Spent behind the Wheel
Drivers' Labor in the Uber Economy
Bringing together sociological and legal perspectives with feminist theoretical insights, this book examines the case study of contemporary professional passenger driving in the U.S. It is a must for readers interested in critical studies of technological change and the gig economy, showing how drivers’ capacities are drained for the benefit of riders, corporations, and the maintenance of the racial state.
Spent Behind the Wheel exposes the harms of professional driving, illuminating the ways that capital accumulation sucks the vitality of reproductive laborers—those who make the world work for others but at the expense of their own health and well-being, men as well as women. With the increasing dominance of Uber and Lyft, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray’s intersectional feminist critique of the gig economy is both timely and potent.
Eileen Boris, author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019
Are taxi drivers in today’s era of the ride-hail app performing care work akin to domestic and household labor? So argue the authors of Spent behind the Wheel. Bringing together sociological and legal perspectives with feminist theoretical insights, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray examine the case study of contemporary professional passenger driving in the United States. On the one hand, they show, the rise of the gig economy has brought new attention to the industry of professional passenger driving. On the other hand, the vulnerabilities that professional drivers experience remain hidden.
Drawing on interviews with drivers, labor organizers, and members of licensing commissions, as well as case law and other published resources, Hua and Ray argue that working for ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft shares similarities with driving for taxi companies in the impact on driver lives. Lyft and Uber sell the idea of industry disruption, but in fact they entrench long-standing modes of extracting the reproductive labor of their drivers for the benefit of consumer lives. Reproductive labor—conventionally understood as feminized labor—is extracted, but masked, behind the masculinized, racialized bodies of drivers. Professional driving is thus best understood alongside domestic and other gendered service work as reproductive labors devalued and often demonetized to benefit the national economy.
Spent behind the Wheel is a must for readers interested in critical studies of technological change and the gig economy, showing how drivers’ capacities are drained for the benefit of riders, corporations, and the maintenance of the racial state.
Spent Behind the Wheel exposes the harms of professional driving, illuminating the ways that capital accumulation sucks the vitality of reproductive laborers—those who make the world work for others but at the expense of their own health and well-being, men as well as women. With the increasing dominance of Uber and Lyft, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray’s intersectional feminist critique of the gig economy is both timely and potent.
Eileen Boris, author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019
Spent Behind the Wheel is an outstanding work that bridges the studies of flexible and algorithm-dominated labor organizations with studies of feminist and racial theories and topics.
H-Net Reviews
Spent Behind the Wheel’s application of feminist theory to ride-hailing is forward-thinking and valuable.
Journal of American Planning Association
Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray’s critical analysis of drivers’ reproductive labour is certainly timely and highly valuable.
Le Travail
Contents
Introduction: Uber Drivers as Service Workers
1. It’s Not the App: The Labor of Driving
2. Financializing Driver Lives: Workers’ Compensation and Unemployment Insurance
3. Driver Criminalization: Systemic Racism in the Passenger Ride Industry
4. Who Gets Disability Justice? Rethinking Accommodation
Conclusion: Drivers in the Time of COVID-19
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
