Trucking with Time

Abstract

How do time, space, and movement interpenetrate to shape the life choices of Mongolian men living in Los Angeles? In this article I contribute to an ongoing scholarly debate about how Mongolian lives have been affected both by socialism’s ‘end’ and encounters with capitalism. While attention has been directed to Mongolians remaining in Mongolia, I extend the debate in this article by scrutinizing the experiences of Mongolians who embraced the new forms of mobility that capitalism ushered in; specifically of those who migrated to Los Angeles in search of the opportunity to lead, what they deemed, better, more fulfilling lives. These Mongolian immigrants encountered new and completely foreign regimes of time discipline that sought to structure their lives in ways that were heretofore unimaginable to them. Throughout this article I demonstrate the all-pervasiveness of these encounters which occur in both public and private life, and in areas as varied as people’s apartments, public parks, offices, and nightclubs. I also explore how a subset of Mongolian men responded to what they regarded as a profound imposition; how they sought employment opportunities in the logistics sector that allowed them to exert some agency over time and to pursue their own ethical goals. Long-distance trucking, the area of the logistics sector these men entered, might seem a puzzling choice because it has routinely been derided by scholars of logistics as akin to working in a sweatshop. However, I argue, in examining this final puzzle, that the choices these men make complicate scholarly assumptions about contemporary capitalism’s workings.