Going on a ride with Lefebvre: everyday contestation of platform mobilities in Mumbai

Given the growing power and proliferation of digital platforms, urban research has been investigating the complex entanglements of platforms with urban social and material processes, highlighting the deeply political nature of platformization. By linking spatial theory and mobilities research, this contribution aims at offering a dialectical approach to study contested platform mobilities in Mumbai. Adopting a mobile view and research practice in the application of Henri Lefebvre's concepts, I observe how mobilities assume different meanings in (platform) taxi drivers' lives: on the one hand in mediating their own biographies and constraints with the urban reality, and on the other negotiating the increasingly repressive platform regimes in their everyday lives. This research approach detects differential space in the sense of Henri Lefebvre, in the way drivers appropriate or circumvent platform mechanisms beyond notions of overt resistance, thereby seeking to carve out meanings and notions of the political in the urban everyday. Besides adding to a growing body of literature under the umbrella of platform urbanism, this paper contributes to debates about empirical applications of Lefebvre's concepts and recent engagements with his rhythmanalytical project. It also critically engages with applications of mobilities research and mobile methods beyond Europe and North America.