Bringing together three key structuring forces of the present conjuncture – ‘the racial character of capitalism, the tyranny of free market logics and our vulnerability as humans on an ailing planet’ – Beverley Mullings asks what their implications are for analyses by academic geographers who specialise in reading, researching and writing about the spatial practices of workers. In this article – and in a longer companion piece – we build on Mullings’ question, turning it round to ask what future academic research by ‘labour geographers’ such as ourselves means for workers’ struggles, including our own as labouring geographers within neoliberal and increasingly marketized conditions of higher education.