The (in)visible face of global infrastructures: An exploration of logistics and informality from the ground up *

Abstract

Global infrastructures are often analyzed and interpreted under a specific framework that highlights the visible infrastructural nodes where flows and capital accumulation reach maximum intensity. This article, in contrast, moves away from infrastructural nodes and offers a grounded and exploratory perspective of global infrastructures focusing on their invisible face: the spaces, practices, economies, ways of inhabiting, and flows that, despite their strong connection to large global infrastructures, are not recognized as such due to their unregulated, unexpected, and loosely codified forms. By applying the lens of critical logistics and focusing on Aspropyrgos, the hinterland of the Piraeus Port (Greece), this article advocates for re-discovering global infrastructure through the variegated, informal, illegible, and incomplete logistical spaces they generate. The article makes two key contributions. First, it shows how global infrastructures are built through the interdependence between formal–informal, visible–invisible, and completeness–incompleteness. Second, it highlights how these infrastructures are intensely shaped by often invisible, individual, and socially constructed actions that unfold through numerous everyday practices.