The Geography of Everyday Exclusion: Third Spaces and Occupational Inequality in Delhi NCR

Vollständiger Abstract

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Third spaces that sit between home (first space) and work (second space) are often described as neutral ground that is open and accessible to everyone. This study questions that assumption in the context of Delhi NCR (Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad), asking whether formal and informal (precarious) workers experience and access these spaces on equal terms. A structured questionnaire including largely quantitative questions was designed and administered to 116 workers, comprising 50 formal and 66 informal workers (6 of which were freelancers and business owners), and covered which spaces they used, how often, what limited their access, and how they felt within two categories of third spaces: formal commercial venues (malls, restaurants, gyms, etc) and informal public ones (street markets, food stalls, tea stalls, etc). Responses were analysed using Mann-Whitney U tests for the Likert-scale measures and chi-square tests with Cramer’s V for categorical data. The two groups were found to inhabit largely separate spatial worlds, with formal workers concentrated in commercial venues and informal workers gravitating toward tea stalls and street markets. Informal workers rated commercial spaces as significantly less affordable and less safe, largely interpreted not as physical safety but rather mental security, yet reported no greater sense of being unwelcome or judged, which locates the barrier in cost and security rather than belonging. Access to informal public spaces, by contrast, did not differ between groups. The exclusion is therefore selective, targeted at the commercial sphere rather than spread across the city. In addition, time poverty was found to be one of the biggest limiting factors to accessing both kinds of spaces for both groups, indicating that long working hours, regardless of other factors, are a root cause for third-space inaccessibility. Thus, these findings reframe third-space inequality as a structural problem of time and money, and point to everyday public spaces as undervalued sites of social mixing worth protecting.