Mobile workers, contingent labour: Migration, the gig economy and the multiplication of labour

Abstract

The article takes the surprising exit of the food delivery platform Deliveroo from Berlin as a starting point to analyse the relationship between migration and the gig economy. In Berlin and many cities across the globe, migrant workers are indispensable to the operations of digital platforms such as Uber, Helpling, or Deliveroo. The article uses in-depth ethnographic and qualitative research to show how the latter's exit from Berlin provides an almost exemplary picture of why urban gig economy platforms are strongholds of migrant labour, while at the same time, demonstrating the very contingency of this form of work. The article analyses the specific reasons why digital platforms are particularly open to migrants and argues that the very combination of new forms of algorithmic management and hyper-flexible forms of employment that is characteristic of gig economy platforms is also the reason why these platforms are geared perfectly toward the exploitation of migrant labour. This allows the analysis of digital platforms in the context of stratified labour markets and situates them within a long history of contingent labour that is closely intertwined with the mobility of labour.

Riders United Will Never Be Divided?

“…Second, the ability to take the risk of losing one's job and being forced to look for another one -either in the industry or beyond -is possibly also related to the demographics of the Gorillas workforce. As mentioned earlier, digital labor platforms overwhelmingly attract migrant workers in Germany (Altenried 2021;Schaupp 2021). While Gorillas is no exception to this general tendency in platform work -warehouse and delivery workers are mostly recent arrivals to Berlin -in some important ways, Gorillas workers do differ from both the 'migrantized' workforce in non-platform jobs and from other platform workers who are also migrants.…”

“…The investors' decisions thus abruptly upended existing organizing efforts and practically overnight, 1.000 riders and drivers lost their jobs (Lomas 2019). It was thus the investors who ultimately decided the future of these food couriers, and some workers even left Berlin entirely to follow Deliveroo abroad (Altenried 2021). Similarly, the delivery platform FoodPanda recently announced the end of its operations in Germany after less than six months of launching in Berlin (Kläsgen 2021).…”

Informalization in gig food delivery in the UK: The case of hyper‐flexible and precarious work

“…Similarly, platforms tap into migrant labor as a readily available labor source. For example, the algorithmic management and hyper-flexible forms of engagement they rely on attract migrants willing to accept workplace malpractice that breaches workplace rules because of the necessity to secure an income (Altenried, 2021).…”

Platformized Cities and Urban Life

“…Extracting huge data sets enables platform companies to offer faster consumable services (e.g., ride-hailing, food delivery) or better matches (care services), resulting in, or so it is assumed, satisfied workers and customers on the one hand, and satisfied investors on the other. However, lean platforms rely on data less to exploit it as a commodity than to organize and optimize the respective service offered, i.e., data about customer demands and the spatial distribution of demand as well as the control, management, and surveillance of workers (Altenried 2021). Since platform companies are usually funded with venture capital -surplus capital seeking to make profit in times of very low interest rates -the growthbefore-profit logic is one resting on network effects and monopolizing a special sector (Srnicek 2017), i.e., on competition between platform companies and their supply of services (see Ecker in this volume, also in comparison to less typical platform models).…”

“…There is yet another approach to platform work as migrant work, that is, in the way of expanding income opportunities. Both Moritz Altenried (2021) and Niels van Doorn (2021) point out (with reference to Berlin) that, despite its precarity, platform work can be a transitory entry gate for migrants/refugees, especially newly arriving migrants without language skills: due to the platforms' quick ways of recruiting and few requirements regarding qualifications, they provide income opportunities immediately upon arrival. Of course, the general problems around these kinds of work -first and foremost, its contingency, labeled as flexibility, and lack of social security -remain, i.e., migrants are even more easily exploited because of their desperate situation during their formal recognition processes as full citizens and the 'stepping-stone' of platform work often turns into a 'dead-end' (van Doorn 2021).…”