Driving Lives: An Ethnography of Chicago Taxi Drivers

Taxi drivers are central to the transportation systems of major urban areas; drivers’ work lives exemplify contemporary labor conditions; their personal networks and associations demonstrate the social dynamics of a global city—and yet, taxi drivers’ experiences often remain hidden from public and scholarly view. The research project from which this paper derives, part of an ongoing collaboration with the United Taxidrivers Community Council (UTCC), a grassroots drivers’ rights organization in Chicago, hopes to redress this omission by chronicling the everyday lives of drivers, in their individual careers and when they come together as a community, by examining drivers’ experiences at multiple scales, from the small intimate space of a cab’s interior to the broad dynamics of the global economy. As drivers chart their transnational courses, map the city in which they live and work, and claim territory for themselves and their concerns, they transfigure the spaces, both material and metaphoric, of the global workforce.