Abstract:Over the past decade, advancements in digital technologies have set the stage for corporations in the Global North to drive down their labour costs by outsourcing work to the Global South. This includes using digital labor platforms that attract digital workers from across age groups, geographic location, and professional or educational backgrounds. Burdened by employment woes such as infrastructural immobility and low wages, countless Filipino professionals are found to be migrating to online platform labor i… Show more
“…Much of the recent work on digital labour in the global South highlight the role of labour platforms and the powerless position workers take in relation to the disciplinary features of the platform. However, particular kinds of workers are able to thrive and experience social and economic mobility and rise as 'coaches' or 'skill-makers', as we have written in an earlier piece (Soriano and Panaligan, 2019). This is an emerging category of influential digital workers who play a crucial role in the platform labour economy by coaching aspiring workers and facilitating online communities of support, while simultaneously making gains from social transactions.…”
Section: 'Skill-makers' As Brokersmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For those transitioning from full-time employment to full-time online platform labour, workers are often wary about security or seasonality of work, the availability of non-salary benefits, or whether there are mechanisms for redress if clients end up unwilling to compensate for completed tasks. Some workers entering the digital platform economy may not have educational or professional training for jobs that they are eyeing but believe that getting employment is possible if they invest in the right mentoring (Soriano and Panaligan, 2019).…”
Section: Emerging Forms Of Brokerage In Platform Labourmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the brokerage process, they also wield influence, set norms and standards of value, and curate spaces for belonging and solidarity, while creating new hierarchies and asymmetries among Filipino freelance workers. This growing league of brokers in the local digital labour economy becomes the backbone of some of the highly subscribed and thriving Facebook groups among freelance workers (Soriano and Cabañes, 2020a; Soriano and Panaligan, 2019). Their community-building work serves as an important anchor for the communicative strategies enacted by these brokers with the constant intention of growing this community to facilitate a more organic exchange of content and maintenance of income stream.…”
Section: Emerging Forms Of Brokerage In Platform Labourmentioning
This article examines and theorises the relationships across three distinct forms of labour brokerage emerging in the digital platform labour economy: platform intermediation, ‘skill-making’, and ‘re-outsourcing’. Drawing from a 4-year digital ethnography on online freelancing and platform labour in the Philippines, one of the largest labour supplying countries globally, I pay special attention to how platform labour control emerges as a process that is constituted in the brokerage relationships at multiple scales between global capital, local capital, community, and family units, and emerging organised networks of workers and influencers on social media. The article examines the materiality of platform labour and the local informal economy that give rise to these forms of brokerage. I also describe how brokerage processes set norms and standards in this largely unregulated sector, thereby playing a role in how labour mobility or precarity are made possible and organised. The article seeks to contribute to the knowledge about the digital work system involving a significant number of Filipinos by capturing the situated dialectical power relations of the global spread of platform-mediated labour management.
“…Much of the recent work on digital labour in the global South highlight the role of labour platforms and the powerless position workers take in relation to the disciplinary features of the platform. However, particular kinds of workers are able to thrive and experience social and economic mobility and rise as 'coaches' or 'skill-makers', as we have written in an earlier piece (Soriano and Panaligan, 2019). This is an emerging category of influential digital workers who play a crucial role in the platform labour economy by coaching aspiring workers and facilitating online communities of support, while simultaneously making gains from social transactions.…”
Section: 'Skill-makers' As Brokersmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For those transitioning from full-time employment to full-time online platform labour, workers are often wary about security or seasonality of work, the availability of non-salary benefits, or whether there are mechanisms for redress if clients end up unwilling to compensate for completed tasks. Some workers entering the digital platform economy may not have educational or professional training for jobs that they are eyeing but believe that getting employment is possible if they invest in the right mentoring (Soriano and Panaligan, 2019).…”
Section: Emerging Forms Of Brokerage In Platform Labourmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the brokerage process, they also wield influence, set norms and standards of value, and curate spaces for belonging and solidarity, while creating new hierarchies and asymmetries among Filipino freelance workers. This growing league of brokers in the local digital labour economy becomes the backbone of some of the highly subscribed and thriving Facebook groups among freelance workers (Soriano and Cabañes, 2020a; Soriano and Panaligan, 2019). Their community-building work serves as an important anchor for the communicative strategies enacted by these brokers with the constant intention of growing this community to facilitate a more organic exchange of content and maintenance of income stream.…”
Section: Emerging Forms Of Brokerage In Platform Labourmentioning
This article examines and theorises the relationships across three distinct forms of labour brokerage emerging in the digital platform labour economy: platform intermediation, ‘skill-making’, and ‘re-outsourcing’. Drawing from a 4-year digital ethnography on online freelancing and platform labour in the Philippines, one of the largest labour supplying countries globally, I pay special attention to how platform labour control emerges as a process that is constituted in the brokerage relationships at multiple scales between global capital, local capital, community, and family units, and emerging organised networks of workers and influencers on social media. The article examines the materiality of platform labour and the local informal economy that give rise to these forms of brokerage. I also describe how brokerage processes set norms and standards in this largely unregulated sector, thereby playing a role in how labour mobility or precarity are made possible and organised. The article seeks to contribute to the knowledge about the digital work system involving a significant number of Filipinos by capturing the situated dialectical power relations of the global spread of platform-mediated labour management.
