'You will build me': Fiscal disobedience, reciprocity and the dangerous negotiations of redistribution on Nairobi's matatu

Abstract

Those who populate the productive frontiers of capitalism are often targets of violence by groups and institutions aiming to poach, control and regulate their economic practices. This article draws on years of ethnographic research conducted with informal transport operators in Nairobi who drive, conduct and own the minibus taxis called matatu. In order to navigate the city, this workforce engages in a coordinated but tense economic dance along the dangerous and shifting lines between illegality, work and reciprocity. The article aims to situate the more dangerous and morally ambiguous aspects of the 'hustle economy' ethnographically, within the generative and ultimately mobile location of urban transportation infrastructures of the matatu sector. Building on the conceptualizations of social infrastructure of AbdouMaliq Simone and Janet Roitman's study of fiscal disobedience, whereby the legitimacy of regulatory authority is questioned and undermined, matatu workers as infrastructure challenge multiple levels of state and non-state regulation through a variety of practices that blend danger, violence and control with solidarity, reciprocity and redistribution. This article evaluates and analyses distinctive features of 'hustling' in Nairobi through the ethnographic lens of matatu transportation operators as they navigate dangerous negotiations with the state, the police and vigilante gangs.