Gender, mobility and emotional infrastructures: Ikwe Safe Rides in Winnipeg–SI new frontiers

Abstract

Ikwe is a grassroots ride-sharing group founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in January 2016 to serve a growing number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women—many of them poor and vulnerable—who felt unsafe taking taxis. It uses a Facebook group to connect its network of volunteer drivers with passengers. This article argues that Ikwe’s technical infrastructure—Facebook and cars—is supplemented by an emotional infrastructure through which drivers share and manage the feelings elicited by their work. This gendered emotional infrastructure is based on a network of social circulations that includes sharing information over the Drivers’ Log (a Facebook Messenger group that includes all Ikwe drivers) and telling funny and sad stories at the parking lot that the drivers call ‘Headquarters’. In this way, drivers seek to foster a system of mutual support and protection. It also challenges the standard notion of a rational, efficiency-maximizing commercial exchange between drivers and passengers, as drivers and passengers intimately engage with each other during rides, at Headquarters or over Facebook.