‘My Life Is More Valuable Than This’: Understanding Risk among On-Demand Food Couriers in Edinburgh

Abstract

Drawing from the social study of the gig economy and platform labour and from the sociology of risk, this article explores how on-demand food couriers in Edinburgh, Scotland, construct and represent work-related risks. By taking the gig economy’s contested and contentious status of ‘self-employment’ as a starting point, this article positions couriers as experts of their own work process and draws on in-depth interviews with 25 couriers to illustrate how platformed labour creates a range of risks, including physical risk and bodily harm, financial risks and epistemic risks. To negotiate these risks, couriers use a range of strategies, including privatising, normalising and minimising risks and by forging new communities of support. While some risks can be negotiated by recourse to the private, entrepreneurial, or ‘choosing’ self, interview data illustrate how algorithmically managed work creates uncertainty and confounds the issue of choice by obscuring the work process and associated risk probabilities.

The intersectional precarity of platform cycle delivery workers

“…This chapter adds to a growing body of literature focusing on the precarious working conditions of food couriers in the gig economy (Briziarelli 2018, Lemozy 2019, Veen et al 2019, Cant 2020, Galière 2020, Gregory 2020, Gregory and Maldonado 2020, Richardson 2020, Woodcock 2020.…”

How algorithmic management influences worker motivation: A self-determination theory perspective.

“…In addition, AM can hamper interactions between workers, which implies receiving less social support (Möhlmann & Zalmanson, 2017). Some research shows that this creates desires for more support and networking opportunities (Duggan et al, 2020, 2021), and even attempts to restore relationships by creating support groups virtually or physically (Gregory, 2021).…”

Of essential workers and working from home: Journalistic discourses and the precarities of a pandemic economy

“…These workers not only have less control over their working conditions, but are also subject to surveillance that exacerbate unequal relations between workers and customers ( Rosenblat and Stark, 2016 ). As (Gregory, 2021) discusses, COVID-19 has shown how much risk has been shifted to on-demand workers, especially as platforms obscure these risks from consumers. Platforms reinforce power imbalances between worker classes, “equipping a purchaser of products and services as ‘middle management’,” producing a labor “paradigm [that] effectively outsources managerial responsibility away from government and commercial enterprises and onto the individual” ( Stark and Levy, 2018 : 1214).…”