“…In light of its role as a leader in BPO, it is unsurprising that the Philippines has emerged as a crucial node in the rapidly growing digital economy (Soriano & Cabañes, 2019). Importantly, the Philippines government is a strong proponent of digital work, with Soriano and Panaligan (2019, p. 176) noting: The government sees platform labour as a complement to other forms of BPO work, an alternative to overseas labour migration, a catalyst for urban and rural development, and an attractive option for young graduates.…”
Section: Gig Economymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Recently, scholarship has started to engage with gig labor in non‐Western countries more seriously (e.g., Anwar & Graham, 2020a, 2020b; Soriano & Cabañes, 2019, 2020; Soriano & Panaligan, 2019). Different from labor markets in high‐income democracies like the United States or Germany, labor practices in low‐income countries were often informalized and precarious wellbefore the rise of the gig economy (Kalleberg, 2018).…”
This article considers the rapidly expanding online market for English teaching. Drawing on interviews with 11 Filipino online English teachers and the first author's own experiences teaching English online, we examine how teachers feel under the conditions of precarity they experience in the gig economy for language teaching. In addressing the experiences of Filipino teachers, we introduce the notion of "discounted nativeness." Discounted nativeness describes Filipino teachers' ambivalent position within the online English teaching industry: platforms take advantage of Filipino teachers' high levels of English proficiency-up to and including passing them off as American teacherswhile the teachers experience discrimination from students and maltreatment by the platforms. The article concludes by discussing the need for sustained research into the burgeoning market for online language teaching.
PurposeThe alternative arrangements to traditional employment have become a promising area in the gig economy with the technological advancements dominating every work. The purpose of this paper is to explore the barriers to the entry of gig workers in gig platforms pertaining to the food delivery sector. It proposes a framework using interpretive structural modelling (ISM) for which systematic literature review is done to extract the variables. This analysis helps to examine the relationship between the entry barriers to gig platforms. The study further proposes strategies to reduce the entry barriers in gig sector which would help to enhance productivity and generate employment opportunities.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses interpretive structural model (ISM) to ascertain the relationship between various entry barriers of the gig workers to the gig platforms. It also validates the relationship and understand the reasons of their association along with MICMAC analysis. The model was designed by consulting the gig workers and the experts allied to food delivery gig platforms namely Zomato and Swiggy.FindingsIt was observed that high competition, longer login hours and late-night deliveries are the significant barriers with high driving power and low dependence power. Poor payment structures and strict terms and conditions for receiving the incentives are interdependent on each other and have moderate driving and dependence power. The expenses borne by the gig workers, such as Internet, fuel and vehicle maintenance expenses have high dependence power and low driving power. Hence, they are relatively less significant than other barriers.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is confined to food delivery sector of India, without considering other important sectors of gig economy for generalizing the framework. As the study is based on forming an ISM framework through literature review only, it does not consider other research methods for analysing the entry barriers to the gig platforms.Practical implicationsThe study attempts to dig out the low entry barriers for gig workers in food delivery platforms as there is a dearth of analysis of these factors. This study would weave them using ISM framework to help the gig platforms overcome these barriers at various levels, thus adding to the body of literature.Originality/valueThe study discusses the need for understanding relationship between the entry barriers in the form of ISM model to identify the dependent and driving factors of the same.
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