Rethinking ‘mobile work’: boundaries of space, time and social relation in the working lives of mobile hairstylists

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between spatial mobility and the labour process, developing a typology of ‘mobile work’. Working while mobile is a largely white-collar (and well researched) phenomenon whereas mobility as work and mobility for work involve more diverse occupations and have been omitted from sociological analysis of mobile work. The article explores the range of work involving spatial mobility before focusing on a hitherto unexamined form of mobility for work, mobile hairstyling. Relationships between mobility, employment status and the construction of spatial, social and temporal work-life boundaries are excavated. It is shown that previous arguments linking mobile work with decorporealisation or unboundedness are inadequate, applicable primarily to working while mobile. Other types of mobile work may or may not corrode work-life boundaries; whether they do depends in part on workers’ income security. Data are drawn from the Labour Force Survey and interviews with self-employed mobile hairstylists.