{"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":233,"pdf_page":241,"physical_index":241,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"55b62964bf9b22404c6b5f72d9f6332f763b1ead9be930786257dd288f74920e"},"chapter":"Dynamics ofVirtual Work","content":"With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many rag pickers—already suffering the hardships of informality—lost their jobs under the guise of physical distancing, hygiene, and safety measures, often exacerbated by classism and casteism. In this context, many shifted to location-based digital labour platforms (DLPs), such as food delivery services like Swiggy and Zomato, and care services like Urban Company. On these platforms, workers experienced selective formalization of their workflow, including features such as standardized rates (rather than negotiated payments with clients) and the direct deposit of earnings into linked bank accounts (Bertolini et al., 2023). For many, it was a way to supplement their income; for some, it even became their primary source of livelihood. Yet, for migrants enduring ethnic, linguistic and communal discrimination in the city, the centralization and control of work through DLPs (Abílio, 2023) provided not only an entry point for employment but also opened new doors to exploitation, a lack of voice, and powerlessness. In this context, this chapter examines how Bengali migrant workers in location-based DLPs in Bengaluru navigate multiple axes of marginality and organize themselves within the city.\n\n2 Traditional Trade Unions and Organizing the Unorganized\n\nTraditional trade unions have a rich history of formally representing the collective interests of workers in industries, large business establishments, and the public sector and demanding state regulations to protect workers’ well-being and rights. Their organizational form and leadership are structured, operate according to systematized rules and procedures and usually permit voluntary membership. However, from the 1980s and 1990s, globally, there was a marked decline in traditional trade union membership, political influence and bargaining capacity against employers and state (Kelly, 2015) mainly due to the informalization and fragmentation of the production process through subcontracting, outsourcing and massive adoption of temporary and part-time employment structures.\n\nIn the Global South, the triumph of the neoliberal economic policy regime (and the withdrawal from the import substitution industrialization) and the global mobility of capital in search of cheap labour has led to the enormous shrinking of the formal sector, where traditional trade unions faced a huge decline in membership (Visser, 2019, p. 19), and the rise of the informal and unorganized sector with high work participation by women and migrant workers as well. Therefore, the traditional trade unions confronted not just the challenge of weakening social security and declining employment opportunities in the formal sector but the difficulty of representing the growing diversity of workers’ interests and attracting union membership in the “new forms of work,” where “large workforces, with identifiable common interests and employers, and [workspace] which are physically and geographically bounded” (Doherty & Franca, 2020, p. 126) did not necessarily exist. Therefore, they had limited success in organizing the peripheral workers, those outside the permanent and fulltime job contracts in industries and enterprises largely deploying migrant workers, and informal, part-time, and temporary/casual labour (Hyman, 2002, p. 13).\n\n9 TRANSVERSAL UNIONISM: RESISTING AND NAVIGATING\n\n233","previous_page":232,"next_page":234}