Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T22:43:43.460Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Youth are redrawing the map’: temporalities and terrains of the hustle economy in Mathare, Nairobi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2021

Tatiana Thieme
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the temporalities and terrains of the home-grown hustle economy of Mathare, one of the oldest and largest informal settlements in Nairobi. It builds on my previous work mobilizing the notion of ‘hustle’ to ground the narratives of struggle, opportunity and place-making expressed by youth whose livelihood strategies have centred around neighbourhood-based informal waste labour in order to assert claims to their local environment. Drawing on three ethnographic portraits and over a decade of longitudinal ethnographic research, the article shows how hustling connects to and evolves with particular generational and gendered identities, revealing the shifting demands on ‘older’ versus ‘younger’ youth. As everyday lives are mired in constant uncertainty, youth occupy a ‘precarious present’, caught in a state of suspension but also well versed in adapting to adversity and shaping local politics of provisioning in the absence of formal structures of support. The article sheds light on local logics of wealth redistribution among youth who belong to the same neighbourhood but whose claims to particular resources shift over time. The article demonstrates how hustling in Mathare sits at the nexus of agentive economic, environmental, political and social struggles, as youth on the urban periphery manage waste in their neighbourhoods to negotiate their place but also their time in the city.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article se penche sur les temporalités et les terrains dans lesquels s'inscrit l'économie de la débrouille intrinsèque à Mathare, un des bidonvilles les plus vastes et plus anciens de Nairobi. Il s'inspire de mon étude précédente sur la notion de débrouille en tant que base pour la lutte, pour les opportunités et pour se faire une place dans ces quartiers coupés de tous services essentiels et de travail salarié. Face à ces défis, un grand nombre de jeunes ont développé des stratégies de survie centrées autour du traitement informel des déchets, revendiquant par là leur environnement et leur économie locale. S'appuyant sur trois portraits ethnographiques, observés pendant plus d'une décennie, cet article montre la connexion et l'évolution de la débrouille au sein d'identités particulières de genre et de génération, et révèle les exigences transitaires selon l'âge. Alors que la vie de tous les jours est faite de constantes incertitudes, la jeunesse vit dans un quotidien de précarité constante et dans un état de suspension, mais elle est aussi très capable de gérer la politique locale d'approvisionnement pour faire face à l'adversité et au manque de structures formelles de soutien. Cet article illustre donc la logique locale de redistribution de gains parmi les jeunes d'un même quartier, dont les revendications varient au fil du temps; il décrit cette jeunesse de la périphérie urbaine gérant les déchets de leurs quartiers pour se faire une place dans Mathare, et démontre à quel point la débrouille y est au cœur de leurs luttes économiques, environnementales, politiques et sociales.

Type
Harnessing the ‘hustle’
Information
Africa , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 35 - 56
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bhan, G. (2019) ‘Notes on southern urban practice’, Environment and Urbanization 31 (2): 639–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breman, J. (2013) ‘A bogus concept? [review of G. Standing's The Precariat]’, New Left Review 84 (Nov./Dec.): 130–8.Google Scholar
Caldeira, T. (2010) Espacio, Segregacion y Arte Urbano en el Brasil. Barcelona and Buenos Aires: CCCB and Katz.Google Scholar
Cooper, E. and Pratten, D. (2014) Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crang, M. (2001) ‘Rhythms of the city: temporalised space and motion’ in May, J. and Thrift, N. (eds), TimeSpace: geographies of temporality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Datta, A. (2012) The Illegal City: space, law, and gender in a Delhi squatter settlement. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Davis, M. (2006) Planet of Slums. London: Verso.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Nunzio, M. (2019) The Act of Living: street life, marginality, and development in urban Ethiopia. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501735134CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duneier, M. (2017) Ghetto: the invention of a place, the history of an idea. New York NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Ference, M. E. (2021) ‘“You will build me”: fiscal disobedience, reciprocity and the dangerous negotiations of redistribution on Nairobi's matatu’, Africa 91 (1): 16–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, J. (2006) Global Shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world order. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. (2015) Give a Man a Fish. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. and Li, T. M. (2018) ‘Beyond the “proper job”: political-economic analysis after the century of labouring man’. PLAAS Working Paper 51. Cape Town: PLAAS, University of the Western Cape.Google Scholar
Fredericks, R. (2019) Garbage Citizenship: vital infrastructures of labor in Dakar, Senegal. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008) ‘Diverse economies: performative practices for “other worlds”’, Progress in Human Geography 32 (5): 613–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Githiora, C. (2018) Sheng: rise of a Kenyan Swahili vernacular. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Goldman, M. (2011) ‘Speculative urbanism and the making of the next world city’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (3): 555–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hake, A. (1977) African Metropolis: Nairobi's self-help city. London: Chatto and Windus for Sussex University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, K. (1973) ‘Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana’, Journal of Modern African Studies 11 (1): 61–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, K. (2009) ‘On the informal economy: the political history of an ethnographic concept’. Working Paper CEB 09-042.RS. Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles.Google Scholar
