When I created the maps of delivery riders on Granary Square, I noticed how people inhabit the same space in very different ways. Riders were always moving — except for one or two who stopped briefly to check their phones — while other people sat around eating, drinking, and enjoying the sun and the water fountains. People were in the same physical location, but in different social spaces. I saw a link with maps as I saw these social borders between them. Additionally the time dimension of the maps I created made me want to explore what time means for delivery riders in the context of platform capitalism. The conversation with Nina Paim made me realise the need to be more specific about my research. At that point I wanted to keep researching delivery riders, which was too broad. Which riders? Brazilian, migrants, or any rider? What do I want to know about them? Am I only interested in their work, or also where they came from and how was life before? How and where will I get this information? Through interviews, secondary sources, or both? What do I want to do with this information? What is my audience?
Nina presented me to some of Tuhiwai Smith’s (2022) ideas about field research. Being from outside, there’s a tendency to portray the community as exotic. Similarly, I need to avoid victimising the workers. Because of my political views, I’m inclined to look at this picture through the lens of class struggle, which is not a problem in and of itself, but I must be aware of the risks that may come from my preconceived opinions. I do want delivery riders to benefit from my work somehow, and avoid exploitative research that only takes from social groups and gives nothing in return. That’s why at this stage I was trying to make something with and for the riders, who ideally would act like collaborators and audience. Like most riders I am a migrant, but unlike them I came here to study, which combined with the researcher role creates a clear power imbalance. This is something I need to address if I want to get honest answers and build genuine collaborations.
After our dialogue I decided to embrace the ethnographic approach with participant observation methods. The following interviews I conducted all revolved around delivery work, but from that emerged information about other topics, such as their education background, English skills, and other work they did or aspired to do. I also asked some of them about which media they used for keeping informed, as I wanted to use something relevant to them, but I realised my research was at an early stage for it to be relevant. My goal is to use field work to gain a better understanding of their reality and let that inform my next steps. And to look for collaboration opportunities.
Reference List
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2022) Decolonizing Methodologies. 3rd edn. Bloomsbury.