Transnational Skilling: ReConfiguring The Urban via Used Cars and Electronics

Abstract

Drawing from field research in India, UAE and Japan in the used car and second-hand electronics economies, this paper thinks about how the urban is territorially reconfigured through refurbished materials of cars and electronics, through a particular focus on skills of the labour involved. Used cars and electronics are commodities highly in demand, connecting various parts of the world as aptly demonstrated by the “globalisation from below” scholarship. While this has emphasised circulation of things and people, it misses out how the skilling of various labour groups contribute to the circulation as well as the creation of these transnational urban markets. For this, I look at spaces of circulation shaping such transnational skilling : Sharjah, Dubai, Izumi city in Osaka Prefecture, and Delhi. Such economies emerge due to various regulatory conditions such as in Sharjah and somewhat in Izumi, or then have their development push regulators to take stock and reconsider the urban spaces : city councils in Delhi, and also Izumi debate to move the used car dismantling units elsewhere. How do regulations create markets but also re-territorialize space? How do market economies/the reconfiguration of cars and used electronics come to be and transform these spaces? My second focus emphasizes skilling and agency, albeit unevenly when people connecting these spaces and making these economies possible are migrant groups in all three spaces. These belong to diverse ethnic, religious and national groups such as Pakistani, Afghan (Sharjah and Izumi) and Malik Muslims (Delhi). In ‘running’ these markets they make use of different skill sets, acquired through various channels (technical as well as social networks). Such transnational mobilities bring diverse communal and community groups together, who would have otherwise never worked together outside these trades. How do these businessmen, workers and labourers learn the skills? how are the skills passed on from one group to another? My paper would try to reflect on some of these questions during the conference.