Controlling space, controlling labour? Contested space in food delivery gig work

Abstract

The article investigates the control of the platform labour process by means of the digital production of space and how workers resist it. The segment of German platform‐mediated food delivery is examined via qualitative interviews and auto‐ethnography. It is shown how the platforms create different spaces to efficiently coordinate and control mobile delivery gig work. Steered by geolocalisation and geofencing, the couriers operate autonomously in spatial corridors defined by the platforms. The agency of the riders is thus limited, but they are occasionally able to undermine the platforms’ spatial control and reinterpret it. The article shows that space is a central but contested instrument for controlling labour.

Technopolitics from Below: A Framework for the Analysis of Digital Politics of Production

“…German labor sociologist Müller-Jentsch [72] speaks of the different fields of industrial relations as "arenas of negotiation." Such arenas are understood as spaces for the regulated staging of conflicts and institutionalized conflict resolution and a "battlefield" where the respective actors not only seek to assert their conflicting interests 5 but also to influence the procedural framework of negotiation itself. In this sense, the arena is both a complex institutional system that determines which modalities, interests, and actors are permitted and a delimited field of conflict that gives the actors options for actionwith defined limits-for solving specific problems.…”

“…In general, the possibility of an accumulation of potential conflicts depends largely on how permeable arena boundaries are with respect to their modes of negotiation. If individual arenas are governed by different negotiation logics, if different actors are responsible for negotiations and other interests determine the agenda, a "leap" of conflicts from one arena to another becomes unlikely and the coexistence of 5 The genuinely political moment in the concept of technopolitics is emphasis on the negotiation of conflicting interests. The interests of workers and capital are at the center of this conflict-even if there are other regular lines of conflicts within firms: those between white-collar and blue-collar workers, between business people and technicians, between men and women, between old and young, etc.…”

“…Consequently, the sociology of work has developed great interest in the topic within the last decade. Internationally, the overwhelming majority of studies research algorithmic management in the context of the so-called platform or gig economy [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. In the German context, which will be central to this article, this focus is supplemented by studies that research algorithmic management in the context of manufacturing [8][9][10][11][12].…”

Introduction: Janus meets Proteus in the platform economy

“…Workers particularly in location-based platform work, and specifically in food delivery, are commonly able to meet physically as the platforms themselves divide cities into certain areas where restaurants are clustered, which acts as a starting zone for the couriers. Couriers' under-standing of and experience with those shared log-in zones not only give rise to individual practices of resistance, but they also provide a spatial context fostering face-to-face contact and the building of collective identities and solidarities (Heiland 2021). Second, as a consequence, although union strategies are ideally multi-scalar from the outset, the emphasis on a specific scale in labour agency differs along with platform type.…”

“…Turning first to platform-based food delivery, and probably also other industries within the platform economy (see, for example, Bucher et al 2020), worker resistance -where it exists at all -often has an individualized character (Barratt et al 2020;Heiland 2021;Shanahan and Smith 2021). Individualized coping strategies have been explained by food delivery couriers' mainly 'entrepreneurial' interpretations of their employment terms and conditions, being manipulated by algorithmic management and their own internalization of the platforms' neoliberal discourse so that the organizational work arrangements associated with the platforms are sustained and reinforced rather than altered.…”