The hustle economy

Abstract

This article deploys the conceptual frame of hustle to examine the everyday dealings associated with uncertainty and accepted informalities that pervade realms of everyday life amongst youth in precarious urban geographies. In doing so, the discussion advances the theoretical linkages between prolonged periods of ‘waithood’, alternative interpretations of work, and experiments within the everyday city more broadly. The article argues that the hustle economy is a localized but globally resonant condition of contemporary urbanism, coupling generative possibilities that emerge from everyday experiences of uncertainty and management of insecurities associated with ‘life work’ outside the bounds of normative social institutions.