2012: 2; widespread attention for his identification of a Robinson and Parnell, 2012), but we might also ‘precariat’ class. Building on his years as an see unfamiliar things as reflective of elsewhere, ILO economist between 1975 and 2006 focused challenging certain dominant binaries and para- on the vulnerabilities associated with ‘flexible’ digms associated with economic and work life labour conditions in OECD countries, Standing that pervade our legal, economic, and institu- (2011) examines the extent to which labour tional categories in advanced capitalist econo- standards ought to be defined in relation to mies. Youth whose position is structurally advanced capitalist countries. He defines seven Thieme 9 forms of labour security: adequate opportuni- room for imagining and conceptualizing politi- ties, protection against dismissal, barriers to cal agencies of those caught in webs of precar- skill dilution, health and safety regulation, train- ity. Precarity does, however, offer useful insight ing, stable income, representation. He argues as a political concept that moves away from that these have historically been viewed as socio-economic approaches to work that largely absent in informal economies, but are also perceive social conditions to be contingent on increasingly eroded in post-industrial, ‘advanced’ modes of production (Ferguson, 2015; Neilson economies in the 21st century (Breman, 2013). and Rossiter, 2008). Popular narratives of Alongside his seven categories of labour secu- informality and precarity are often associated rity, Standing argues that today there are seven with stigma and misconceptions of poverty, socio-economic classes of labourers. These are namely that the poor lack planning and eco- the elites (a tiny number of absurdly rich); the nomic rationality (Collins et al., 2009). If, fol- (stably employed) ‘salariat’; (skilled consul- lowing Neilson and Rossiter’s argument (2008), tant-type) ‘proficians’; a dwindling working ‘precarity is the norm’ and ‘Fordism is the class; the ‘precariat’ (temporary part-time exception’, then it becomes theoretically and workers); the unemployed; and the ‘misfits’. politically crucial to see the ‘cultural logics’ While Standing’s commentary offers an (Gidwani, 2001) that are at play amongst those important analysis of changing labour condi- navigating conditions of waithood and precar- tions across geographies, his conceptualization ity across the North/South. This brings me to and categorization of a new social and eco- ‘hustle’, a notion that resonates across diverse nomic class raise several concerns. In Stand- geographical contexts as a set of loosely com- ing’s structure, the precariat, the unemployed, mon practices, conditions and identities and the misfits are defined by what they are amongst youth navigating the precarious pres- not engaged in. They are not part of other ent across post-Fordist and post-colonial infor- groups or prescribed economic models (Clay mal economies. and Phillips, 2015; Ferguson, 2006; Roitman, 1990). Not only are they engaged (at best) in insecure forms of employment, but they are III The hustle as cultural economic also in many ways branded as welfare cases, practice unable to organize into a class conscious poli- The ‘hustle’ infers a constant pragmatic search ticized cohort, unlike the unionized working for alternative structures of opportunity outside class of a former Fordist era, or exploit the formal education, employment, and service pro- advantages of professional mobilities like vision. It assumes a continuous management of wealthier groups. risk associated with living and working beyond As a conceptual lens, precarity offers impor- formal institutional norms. This section shows tant levers for advancing engagements con- how the personae and practices of ‘hustling’ cerned with insecurity associated with work operate through experiences of urban uncer- and sheds light on the effects of vulnerability tainty. Hustling evokes, expands on and in some on those forced to enter flexible and intermittent cases is in tension with other articulations of structures of work. However, if ‘precariats’ are shrewd improvisation, frugal innovation and positioned as largely victims of structural creative calculation of risk examined above, exploitation within contemporary insecure including precarity but also jugaad,‘System labour markets (Bourdieu, 1998; Standing, D’, ‘pirate modernity’, ‘makeshift urbanism’ 2011; Davis, 2006), who live life under others’ and ‘misfit economy’ (Clay and Phillips, control (Berlant, 2011), we are left with little 2015; Jauregui, 2014; Jeffrey, 2010; Radjou 10 Progress in Human Geography et al., 2012; Neurwirth, 2012; Sundaram, 2010). ‘deviant’ practices in their everyday urban set- I suggest that ‘hustling’ translates across local- ting, urging social scientists of all stripes to ities as representations and practices that entan- study and