The logistical colonisation of life: Gender, exploitation, and resistance in the work of Romanian women truck drivers

This article examines the gendered and geopolitical dynamics of contemporary logistical capitalism through the experiences of Romanian women truck drivers. Drawing on Social Reproduction Theory, it theorises the ‘logistical colonisation of life,’ a process whereby social reproductive labour is absorbed and instrumentalised to sustain supply-chain fluidity. The truck cabin emerges as a ‘total space’ that blurs production and reproduction, a situation intensified by ‘crew’ employment, which commodifies intimacy and externalises reproductive costs. Furthermore, while social platforms enable new forms of solidarity, they simultaneously function as ‘affective tachographs’ that monitor and re-commodify resistance.