Informal Learning and Becoming: Narratives of Ridesharing Youth in Kathmandu Valley

Abstract

Ridesharing youths in Kathmandu are learning various skills informally and shaping their identities while working on the streets. The existing literature in this field appears to focus on the financial, technological, and environmental aspects of ridesharing rather than on its learning and development dimension. This dissertation aimed to highlight these dimensions based on the experiences of the five young ridesharers in the city. Through a series of in-depth interviews, the study inquired how participants explained their informal learning experiences and how they navigated ridesharing to shape their positionality in the city. As a research methodology, the researcher employed narrative inquiry, designing open-ended questions for the in-depth interviews and observing their activities in the street. Grounded on an interpretive paradigm, the ontological stance of this study was individual relativism. Epistemologically, the study applied Deleuzian constructivism, while its axiological stance was value-laden. The skills learned informally and the becoming dimension of the participants were figured out based on the thick descriptions of the narratives. A thematic analysis was conducted to derive meaning from the themes identified in the stories. Additionally, the researcher’s reflections were incorporated when presenting the study’s findings. In brief, the study identified eight major themes, four related to learning and four to the becoming dimension of ridesharing. Driving adaptation, technology integration, customer satisfaction and financial literacy were the themes on the learning dimension while self-confidence, self-employment, pleasure riding and ridesharing in transition were on their becoming dimensions. The study found that the youth learned to adapt technology in urban mobility, satisfy their customers while ridesharing, and become financially literate. Meanwhile, they were shaping their identity as self confident and self-employed ridesharers in the city, enhancing their positionality through the capacity to enjoy, grow, develop and even exit the ridesharing industry. To conclude, the study presents the living and learning conditions of urban youth, exploring their lived experiences while ridesharing and becoming a self dependent urban youth in the city. This dissertation explored the contexts they encountered, the hardships and challenges of ridesharing they faced in extreme conditions, and their individual, deeply personal narratives of living by and learning through ridesharing. I hope the study’s findings will contribute to institutionalizing the emerging tech-based youth initiatives in Nepal, such as ridesharing, particularly by identifying the learning and becoming dimensions associated with them.