appreciate practices normatively con- gle youth, informality and precarity. As a sidered delinquent or illegal by examining them conceptual category, hustle rethinks contempo- as social practices in their own right. It is by rary experiences of urban uncertainty that cou- conducting such an ethnographic study of these ple struggle and hope. Weaving ethnographic practices outside the realm of their criminologi- insights into a broader analytical frame for con- cal or societal propriety that the skills, motiva- ceiving and researching ‘hustling’ practices, the tions, and logics of these ‘hustlers’ can better be following discussion engages with the politics understood. His theory of ‘crime as moonlight- of creative experiments in the face of urban ing’ is of particular interest here. Polsky’s pool struggles. To do this, two associations with the hall ‘hustlers’ dedicate themselves, part-time, to term ‘hustle’ are made explicit. First, the proto- vocations that technically break the law (i.e. typical figure of the ‘hustler’ as first featured in gambling) though they never really get caught. film, and later in popular culture, is invoked in So these hustling practices are, firstly, a supple- the discussion on ‘dirty work’. Second, ‘hus- mentary income to their other ‘normal’ (but tling’ is conceptualized through the cultural low-paid) jobs and, secondly, on the periphery economic logics and knowledge of extra-legal of legality so always ‘risky business’ but safe and informal practices of ‘getting by’, illustrat- enough given the unlikelihood of law enforce- ing that hustle goes beyond familiar conceptua- ment paying much attention to these particular lizations of informality and precarious work to spaces. In other words, moonlighting was the describe a process of being caught in – but also ‘extra bit on the side’. creatively detangling oneself from – the vicissi- To hustle has generally, since the 1960s, been tudes of labour limbo. Throughout this section, associated with an underworld of morally and empirical inflections from Nairobi fieldwork legally dubious practices (Duneier, 2000). Set in are interwoven to set in dialogue existing aca- a post-colonial urban African context, the hus- demic theory and the field from which the arti- tler was later classified by Hart as part of the cle proposes to ‘theorize up’. ‘illegitimate’ category of the informal sector along with prostitution and ‘spivs’ (Hart, 1973). In the 1980s, the concept of hustle 1 Dirty work became central to the repartee of African Amer- As epitomized in Tevis’ 1959 novel The Hustler ican hip hop genres (Roffelson, 2013; Jay-Z, (followed quickly thereafter with the epic Paul 2010), reflecting an amalgam of politicized nar- Newman film adaptation), the term ‘hustle’ has ratives depicting inner-city poverty, speaking held a connotation of individualistic rogue prac- out against the under-exposed or misunderstood tices performed by a trickster operating within realities of urban injustice, violence and strug- or in relation to the criminal underground econ- gle in everyday street life of the post-Fordist omy. Polsky’s book first published in 1967, American ‘ghettos’ of West Baltimore, Detroit, Hustlers, Beats and Others, like Tevis, explores and Brooklyn. These accounts relayed the obsta- the underworld of American pool halls. Polsky cles for youth who were systematically excluded offers a critical and uniquely (for its time) from mainstream employment opportunities, reflexive sociological commentary on main- relegated as urban outcasts, school drop-outs and stream perceptions and criminological classifi- more accustomed to the revolving door of prison cations of urban deviance. He advocates for than holding a steady job (McKensie, 2015; engaging ethnographically with so-called Wacquant, 2008; Wilson, 2009). Thieme 11

Ideas and practices associated with hustling work and legitimacy in the city. And as seen translate across different contexts, born out of and heard through such vernaculars as hip urban marginality in the shadows of the post- hop and other urban stories from the streets, American city, redeployed in a rapidly changing these allegories travel and resonate with post-colonial African city, and resonating with youth whose accounts of localized struggle what Mali-born, Paris-based hip hop artist and exploits speak to youth experiencing Oxmo Puccino calls ‘Ghettos du monde’ (Rof- their own elsewhere. felson, 2013). As Richardson and Skott-Myhre Informed by but moving beyond popular cul- (2012: 5) argue, every city ‘knows marginality, tural registers, the notion of hustling offers an poverty and stigma’. The notion of hustling has important commentary on youth’s relationship travelled from the American pool halls, to to work in the makeshift city. In the context of African American hip hop (Jay-Z, 2010), to Nairobi, employment is scarce but ‘work’ post-colonial African cities (Fredericks, 