ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part addresses socialities at the centre of multiple forms of mobile work, highlighting day labourers, “fly-in-fly-out” workers, food courier ‘gigs’, housing-for-labour cultural exchange, building the empowered self through travel, and selling live, digital “moments” across geographic space. It argues how waiting structures the day labour experience in many ways, from waiting along the street for a job offer, waiting to get to the job site and sometimes waiting to be paid; finding themselves in entirely new places each day, the consistency provided through their mobile communication devices provides spaces of comfort. The part describes how transnationally mobile people can engage in placemaking in their destination country through the “convivial media experiences” created in the more successful scenarios of the home-share platform, Workaway.
