Reconfiguring rickshaw mobilities: formalization and exception in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone

This paper examines the relationship between formalization and (im)mobilities by focusing on the reconfiguration of cycle-rickshaw journeys in the ‘diplomatic zone’ of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Following two terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, this high-income neighborhood witnessed a strong trend toward the securitization, regularization, and sanitization of urban space. Consequently, the local transport system underwent significant changes, including a number of interventions aimed explicitly at regularizing cycle-rickshaw mobilities. These changes involved the introduction of a formal license system, a fixed fare chart, and the designation of a limited number of registered rickshaws to clearly demarcated areas. This paper critiques the insular and exclusionary logic that underpins this area-based rickshaw system and argues that formalization – in this particular instance – has led to the deepening of existing inequalities. In analyzing these inequalities, I present formalization as an inherently unfinished process that gains shape through simultaneous and often contradictory processes of fixing, enclosure, and exception. I offer that this conceptual triad provides a useful starting point for making sense of the relationship between formalization and (im)mobilities in a way that does not reify or assume intuitive and simplistic conflations between the formal/static and informal/mobile.