2012; (beyond industrial labour production) is made Ntarangwi, 2009; Pieterse, 2010), to Detroit, everywhere. Many youth born and raised in the Paris, Berlin and London (Kinder, 2016; Roffel- slums became involved, to different degrees, son, 2013). In Nairobi, the term ‘hustle’ (used with small-scale, neighbourhood-based ‘trash from English and not in translation) has become is cash’ collectives. A sophisticated but frag- folded into the ‘creolized argot’ (Comaroff and mented social and economic organisation, these Comaroff, 2005) of Sheng, a combination of garbage collection groups territorially mark Swahili, English, and neighbourhood-based each sub-neighbourhood of the slums in gang- badinage. In doing so, hustling offers a concep- like formation. Each group collects residential tual framing device for rethinking the relation- garbage from up to 400 households for a ship between youth and work practices in monthly fixed fee and, in order to insert urban contexts of resource scarcity. In this exchange value into this solid ‘waste’, sorts regard, hustle may therefore be a form of ‘tra- through its composite materials to decipher velling theory’ (Said, 1983). what is worth shredding (such as plastics), re- While hustling in the Nairobi context does using (such as metal), fixing (such as electro- suppose blurring the lines between what is nor- nics), and re-selling. Multiple sources of matively considered licit and illicit work, it also income are sought at any one time to mitigate implies shrewd improvisation and adaptation to risk, so ‘moonlighting’ is the norm as opposed conditions of adversity (Jeffrey, 2010) that com- to ‘something extra on the side’. bat social injustice and unequal resource distri- These practices are seeking to render ‘dirty bution. As an embodied practice, hustling work’ and liminal spaces more visible (recog- inhabits the overlapping spaces between work nized by local authorities and community resi- and ‘hanging about’ (Jones, 2012) that charac- dents alike), but equally operate and thrive terize work taking place in street economies, under the radar, resisting any form of wider col- and often deliberately re-appropriates stigma lective federation or institutionalization. These to fashion creative expressions of ‘struggle and hustle economies remain fragmented and small insurgency’ (Jay-Z, 2010) through various ‘pol- scale in their operations and anchored in place- itics of style’ manifest through forms of dress, based social ties. They are politically charged music, street argot and other cultural repertoires on particular days when dumping on the side of (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2005). These popular the road becomes a strategic provocation (and repertoires complicate the legalistic and econo- shaming device) to the local authorities, and are mistic categories seeking to express vulner- inflected with style as spaces and moments of abilities and insecurities associated with work and leisure, craft and banter, running and 12 Progress in Human Geography waiting, pushing and pulling, getting dirty and expressions of capitalist endeavour, creative looking good, overlap and become integral to improvisation and hustle. the habitus of hustle. Hustling in the Nairobi context resembles To hustle is therefore an urban condition (the aspects of jugaad (Jeffrey, 2010) and provi- hustle), an action (to hustle), and an identity sional agency (Jauregui, 2014) in the Indian marker (to be a hustler) that evoke multiple context, but equally departs from these logics. forms of prosaic, industrious, and political Jeffrey (2010) writes about ‘timepass’ amongst labour: combining everyday survivalism and educated unemployed lower-middle-class youth waiting, strategic diversification of income whose aspirations are rarely met, and who end streams to mitigate risk, punctual contestation up engaging in jugaad practices where they of authority in order to access key services and become tricksters, opportunistic ‘political entre- resources, and the ability to navigate and even preneurs’, part of the fabric of generalized and shape local politics of distribution (Ferguson, normalized corruption. Jauregui conceptualizes 2015). All the while, the hustle is articulated jugaad as a form of ‘provisional agency’, ‘both through various modulations of style and per- a capability to provide a social good and a tem- formance, which include what may appear like porary means of mobility geared toward a better various stations of ‘idling’ between jobs future’ (2014: 76). While jugaad assumes a bet- (referred to as kuzurura), yet become crucial ter future, working towards an imagined escape moments that exercise the ability to endure and out of the present struggle, hustling assumes the strategically manage constant uncertainty. struggle as a condition of urban life, a possibil- These performed acts of loitering are charged ity in its own