{"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":118,"pdf_page":131,"physical_index":131,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6e85336c6f767848dc95fe9ae372bcbdc6a5f5d5d3cd96f9dac819c76fa5caf7"},"chapter":"Dynamics ofVirtual Work","content":"Working as platform amphibians becomes an attractive terrain of gig employment for migrants because most of them come to cities with the hope of increasing their familial income. These workers do not only earn for themselves but rather have to earn sufficiently enough to provide for their lives in the cities, as well as provide for the lives of their families back in their native places. Two migrant workers, Raman from West Bengal and Ashraf from rural Bihar<sup>22</sup> who now work in Delhi and Bengaluru, respectively, narrate:\n\nThe amount of money that I get on Swiggy—I work mainly on Swiggy only—is not sufficient at all. It rarely covers the expenses. Now I also work on Urban Company as an electrician. It is a difficult life. Sometimes, I feel that staying back in Bihar would have been better. These fancy roads were not there, but at least food and other sustenance goods was there in plenty.\n\nI have been working on Dunzo for more than 2 years now, but I have not yet received more than 15.000 rupees in a month. When I came here, I thought I would send money home, but now I am finding it difficult to even survive myself. Returning home is also not an option because there are no avenues for employment there. I would have to work maybe as a daily wage worker. Here at least I have some dignity.\n\nA key aspect that the worker has highlighted above is the lack of developmental initiative present in the country’s poorer regions. The growing uneven development in the country, with the country’s hinterlands— the major source of migrant gig workers—suffering the most due to the lack of developmental initiatives and geopolitical backwardness (Deb Roy, 2024c). This was accompanied in India in the early 1990s with a constant decrease in the funds allocated to programmes which used to directly benefit the poor and the marginalised, along with reduced public expenditure, rural development funds and employment generation programmes. Following this, the state in India promoted the formation of ‘primitive accumulation in an anticipatory sense as compared to actual dispossession’ (Adnan, 2014, p. 32). Primitive accumulation in India has produced the basis for the transition of the agrarian economy to a neoliberal one, and as such has decimated the agrarian relations of production in the country resulting in a growing reserve army of labour for capital in the urban spaces to exploit (Gopalakrishnan, 2009). The growth of gig work through these methods reflects the constant relevance of primitive accumulation as an important part of capitalist exploitation even today. The capitalist social structure demands that the workers are completely separated from all forms of property which makes them completely subservient to the means to which they can realise their labour. Capitalism thrives by actively reinforcing this distinction, and ‘… the so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the prehistoric stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it’ (Godelier, 1967, p. 99). However, for the migrant platform-based gig workers, this process of separation works within both the material and within the digital ecosystem. Materially, they remain segregated from the products of their labour like all other workers, but they also get ideologically exploited because of the mental stigmatisation that they face. One worker from the north-east recounts:\n\n118\n\nS. D. ROY\n\n<sup>22</sup> Names changed due to privacy concerns.","previous_page":117,"next_page":119}