Disposable People as Infrastructure? The Livelihood Trials and Tactics of Three-Wheeler Delivery Drivers on Hanoi’s Streets, Vietnam

Abstract

The Vietnamese state is envisioning Hanoi as a prosperous, ‘civilised’ capital city with fast, ‘modern’ mobilities and their corresponding infrastructures, including expressways and an elevated railway. Concurrently, slower informal paratransit are increasingly discouraged and marginalised, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of three-wheeler motorbike delivery drivers. Despite official registration as disabled war veterans, ‘real’ three-wheeler drivers find themselves in an ever more conscribed environment, while other drivers attempting to maintain livelihoods in this way are deemed ‘fake’ by officials and further ostracised. Drawing on conceptual debates regarding people as infrastructure and mobility (in)justice, and ethnographic fieldwork with three-wheeler drivers, I detail how drivers (both ‘real’ and ‘fake’) must negotiate inconsistent policies, a growing discourse that they are obsolete and hence disposable, and new infrastructures incompatible with their livelihoods. Combined, these elements create specific mobility experiences and frictions to which drivers react with subtle and inventive tactics to maintain their rights to the city’s streets.