In this recent publication, Theo Aalders and Detlef Müller-Mahn (Project C03 Green Futures) explore how labour shapes future-making in East African infrastructure projects, balancing between material realities and anticipatory imaginaries. Their research highlights three key tensions: the mediation between present materiality and future visions, the visibility and invisibility of labour, and the dual nature of labour as both exploitative and a potential site of resistance and liberation.
The Hard Work of Future-Making: Alienated Futures, Invisible Labour and Liberation
By Theo Aalders and Detlef Müller-Mahn
Abstract
This article proposes that future-making is hard work. Drawing on examples of work on and around infrastructure projects in East Africa, we show how people orient themselves towards the future through both imagination and material practices. We argue that work navigates between apparent opposites, and identify three antagonisms that are particularly relevant to our argument. First, we discuss how labour mediates between material reality and anticipatory imagination, extending this argument to include a mediation between material present and immaterial future imaginaries. Second, we show how labour can oscillate between visible, even spectacular, performance of labour and employment, and the invisible work of often marginalised people.
Finally, we argue that while labour is often characterised by exploitative dynamics, it also offers possibilities for resistance – as well as promises of liberation – through organised labour in various forms. We conclude that (organised) labour, particularly around infrastructure projects, has the potential to make marginalised futures visible and real, thus challenging dominant imaginaries and material realities of the future inscribed by infrastructure master plans. These arguments are illustrated by vignettes collected during fieldwork on the Nairobi Express, along the proposed Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) corridor in Kenya and around a dam construction site in Tanzania.
Reference
Aalders, T., Müller-Mahn, D. 2025. The hard work of future-making: alienated futures, invisible labour and liberation. Territory, Politics, Governance, DOI
