Frictional Infrastructures: Navigating the Socio-Spatial Landscape of Second-Hand and Waste Tyres in Mega-City Lagos (Nigeria)

This chapter explores the complex socio-spatial landscape and trajectories of imported second-hand (tokunbo) tyres and end-of-life tyres (ELTs) in Lagos, Nigeria—one of the fastest growing cities in the world, with a daily vehicular traffic of 2 million. Despite being often visible as discarded waste on the streets, in gutters or canals, ELTs can assume new social and micro-infrastructural identities, such as serving as platforms for generators and market goods or being transformed into unique pieces of furniture or works of art. Moreover, ELTs can be ground into crumbs to produce asphalt roads or converted into fuel for industrial purposes. The chapter analyses how ELTs circulate across these regimes of value and the discourses associated with the transformation and repurposing of various forms of “pneuma-materiality” among recyclers, upcyclers or artists. We investigate the urban actors who are key in prolonging, or pronouncing the end of a tyre’s life: the vulcanizers who replace, repair and restore tokunbo tyres by the roadside and from whom ELTs are increasingly collected. In Lagos, the ubiquitous vulcanizing trade lies at the centre of a contested project of urban governance, where vulcanizers are required to clear the streets of abandoned tyres during sanitation days, a practice that also reveals the organizational power of the association regulating this “informal” urban trade. Drawing on imagery derived from both engineering and anthropology, the chapter highlights the resilience and transformational potential of ELTs and second-hand tyres and the complex social and economic relationships that shape their afterlife, journeys and role as “frictional infrastructure” in a mega-urban context.