right. with both a demeanor of apathy towards the Vigh (2006)’s ethnographic account of at- future and the understated making of (some- risk youth and their modes of dubriagem or times ambitious) plans. ‘social navigation’ in wartime Guinea Bissau is especially relevant to the hustling practices of Nairobi youth. Vigh (2006: 142) focuses not 2 Cultural logics of hustle on warlords (the obvious structures of power) but instead on youth war soldiers and the every- Hustling as described and experienced by Nair- day efforts that youth put into surviving and obi youth in my research is place-based but also forging a future for themselves in a context of akin to Waage’s study of youth in Cameroon, persistent poverty, conflict and motion. These which examines the multiple social meanings of different accounts of youth’s everyday ‘zigzag’ the stock phrase commonly used by youth in economies (Jeffrey, 2013) and insurgencies to Ngaounde´re´, ‘je me de´brouille’(Imakedo, claim but also redefine the terms of urban citi- think fast), to explain how they cope with zenship (Holston, 2009) reveal the contradic- unforeseen everyday life situations and chal- tory implications of uncertainty where youth lenges in the urban social environment, and also expose, in raw, rough, and provocative terms, how la de´brouille becomes itself part of their the structural injustices of uneven distribution ‘cultural repertoire for making a life’ (2006: of resources and rising inequalities. But unlike 23). The confluence between seizing the many of their elders who assert their ‘rights to moment, making do and opportunism is also the city’ through dignified claims to housing or reflected in Jeremy Jones’ (2010) work in Zim- land tenure (Attoh, 2011; Weru, 2004), hustlers babwe describing how entrepreneurial youth provoke mainstream senses of propriety, and have responded to recent economic crisis definitions of ‘upgrading’ through alternative through the kukiya-kiya economy, depicting channels of expression, re-appropriations of Thieme 13 urban public spaces, and turning the most unde- of ‘ghetto life’ through out of turn Swahili hip sirable, undignified realms, such as waste, into a hop telling raw stories of ghetto life with bold confluence of economic opportunity, commu- graffiti on the canvases of these often dilapi- nity service, and territorial zoning within their dated Nissan minivans, rendering each one its neighbourhoods. While their elders exercise a own unique work of mobile urban art (Ference, ‘politics of patience’ (Appadurai, 2001) and a 2016). On the roadside, ordinary commerce is certain deference for endless deliberation and punctuated by imaginaries of elsewhere, as the following the order in which proceedings hap- stylized portraits of popular culture icons fea- pen, hustlers operate within a politics of tured on the murals of barbershops in the slums urgency, where time may be spent waiting for (Ntarangwi, 2009; Weiss, 2009). Moments of the next opportunity but cannot be drawn out ‘bluffing’ (Newell, 2012) the good life com- through claims to a material right. In other bined with affinities with the ghettos of West words, hustlers refuse to belong to the city as Baltimore or Brooklyn are entangled with raw is, but they make a claim to a symbolic right, expressions of struggle rooted in everyday local that is, making the city as it could be otherwise reality. These appeals to elsewhere are para- (Harvey, 2008; Simone, 2012). doxically juxtaposed with no intention to Investigating geographies of urban struggle, ever leave ‘the hood’. In Nairobi, this char- particularly amongst marginalized youth, acterizes youth’s liminal position in space offers an opportunity to deepen ‘comparative and time, as they live and work in the poorest gestures’ (Robinson, 2011), theorizing not neighbourhoods, occasionally travelling to only from the South (in itself a vital project), middle-class enclaves of consumption and but also from the neighbourhoods where the social gatherings for leisure, but always habitus of hustling has naturalized particular returning to the ‘base’ where they have made attitudes and behaviours amongst youth whose a life and feel they belong. expectations do not include access to former Hustle,asitisdeployedamongstNairobi Fordist markers of adulthood such as secure youth, combines the urgency of everyday eco- housing or employment. These attitudes and nomic survival with aspirational urban identi- behaviours have in turn shaped diverse aspira- ties anchored in making the everyday struggle tions and outcomes within communities for meaningful and culturally significant. It can be ‘getting by’ in a low-income neighbourhood survivalist but aspirational at the same time, (McKensie, 2015; Venkatesh, 2006). The dual- deployed by youth on their own terms to face ism between dejection towards the present conditions beyond their control. It does more and desire for an imagined