Papers

• Contesting Vietnam’s Plans for Modern Mobilities: Informal Motorbike Taxi Drivers’ Strategies on Hanoi’s Streets Sarah Turner McGill University

  In their efforts to create a modern, prosperous, and ‘civilized’ capital city, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s central government and Hanoi’s municipal authorities are conceiving an urban space replete with security, orderliness, and modernity. This state imaginary privileges ‘modern’ mobilities with highways, expressways, and an elevated metro system all being championed, while so called ‘traditional’ means of moving around the city, like informal transportation, are strongly discouraged and marginalised. Moreover, Hanoi officials are considering banning motorbikes from downtown streets by 2030, in a city where the majority of the 7.5 million population travels by motorbike. Such plans and visions threaten the livelihoods of thousands of informal motorbike taxi drivers (locally known as xe om).

  Drawing on mobilities and everyday politics literatures, and ethnographic fieldwork with xe om drivers, recent app-based competitors, customers, and planners, I argue that the state’s discourse of modernity creates specific mobility experiences, rhythms, and frictions for xe om drivers. These drivers must negotiate emerging, often conflicting, policies curbing their mobilities and excessive police ‘fees’, as well as new app-based competitors. Nonetheless, xe om drivers have reacted with subtle everyday politics tactics including performing ‘identity management’ with police, information gathering via social networks, and inventive efforts to maintain a loyal customer base. This paper thus highlights how marginalised individuals can push back against mobility injustices embedded in a politically socialist space.

• From Territory to Algorithm: Shifting Moral Grounds in Jakarta’s Motorbike Taxi Industry Mechthild von Vacano Freie Universität Berlin

  In 2015, taxi drivers across the globe were protesting the expansion of on-demand ride service like Uber. Simultaneously Jakarta’s streets were the site of a similar, though structurally different contestation among two-wheeled taxi drivers. In contrast to their four-wheeled equivalents, motorbike taxis (ojek) lack official recognition as public transport and constitute a classic example of the so-called ‘informal’ economy in Indonesia. Ever since their emergence in the 1970s, conventional ojek services have never been regulated by the state, but organized by a system of neighbourhood-based waiting posts with distinct rules for membership and customer pick-ups. This system was challenged, when the Indonesian start-up GoJek began to adapt the global model of ride-sharing platforms to the local motorbike taxi market – soon to be followed by other regional and global players. In Jakarta application-based ojek services expanded rapidly during the first half of 2015. Conventional ojek drivers soon felt threatened by this new business model and organized in protest to keep GoJek and the like from entering their territories. Some resorted to physical violence, and soon a public debate on ‘ojek versus GoJek’ unfolded. In negotiating their conflict of interest, stakeholders on both sides invoked different ideals of economic participation.

  Drawing on ethnographic research in a Jakartan neighbourhood and the analysis of local media coverage, this paper examines the social, economic, and political claims by drivers, operators, clients, and policy makers. Furthermore, it suggests reading the ‘ojek versus GoJek’ debate as epitome of diverse economic moralities currently contested in urban Indonesia.

• Meals on Wheels: Competing Forms of Food Delivery in Hanoi’s System of Moto-Mobility Arve Hansen University of Oslo

  Arve Hansen
  Centre for Development and the Environment
  University of Oslo

  Nguyen Tuan Anh
  University of Social Sciences and Humanities
  Vietnam National University

  Luu Khanh Linh
  University of Social Sciences and Humanities
  Vietnam National University

  Platform capitalism has entered the streetscapes of Vietnamese cities and in a few years become deeply embedded in urban everyday mobilities. Particularly vehicle sharing services have become immensely popular. They compete with already existing services, and represent a process of commercialization of the sector. In a sense, the platform services contribute with a more formal version of largely informal employment, but the livelihoods of the drivers often remain just as precarious as is the case for traditional xe om drivers. Recently, the platform companies have also branched out into food delivery, again entering into competition with existing and less formal services. Indeed, the combination of a strong culture of eating out and the ‘system of moto-mobility’ has led to a culture for take-away and delivery where motorbikes take on center stage. This paper approaches competing forms of food delivery in Hanoi. By combining a mobilities and food practices approach, and based on interviews with food vendors, delivery workers and consumers, it interrogates the changing geographies and mobilities of food in Vietnam’s capital city.

Abstract

Keywords

• Infrastructure
• Mobility
• Urbanization
• Vietnam