Platform capitalism and neo‐normative control: “Autonomy” as a digital platform control strategy in neoliberal Chile

Abstract

A key element of the platform business model is concentrating great organisational power over the work process while simultaneously allowing workers certain degrees of autonomy and encouraging them to see themselves as self‐employed. This study applied the neo‐normative control concept to analyse the mechanisms platforms use to promote freedom of choice and self‐regulation values, which are formed extra‐organisationally in deeply neoliberal societies such as Chile. The Uber ride‐hailing and Pedidos Ya home delivery platforms in Chile were examined using a labour process theory framework based on an ethnographic design. The results show the specific ways in which these platforms deploy forms of neo‐normative control, how this deployment is anchored in the labour context of neoliberal Chilean society, and how workers re‐signify, stress, or seek to subvert this control strategy. The findings' theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.

Platform Labour Unrest in a Global Perspective: How, Where and Why Do Platform Workers Protest?

“…To date, most research on platform work emanates from Europe, North America and Australia, which has led to an over-representation in the literature of protests and worker communities in those regions. Nevertheless, important studies of platform work in Africa, Latin America, South Asia and East Asia (Anwar and Graham, 2020; Chen, 2018; Chinguno, 2019; Morales and Stecher, 2023; Parth et al, 2021) highlight similar themes to European and American analyses. For instance, algorithmic control is central to studies of platform work in China (Chen, 2018), Chile (Morales and Stecher, 2023) and Brazil (Amorim and Moda, 2020).…”

“…Nevertheless, important studies of platform work in Africa, Latin America, South Asia and East Asia (Anwar and Graham, 2020; Chen, 2018; Chinguno, 2019; Morales and Stecher, 2023; Parth et al, 2021) highlight similar themes to European and American analyses. For instance, algorithmic control is central to studies of platform work in China (Chen, 2018), Chile (Morales and Stecher, 2023) and Brazil (Amorim and Moda, 2020). While this underlines the wide relevance of novel concerns associated with platform work, extant qualitative evidence does not yet enable an understanding of whether grievances addressed by platform worker protest are genuinely international or whether different regions give rise to different ‘models’ of platform protest, with different motives, actors and methods.…”

New social relations of digital technology and the future of work: Beyond technological determinism

“…Similarly, given the importance of gender and technology in the labour process discourse of the 1980s (Cockburn, 1983; Crompton & Jones, 1984; Cockburn & Ormrod, 1993), it is surprising that the gendered aspects of technology are underexplored in analyses of platforms, with some notable recent exceptions (van Doorn, 2017; James, 2022). This narrowing of the full spectrum of social relations is compounded by a wider methodological problem of neglecting the Global South, especially in leading Anglophone journals; a problem that is starting to be addressed (e.g., Amorim & Moda, 2020; Chen, 2018), including from contributors to this Issue (e.g., Parth et al, 2021; Morales & Stecher, 2022).…”

“…Perhaps the clearest recent examples of this critical approach appear in the burgeoning literature on platform work. There is a widespread perception that platform technologies are not neutral, but are designed to reinforce managerial control at the point of production (e.g., Bronowicka & Ivanova, 2020; Griesbach et al, 2019; Lee et al, 2015; Morales & Stecher, 2022; Parth et al, 2021). These approaches avoid treating technology as disconnected from social relations and thus avoid problems associated with the first part of our working definition of technological determinism.…”

Why platform capitalism is not the future of work

“…For example, Veen et al (2020) draw influence from Gandini's theoretical insights and support them with empirical data: platforms are a site of new forms of panoptic surveillance, and control systems whose workings are opaque from workers' perspectives. Numerous other articles are quick to emphasise similar themes (for example, Griesbach et al, 2019;Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020;McDonald et al, 2021;Sun et al, 2021;Morales, 2022). Indeed, there is by now a huge literature on algorithmic control as a pre-eminent feature of platform work, drawing out a wide range of different aspects and introducing a wider vocabulary, including ideological and affective manipulation such as nudge techniques (Pignot, 2021;Parth and Bathini, 2021) and mobilising new vocabulary such as 'algorithmic despotism' (Griesbach et al, 2019) and neo-normative control (Morales, 2022).…”