future has become than Standing’s concept of precarity, which translated into various genres of urban youth oscillates between description and prescription, expression. because hustling becomes a form of pragmatic The ‘politics of style’ (Comaroff and politics contesting different levels of authority Comaroff, 2005) from the Nairobi ‘ghettos’ is and power by claiming agency through the transposed onto the informal urban transport deliberate appropriation, in some cases, of the matatu system, which literally travels through- seemingly least desirable forms of work. Louise out the city’s arteries, moving from the ghettos Waite’s work offers a more useful critical geo- to the central business district, across the city’s graphy of precarity. Referring to precarity as main roads and off-roads. Technically illegal ‘life worlds characterised by uncertainty and but used by the majority of Nairobi citizens, the insecurity’, Waite argues that it is double- matatu features a paradoxical urban popular edged as it implies both a ‘condition and a pos- fashion that almost romanticizes the daily meˆle´e sible rallying point for resistance’ (2009: 412). 14 Progress in Human Geography

Hustling, therefore, is akin to Waite’s under- place-based performative politics of style that standing of precarity as both a condition of con- potentially speaks to multiple elsewheres. In temporary urban life and a possible hook for connecting the literatures on informality and contestation. The waste workers of Nairobi, the precarity to geographies of waithood and uncer- self-identified hustlers of the city, are neither tainty, the conceptual lens of ‘hustle’ offers a unorganized nor economically inactive, and way to capture the everyday incremental liveli- they certainly do not depend on hand-outs. They hood strategies that inform youth identities and expertly dance from one state of (in)security expressions of resistance in the face of both (what Standing might call ‘class’) to another. failed promises and increasingly outmoded cul- They are technically unemployed but manage tural expectations. diverse income streams from various class- As the article argues, uncertainty and precar- types. Multinationals and NGOs hire them as ious urban environments are increasingly inte- skilled ‘proficians’ of urban engagement; local gral to ‘ordinary’ urban experience (Robinson, politicians, retailers and factory owners hire 2006). Under this register, diverse forms of them as part-time labour; and they can some- hustling can become integral to a potentially times be found amongst misfits of varying progressive politics of adaptation and experi- types. These hustlers’ ability to navigate ‘class mentation in times where dominant capitalist fluidity’ or rapidly changing levels of uncer- economic models and labour relations are tainty means that they can be stigmatized as undergoing dramatic shifts. These experiments misfits one moment while hailed as ‘entrepre- have the potential to resist, escape, and rework neurs’ at other times. The inspiration and hegemonic structures of power in incremental empirical evidence of this discussion may be ways in the everyday city, and travel across locally specific to Nairobi and the particular localities to inspire new shared solidarities rationalities of young people living in informal (Amin, 2014; De Certeau, 1984; Pieterse, settlements. But the logics of hustle are evi- 2008; Simone, 2009; Pieterse and Simone, dence of the wider hybridization of precarious 2013). As such, the overlapping rhythms and economic status, identity and politics found spaces of work, social life, and contestations elsewhere. For example, these logics travel to of authority are at once ephemeral, and yet the Global North where a precariously become part of a rich repertoire of experiments employed young person on a zero-hour contract that shape the alternative logics of the hustle could be considered a ‘misfit’ tenant and simul- economy, incorporating economic, individual taneously celebrated as a potential ‘under 30’ and political implications for everyday strug- start-up entrepreneur (Clay and Phillips, 2015). gles that redefine the terms of adulthood and of the real economy tout court. To finish, I make three points with regards to IV Conclusion: Harnessing the future of hustle. the hustle Firstly, as uncertainty related to work contin- This article locates the possibilities for rethink- ues to grow globally, it seems urgent to enrich ing and researching urban precarious environ- the economistic and legalistic reading of ments through the analytical frame of the hustle informality and precarity with insight into the economy, drawing from ethnographic work lived experiences of people for whom work may conducted in Nairobi but presented here as a increasingly blur the line between the formal, condition of contemporary urbanism amongst informal and even criminal sector (Saitta (though not