Conversations through the rear-view mirror: Uber drivers’ narratives on the precarity of work, ‘belonging’, and violence

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ABSTRACT There has been a rapid increase in crimes against e-hailing drivers in South Africa (SA) since the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. This study explores the narratives about interpersonal violence among black and migrant Uber drivers who navigate through peri-urban neighborhoods in Cape Town, SA. Their narratives unearth the cultural and socio-geographic understandings of violence within increasingly impoverished, violent, and marginalized areas. Moreover, the narratives highlight the peri-urban geographies of precarity, labor, and the ways in which interpersonal violence impacts their mobility and lives. Theoretical arguments emerge on ‘safety’ and ‘embodied fear’ that Uber drivers experience in peri-urban areas, which portrays a microcosm of South African society reflecting on race, class, labor, xenophobia, and geographic location. This work gives insight into the construction of migrant e-hailing drivers' positionsfungibility, precarity, and xenophobia.