Infrastructures to work: Tracing the labour footprint of large urban infrastructure projects

Despite being mostly deemed failures, the large urban infrastructure projects (LUIPs) remain crucial for growth and development in the policy agenda. A key economic and political driver behind these projects is their impact on boosting employment. Most research mainly represents the perspectives of project promoters, planners, and funders, often focusing on the experiences of high-level professionals, politicians, and businesses. Those at the bottom of the employment hierarchy, mainly low-paid workers, have received limited attention. However, they play a key role in determining the broader impacts of LUIPs. They can do this by withdrawing their labour, increasing productivity, and materialising and spreading employment gains from infrastructure projects. In this paper, we employ the financial diary method to explore the everyday life and economic strategies of those working in LUIPs of different kinds in Istanbul and Johannesburg. We argue that the LUIPs have significant spatial impacts on spaces of home and revalue labour through perceptions around them. The sustainability of these spatial changes and changing labour relies on mobility, everyday financial strategies, and gender roles. Together, these insights reveal “infrastructures to work”, where workers take significant measures at their own cost to meet general needs.