Paper short abstract:

This paper explores loitering, as mediated by built environments, in its capacity to act as an anchor (albeit transient) to a specific site for immigrant gig workers; making visible their significance in maintaining the city’s rhythm while acting in opposition to their various temporal lags.

Paper long abstract:

Delivery riders provide mobile and temporal labour that maintains the rhythm of cities (Sharma, 2014). Platform work creates spatial patterns and temporal rhythms of congregation for their largely immigrant working class workforce (van Doorn & Vijay, 2021; Kitchin, 2019), determining how riders congregate and loiter on sidewalks and intersections.

I explore such mediations of loitering, congregation and waiting in their capacity to reveal alternate relationships to time. I draw from queer and trans theory to discuss temporal lags, interregnums and waiting as non-linear understandings of temporality, futures, aspirations and normative adulthood (Malatino, 2019; Freeman, 2010; Halberstam, 2005). Using this as an opening, I show how immigrant gig workers exist in temporal lags – between time zones, aspirations, and waiting to become ideal workers, consumers, and citizens.

This paper is a work-in-progress and a component of my dissertation where I place feminist geographies, materialist media studies, and queer and trans theory in conversation to explore how the built environment, through a focus on loitering, mediates relationships to non-linear temporalities. As a way of inhabiting space, loitering fosters a relationship with the built environment where risk, anonymity, and movement are constantly negotiated (Phadke, Khan & Ranade, 2011). I explore loitering, as mediated by built environments and technological structures, in its capacity to act as an anchor (albeit transient) to a specific site for immigrant gig workers; making visible their significance in maintaining the city’s rhythm while acting in opposition to their various temporal lags.