{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","title":"Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9783031912610","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","id":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","uuid":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","title":"Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance","normalized_title":"migrantlabourinthegigeconomytheintersectionofmigrantlabourplatformcapitalismandresistance","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9783031912610","isbns":["9783031912610","9783031912627"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":270,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Migrant%20Labour%20in%20the%20Gig%20Economy%20The%20Intersection%20of%20Migrant%20Labour%2C%20Platform%20Capitalism%2C%20and%20Resistance","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/search"},"page":{"printed_page":112,"pdf_page":125,"physical_index":125,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a8054ab1bfcc758e5183331f2bfdb2860b6cbc08f872773dea095cd89ae50563"},"chapter":"Dynamics ofVirtual Work","content":"Such conditions (and expectations) created by the platforms have had an important effect on the labour and employment relations (Zukerfeld, 2022), especially because of the destabilising effects that they have on the formal structures of employment (Huws et al., 2018). The delivery workers fulfil an essential requirement for the domination of the commodity form. Commodities, under capitalism, as Marx (1867/1976) had pointed out, have become the axis within which the society structures itself.<sup>17</sup> Commodities and the ability to consume become the most important part of the middle class ontology that technologically mediated urban spaces create and propagate in the society (Deb Roy, 2021). For most of the middle class, the delivery workers thus play a critical role in providing a sense of belongingness within the urban space because belongingness within the urban space today gets constituted not only through one’s ability to possess commodities but also through the processes in which one gets access to the commodities. This produces the ideal circumstances for the schema of expanded reproduction that contributes to the growth of capital accumulation in the society (Marx, 1885/1992, 1973/1993). Logged labour, comprising labour processes where individual skills are broken down into distinct and separate smaller tasks (or units of work), plays a key role in this process of deskilling (Huws, 2016a). One migrant worker from Assam, who was previously an agricultural worker, and now works as an Amazon delivery worker stated:\n\nI used to work in my family’s field. Came here to make a life and also thought that with so much technology, I will also get some work after leaning some skill, but after coming here I have realised that things are not so simple. I have been working as a delivery worker only, and now even have forgotten field work. It will take me months to readjust myself. Could not learn any new skills also. I also have a 10.000 rupees debt which I am finding difficult to repay.\n\nDeskilling under capitalism has been an important part of the network of capitalist exploitation. It has been an instrumental force in the creation of seamless service mechanisms put forward by the platforms.<sup>18</sup> Platforms use a diverse range of tactics to encourage a gradual deskilling of the workforce, whereby a greater task is divided into a multitude of smaller tasks which makes it difficult for workers to gain a control over the larger labour process (Huws, 2020). The growth of network enterprises and platforms that build on networks—both technological and human—have come to dominate the informational phase of capitalism, that characterises the modern phase of capitalism (Castells, 1996). Gig workers in this context provide services to a growing consumer base of informational goods as well as act as mediators of the service delivery systems (Zukerfeld, 2022). These gig workers have increasingly begun to be composed of migrant workers who have been constantly put under the growing financial and social duress that have come to characterise rural India. Rural-to-urban migration has been a key feature of capitalist development since the early 1990s in India. The growth of such migration has mostly rested on the growth of distress migration that has followed the neoliberal economic policies since the late 1980s and more so, since its formal institutionalisation in 1991.\n\n112\n\nS. D. ROY\n\n<sup>17</sup> Marx had argued that any commodity is ‘[an] external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind. The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference. Nor does it matter here how the thing satisfies man’s needs, whether directly as a means of subsistence, i.e. an object of consumption, or indirectly as a means of production’ (Marx 1867/1976, p. 125).","previous_page":111,"next_page":113}