3 Migrant labour and Its Predatory Inclusion in the Gig Economy
Another noteworthy aspect which is partly related to the idea of refeudalisation concerns the composition of the platform workforce and its relentless and gradual racialisation over the years. To see how the world of digital labour platforms has rapidly become a ‘stronghold’ of migrant labour, one need only look at any of the many metropolises around the world where on-demand platforms are present (Altenried, 2021). Extensive analyses, both focusing on the digital crowdwork sphere and those concerning place-based urban service platforms, have highlighted how the labour markets offered by these platforms have become a preferred terrain for migrant workers, sometimes evolving into an infrastructure of mobility in migration, often reproducing and crystallising past colonial trajectories and disparities (Bernard, 2023; Casilli, 2017). In the case of online crowdwork, for example, an ILO 2021 report even argues that platforms can be a suitable space to ‘train’ and put to work the masses of asylum seekers in refugee camps across Africa (Hackl, 2021). Regarding on-demand work, as Van Doorn and Vijay (2021) suggest, it is increasingly evident that the availability of migrant labour pools constitutes a crucial resource for platform growth, as significant as financial investments and permissive regulatory environments. As Bernard (2023) points out in her recent research about Uber drivers in Paris, London and Montreal, racialised workers constitute a valuable reserve army for the platform, providing it with a docile and available workforce. However, this is not always and necessarily the case, as platforms can also see a strong presence of indigenous workers, especially in smaller urban areas or in peripheral areas of economic development (where labour markets are commonly insufficient to ensure the reproduction of the workforce and where unemployment rates are high).
3 DIGITAL CAPORALATO AND MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE GIG
63