The limits of mutual aid: Emerging forms of collectivity among app-based transport workers in Indonesia

Abstract

App-based transport has grown rapidly in Indonesia, and now provides work for over a million private commercial drivers. A large proportion of online drivers have joined self-organised community organisations that operate on a mutual aid logic, characterised by horizontal networks and strong social commitment. This mutual aid-based approach, which builds on a long tradition of associational behaviour in Indonesia’s large informal sector, has facilitated high levels of membership and member participation in small, geographically based driver communities. It is less well suited, however, to staging large-scale protests, negotiating with the app-based transport companies or engaging with government. Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork, this article argues that mutual aid-based organising has indeed proved an effective way to reach out to this group of non-traditional workers, but is not in itself enough to effect structural change. Ultimately, everyday forms of collectivism must be complemented by large-scale mobilisation, legal challenges and industrial action if drivers are to challenge the power of their pseudo-employers. To date, however, successful integration between driver communities and larger scale organisations has proven difficult in the face of external hostility and internal divisions.