African Studies Seminar: Tatiana Thieme on ‘When the day hustle goes down, the night hustle goes up’

Based on ethnographic research in one of Nairobi’s oldest and largest informal settlements, this paper mobilises the notion of ‘hustle’ to ground the narratives of struggle, opportunity and place-making expressed by youth whose livelihood strategies have centred in part around informal waste labour. As everyday lives are mired by constant uncertainty, youth occupy a ‘precarious present’ (Millar 2018) caught in a state of suspension d but also versed in adapting to adversity and shaping local politics of provisioning in the absence of formal structures of support. The paper focuses on a set of ethnographic portraits and particular ‘bases’ in Mathare Valley, examining the non-linear and unpredictable vicissitudes of hustling as a survival, livelihood and political strategy to get by and get things done. The set of skills and knowledges that navigate ebbs and flows of makeshift urbanism include negotiating opportunity and set-back, hope and disappointment, waithood and rapid adjustments to emergencies, making work and loitering on the jobless corner. Finally, the paper examines the temporalities of the home-grown hustle economy of Mathare, as the younger youth seek to ‘redraw the maps’ of local informal economies such as garbage collection and older youth start getting involved in local politics alongside their multiple side hustles.

Download the Autumn 2018 programme here. 

All welcome.

This seminar series is convened by the African Studies Research Centre/IAS:

• Dr. Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (h.neveu@ucl.ac.uk)
• Prof. Megan Vaughan (megan.vaughan@ucl.ac.uk)
• Dr. Keren Weitzberg (k.weitzberg@ucl.ac.uk)