Spaces of (in)formality and the politics of infrastructural labor: The case of tribal transit planning in the Northwest United States

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between infrastructural labor and the everyday praxis of transportation planners in tribal communities in the Northwest United States. We reveal how the relationship-building and strategic positioning of tribal transit planners constitutes a form of infrastructural labor. This labor yields a form of “community-cultivating” technical-material infrastructure vital for enhancing people’s mobility and, thus, life opportunities in an otherwise starkly immobile lived experience. Illuminated are the socio-political, affective, and (in)formal contours of this labor as it simultaneously contests and sustains colonial legacies, is mobilized by (and mobilizes) strong emotive currents ranging from despair to hope, and operates as the connective tissue between spaces of informal social connection and the domain of formality in which state actors, such as planners, are typically thought to be confined. In the process, the study nuances our understanding of infrastructural politics with a notable twist, as planners are usually depicted as technocratic-state actors, (re)productive of colonial legacies and neoliberal capitalism. Data is drawn from semi-structured interviews whereby tribal transit planners are revealed to tenaciously work through an infrastructure of social relations to collectively secure the resources they need, what we identify as a condition of possibility for generating more fundamental change. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and political implications of the study and offer two contradictory interpretations of our findings.