Theorising informality and social embeddedness for the study of informal transport. Lessons from the marshrutka mobility phenomenon

Moving in informal circles in the global North: An inquiry into the navettes in Brussels

“…Hence, the navettes prevail to a large degree not because of their market-likeness and flexibility as falsely predicted by the neoclassical literature, but rather due to their stance against market-likeness, avoidance of demand-driven price fluctuations, and emphasis on honesty, reliability and predictability. Similar to observations regarding informality and urban mobility in the South and East (Rekhviashvili & Sgibnev, 2019;Rizzo, 2016;Sopranzetti, 2018), the decision to drive a navette is not merely an entrepreneurial choice, but rather a tactical move allowing to compete with formal actors, which leads to insecurity, self-exploitation and marginal profit rates.…”

Marshrutka (in)formality in southern Russian cities and its role in contentious transport policies

“…Secondly, those latter urban transport perspectives are critical of widespread depoliticised, one-sided and often solely technocratic perspectives on urban mobility issues. These perspectives, the argument goes, need a broader consideration of socio-technical determinants and a closer engagement with directly related questions of urban (in)equality through spatial distribution in the debates (Kębłowski and Bassens 2018;Kębłowski et al 2016;Timms et al 2014;Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev 2018a). Thus, informal transport has been recognised as a still underresearched but urgent topic of global cities.…”

Multicriteria evaluation of the quality of service of informal public transport: An empirical evidence from Ibadan, Nigeria

“…The perception of users or customers on the QoS consists of the technical quality which is the core services assessment; and the functional quality, which is the service delivery process evaluation (Gronroos, 1984). The social embeddedness of perceptions of such technical and functional quality dimensions needs to be accepted (Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev, 2020) Several users need attributes revolve directly around time: for instance, access and egress time, service interval, and in-vehicle time. The sense of journey times is thus a criterion for QoS as perceived by the users.…”

“…In addition, the growing significance of informal public transport in Ibadan requires a more pragmatic approach that encourages turning the negative perceptions of IPF to a positive policy informed by stakeholder perceptions (Moyo and Olowosegun, 2021) hence the significance of multicriteria evaluation of perceptions of their quality of service. Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev (2020) note the need to recognize the socially embedded character of informal transport seriously.…”