An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Prof. Julietta Hua (Nominated Fellow 2022; San Francisco State University)
Driver-labor and Reproductive Justice
Taxis are often understood as vastly different from gigged driving companies like Uber and Lyft, in part because gigged driving companies market themselves this way. My broader work, with Dr. Kasturi Ray, traces the ways traditional taxis and the gigged driving sector have more in common than they are different. Specifically, they share the presumption of unfettered access to drivers’ reproductive labor as a means for industry accumulation. We argue that professional passenger ride-for-hire driving is thus best understood through the lens of reproductive labor, the nature of which has historically been occluded behind the masculinized bodies of drivers.
This presentation thinks with reproductive justice lenses to understand the gendered, racial conditions of labor that structure the passenger ride-for-hire industry in the United States, whether taxi or gig. The erosion of abortion rights, in other words, presents an opportunity to broaden the horizon of reproductive justice in unconventional ways, specifically by considering how driver-labor conditions resonate as matters of concern for reproductive justice.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2