limited to) youth, a set of working et al., 2013). Hustling in Nairobi slums reflects, practices in the face of uncertainty, and a albeit in variegated ways, broader trends in Thieme 15 other urban spaces where it is increasingly dif- the structures that render young people’s lives ficult to imagine let alone attain one source of precarious and vulnerable, as they face an stable income and secure employment. There- attachment to yet dispossession by volatile and fore, the ‘hustler’ who is able to adapt to a multi- uncertain futures. tude of uncertainties and create multiple Thirdly, one of the crucial questions this arti- potential opportunities with diverse stations of cle raises for further research is whether the remuneration, planning, aspirations, and disap- hustle economy should be read as (and desired pointment is not only a survivalist but also to be) a transient state, or whether it might be potentially an activist, a community organizer, regarded as a mode of urban life in its own right. an entrepreneur, an opportunistic jack of all We don’t know enough about these spaces of trades. Therefore, young people’s strategies to struggle and the everyday significance for youth ‘get by’ are also shaped by and shaping cultures whose experience involves navigating harsh of learning, calculations of risk and reward, realities of everyday life and uncertain futures interpretations of work and parameters of hope. within and around these socio-economic and Secondly, the conceptual category of hustle spatial fields. Youth living or moving in and out operates within a paradoxical reality. It infers of these realms have too often been defined by particular stigma and loaded associations evo- what is missing, defective, no longer valued, cative of a palimpsest of politics of struggle, but lawless, and deviant. In arguing that urban equally in redeploying these narratives of hus- youth are ‘hustling’ in cities across various tle, new expressive articulations of urban strug- urban contexts, I call for further investigation gle emerge and shape unlikely but important of hustling in various forms of urbanism where experiments. Incremental, off the grid, and on the state of ‘crisis’ has become integral to nor- the margins though they may be, they are sig- malized uncertainty. The context and period of nificant because they break away from (or ‘youth’ is therefore lived through different yet reconfigure) the normative forms of capitalist overlapping experiences of uncertainty that labour and consumption. They contest dominant relate to (but go beyond) ‘informality’ and ‘pre- structures of opportunity (or lack thereof) and carity’. I suggest ‘hustling’ as a way to fore- create new ones that may be off the charts of ground the everyday practices of makeshift what constitutes ‘value’, ‘a good job’ or a spe- urbanism through which (young) lives on edge cific ‘class’, but open up a range of questions produce and are produced through these uncer- related to urban life marked by incremental tainties. Thus, the myriad experiments related to adaptation and improvisation in the face of making a living that may lie outside formal uncertainty. Methodologically, this means as employment relations challenge what is under- researchers we need to make it a priority to seek stood as a ‘productive activity’ while also opportunities within and outside academia to becoming, as hustle has in Nairobi and perhaps bring those who study hustle and those who do elsewhere in its own form, a kind of performa- hustle into conversation. This involves suspend- tive youthful practice of ‘getting by’ but also of ing normative categories of criminal or legal, ‘getting things done’. and focusing on the skills, agencies, and resour- cefulness that are constantly being carved out in Acknowledgements times of adversity and scarcity. Here a crucial This article has benefited from informal presenta- challenge emerges: Without displacing, roman- tions to and conversations with several colleagues ticizing, or appropriating the hustle, we need to over the past two years. Special thanks to Lizzie work with its progressive and generative dimen- Richardson, AbdouMaliq Simone, Michele Lan- sions, without condoning or collaborating with cione, Brandon Finn, Emma Mawdsley, Sarah 16 Progress in Human Geography

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Author biography on cultural and economic geographies related to urban poverty, informal work, and everyday strate- Tatiana Adeline Thieme is a Lecturer in Human gies to navigate uncertainty across cities in the global Geography at University College London. Her South and North. Tatiana has a BA from Cornell research interests engage with different aspects of University, a MSc from London School of Econom- entrepreneurial and makeshift urbanism in precar- ics, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. ious urban environments. Her research has focused