Honwana, A. (2012) The Time of Youth: work, social change and politics in Africa. Hartford CT: Kumarian Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honwana, A. and De Boeck, F. (2005) Makers and Breakers: children and youth in post-colonial Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA and Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Huchzermeyer, M. (2011) Tenement Cities: from 19th century Berlin to 21st century Nairobi. London: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, C. and Dyson, J. (2009) Telling Young Lives: portraits of global youth. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, G. (2012) ‘Hang about: young people's frustrations at the state of progress’, Dialogues in Human Geography 2 (1): 101–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, J. (2010) ‘Nothing is straight in Zimbabwe: the rise of the Kukiya Kiya economy 2000–2008’, Journal of Southern African Studies 36 (2): 285–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, C. (2004) Growing up Global. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, K. (2016) DIY Detroit: making do in a city without services. Minneapolis MN: Minnesota University Press.Google Scholar
King, K. (1996) Jua Kali Kenya: change and development in an informal economy 1970–1995. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Mabala, R. (2011) ‘Youth and “the hood”: livelihoods and neighbourhoods’, Environment and Urbanization 23 (1): 157–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacGaffey, J. (1991) The Real Economy of Zaire: the contribution of smuggling and other unofficial activities to national wealth. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. and Roitman, J. (1995) ‘Figures of the subject in times of crisis’, Public Culture 7 (2): 323–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKensie, L. (2015) Getting By: estates, class and culture in austerity Britain. Bristol: Policy Press.10.2307/j.ctt1t8928tGoogle Scholar
Millar, K. (2014) ‘The precarious present: wageless labour and disrupted life in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’, Cultural Anthropology 29 (1): 32–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, K. (2018) Reclaiming the Discarded: life and labor on Rio's garbage dump. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monteith, W. (2021) ‘“We are taught to act”: hustling on the move in Kampala and Nairobi’, Africa 91 (1): 95–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, G. (2005) Disposable Cities: garbage, governance and sustainable development in urban Africa. Burlington VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Neilson, B. and Rossiter, N. (2008) ‘Precarity as a political concept, or, Fordism as exception’, Theory, Culture and Society 25 (7–8): 51–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, S. (2012) Modernity Bluff: crime, consumption, and citizenship in Côte d'Ivoire. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ntarangwi, M. (2009) East African Hip Hop: youth culture and globalization. Chicago IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Parnell, S. and Pieterse, E. (eds) (2012) Africa's Urban Revolution. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Pieterse, E. and Simone, A. M. (eds) (2013) Rogue Urbanism: emergent African cities. Auckland Park: Jacana Media.Google Scholar
Richardson, C. and Skott-Myhre, H. (eds) (2012) The Habitus of the Hood. Bristol: Intellect.Google Scholar
Simone, A. M. (2018) Improvised Lives: rhythms of endurance in the urban South. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Simone, A. M. and Pieterse, E. (2017) New Urban Worlds: inhabiting dissonant times. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Sommers, M. (2012) Stuck: Rwandan youth and the struggle for adulthood. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: the new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Thieme, T. (2010) ‘Youth, waste and work in Mathare: whose business and whose politics?’, Environment and Urbanization 22 (2): 333–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thieme, T. (2013) ‘The “hustle” amongst youth entrepreneurs in Mathare's informal waste economy’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 7 (3): 389–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thieme, T. (2015) ‘Turning hustlers into entrepreneurs, and social needs into market demands: corporate–community encounters in Nairobi, Kenya’, Geoforum 59: 228–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thieme, T. (2016) ‘“This upgraded place is my bedroom, but the ghetto is my living room”: negotiating doing (too) well and belonging in the “hood” of Nairobi slums’ in Lancione, M. (ed.), Assembling Life at the Margins. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thieme, T. (2017) ‘The hustle economy: informality, uncertainty, and the geographies of getting by’, Progress in Human Geography 42 (4) 529–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thieme, T., Ference, M. E. and van Stapele, N. (2021) ‘Harnessing the “hustle”: struggle, solidarities and narratives of work in Nairobi and beyond’, Africa 91 (1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unseld, F. (2021) ‘Rhythms of the unemployed: making art and making do through the spoken word in Kisumu, Kenya’, Africa 91 (1): 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van den Broeck, J. (2017) ‘“We are analogue in a digital world”: an anthropological exploration of ontologies and uncertainties around the proposed Konza Techno City near Nairobi, Kenya’, Critical African Studies 9 (2): 210–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Stapele, N. (2021) ‘Providing to belong: masculinities, hustling and economic uncertainty in Nairobi “ghettos”’, Africa 91 (1): 57–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasudevan, A. (2015) ‘The makeshift city: towards a global geography of squatting’, Progress in Geography 39 (3): 338–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigh, H. (2006) Navigating Terrains of War: youth and soldiering in Guinea-Bissau. New York NY: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Vosko, L. F. (2000) Temporary Work: the gendered rise of the precarious employment relationship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waage, T. (2006) ‘Coping with unpredictability: “preparing for life” in Ngoundéré, Cameroon’ in Christiansen, C., Utas, M. and Vigh, H. (eds), Navigating Youth, Generating Adulthood: social becoming in an African context. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.Google Scholar
Wacquant, L. (1999) ‘America as social dystopia: the politics of urban disintegration, or the French uses of the “American model”’ in Bourdieu, P. (ed.), The Weight of the World: social suffering in contemporary society. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Waite, L. (2009) ‘A place and space for a critical geography of precarity?’, Geography Compass 3 (1): 412–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, V. (2014) ‘African urban fantasies: dreams or nightmares’, Environment and Urbanisation 26 (1): 215–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, B. (2009) Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops: global fantasy in urban Tanzania. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
White, L. (1990) The Comforts of Home: prostitution in colonial Nairobi. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wrong, M. (2009) It's Our Turn to Eat: the story of a Kenyan whistle-blower. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar