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No Right to the Street: Motorcycle Taxi, Discourse Production and the Regulation of Unruly Mobility

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Abstract

In the city of Guangzhou, taxi service provided by motorcycles accomplishes a unique form of short-distance, flexible transport mobility bridging major nodes in the state-run public transport network with under-connected urban neighbourhoods and workplaces. Operated almost exclusively by rural-to-urban migrants in the city, motorcycle taxis have played the central role in sustaining the livelihood of a marginalized urban social group.

The contents of this chapter have appeared in two publications:

Qian, J. 2015. No right to the street: motorcycle taxis, discourse production and the regulation of unruly mobility. Urban Studies, 52(15): 2922–2947.

Qian, J. 2016. Disciplined mobility and migrant subalternity: the politics of motorcycle taxis in Guangzhou. In: D G Wang, S J He (Eds.), Mobility, Sociability and Wellbeing of Urban Living, pp. 23–48. Berlin: Springer.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This number, however, refers only to those licensed, thus officially legal motorcycles. According to Dr. T, a senior official in local Transport Administration Department, the size of unlicensed motorcycles at least doubled this number.

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Correspondence to Junxi Qian .

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Qian, J. (2018). No Right to the Street: Motorcycle Taxi, Discourse Production and the Regulation of Unruly Mobility. In: Re-visioning the Public in Post-reform Urban China. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5990-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5990-2_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-5989-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-5990-2

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