Labour and the city: Some notes across theory and research

Abstract

Abstract At a time of growing interest in research and theory concerning urban space and urban workers, this article explores three divergent strands of scholarly research and theory that are producing new perspectives on the relations of labour, work, and employment with processes of urbanization, the production of urban space or city life. Drawing together research and debates both within geography and outside of it, this article briefly reviews emerging urban scholarship on labour in the so‐called “sharing economy,” historical research on the distinctly urban histories of slavery in North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and South America, and the often unpaid and highly gendered labour of urban homesteading and autonomous self‐provisioning in cities. This article does not strive to present comprehensive or masterful readings of these literatures but rather to explore some of the very different ways that “labour” is mobilized in them, noting the differences between them but also pointing to some of the insights about knowledge production on labour and city life that is offered by reading them together.

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