Uneven geographical development is an essential part of capitalist development, as Harvey (2006) had argued, which produces the avenues of spatial exploitation that capitalism can use for its own benefits. The growth of uneven development has an intrinsic connection with the rise of gentrification as a social ideology in the society, which gets reflected within the local and regional levels (Smith, 1982). Gentrification under contemporary capitalism, as Stein (2019) shows, has become an important part of capitalist reimagination of urban spaces based on the exclusion—either materially or ideologically or both—of the marginalised from these spaces. This manifests itself in the way different services and commodities are provided to the urban populace of the country, including certain services deemed essential for sustenance, which are based on the exploitation of the working class driving them towards states of heightened precarity and exclusion. This occurs despite certain platform workers being accorded the status of essential workers (de Neve et al., 2023). Under contemporary capitalism, the platform-based gig economy has come to occupy an important position in this regard. The gig economy refers to the economic structure created out of the usage of digital platforms and technology in certain jobs (Woodcock & Graham, 2019).
The gig economy that has grown through the platforms has reshaped cities and the socio-economic relations of production therein (Huws, 2014). The growth of urban infrastructures globally has resulted in a change in the dynamics of global labour processes in such a way that labouring has become synonymous with high productivity, flexibility and a sense of ‘alienated’ autonomy for the workers. Most of these changes have come in the wake of an increased presence of digital technologies in the urban spaces which have ushered in a new era of capitalist domination and networking in the society. The gig economy has emerged as a key term in most of the contemporary employment practices with it being practised increasingly in the domains of ride hailing (passenger transport), delivery work, services and freight transport. Taylor et al. (2017) define the gig workers to be those workers who use phones and digital applications— commonly known as platforms—to sell their labour power. That being said, it is also important to note, as Huws et al. (2016) have argued, that the gig economy does not survive purely through digital interactions and also requires significant physical interactions. These interactions are often managed through algorithmic management-based processes based on soft controlling structures gaining prominence within the labour process (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016). It extends a company’s customer management strategies in such a way that ‘customer, rather than managers, are […] the ones who must be pleased, whose orders must be followed, whose ideas, whims and desires appear to dictate how work is performed’ (Fuller & Smith, 1991, p. 11). The growth of such structures has proved to be ‘fatal’ for migrant workers in the gig economy who remain the most easily accessible source of cheap labour power for the platforms in urban spaces across the globe (Alyanak et al., 2023; Kowalik et al., 2023). Migrant workers get attracted towards platform-based gig workers because they provide them with an easier access to urban spaces, quick and lesser bureaucratic gatekeeping (Altenried, 2024). At the same time, some workers also prefer working as gig workers because it gives them a sense of empowerment and social status that places them at a higher pedestal than other informal workers. This is despite the fact that working for platforms in India, as De Neve et al. (2023) argue, consists of working conditions very similar to the informal economy.
5 MIGRANT GIG WORKERS OF INDIA’S CONSUMERIST CITIES
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