Embodying flexibility: experiencing labour flexibility through urban daily mobility in Santiago de Chile

Abstract

This paper’s objective is to contribute towards understanding the relationship between mobility practices and labour flexibility. Focusing on the case of Santiago de Chile, it argues that an extremely flexible labour market, as in the Chilean case, affects the everyday lives of inhabitants which are compelled to ‘weave’ dispersed workplaces, articulate multiple-employments within a workday or use mobility time-space for tele-working. From an ethnographic perspective, we show how labour flexibility in Santiago de Chile is experienced and embodied through daily mobility practices. The article presents ethnographies in which flexibility changes mobility practices, giving rise to a specific time-space that becomes an intrinsic, yet seldom recognised dimension of the economic production process.