{"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":73,"pdf_page":87,"physical_index":87,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"183e79ab760246f5d82feac2b2d56d64d832909e51f7fb2719b30f09a70d8b4d"},"chapter":"Dynamics ofVirtual Work","content":"In the case of food delivery in Italy, one of the mechanisms of illegal labour intermediation that finds a place in the environment of official apps concerns the self-booking mechanism of work slots. During the pandemic and up to the present day, illegal services have proliferated that allow the acquisition of greater work opportunities and that operate through specific software, known as pirate bots. Bots are a shortcut to work for those with low rankings and unable to get enough work slots. However, bots are also a burden on the shoulders of the workers themselves, increasing unfair competition and forcing those who use them to pay large sums of money each week. As a rider in Turin explains:\n\nUsing bots is stupid, and most of all, it hurts your colleagues. Bots are made to enslave us and blackmail us even more, you pay to get them, if they were for free, it would be different. To use them, you must spend a certain amount per week, it’s a system to make bastards rich, who profit from the competition of underclasses like the riders (A., Glovo rider).\n\nAs another rider from Turin explains, platform companies are more or less directly responsible of this kind of racket:\n\nBetween the accounts that are for sale and now the hours that can be bought by these bots, we are immersed in a Wild West labour system. We should publicly denounce the companies because they favour the black market, they have created a working environment without rules, a war of all against all, where the smartest or most ruthless wins (D., Glovo rider).\n\nIn sum, the bot market represents a further form of illicit labour intermediation and, therefore, can be understood as an informal expression of digital caporalato. Of course, there are even more discreet forms of parasitic interposition of riders’ work that take place face to face; but it is also possible that the informal exchange, sharing or transfer of riders’ accounts takes place simply on the basis of solidarity, acquaintance and personal friendship—without any form of exploitation involved.\n\n5 Conclusion\n\nOver the last decade, the gig economy has proven to be a particularly favourable arena for migrant labour. This is happening not only in Europe, with massive extra-continental labour flows, but also in other global regions, as in the case of Argentina, where labour flows are predominantly—but not exclusively—intra-continental Latin American. The paper confirmed this hypothesis, which has been widely discussed in the literature, but also revealed some hidden aspects of platforms as migration labour infrastructures. If it is true that easy access to platforms, represented by low entry barriers (mainly easy registration and no need to know the native language), allows migrants to quickly find employment in host countries, the working conditions offered can often be a trap rather than an opportunity for them. The flourishing of forms of digital caporalato within the gig economy demonstrates that the gig economy offers a deliberately crafted race to the bottom specifically designed to include the migrant component of the workforce in its political economy, revealing a model of labour entrapment with little chance of escape. The recruitment policies of managers (as in the case of FRC and UberEats) as well as the informal circuits of illicit labour intermediation (such as Uber’s fleets) seem in fact designed specifically to differentially and predatorily include the migrant portion of the workforce in platforms. But more than a negative spillover effect, the phenomenon of digital caporalato is the consequence of the same organisational design that structures platform work. As also argued, for instance, by the Italian Commission on gangmasterism, the evanescent figure of the employer in platform work constitutes a favourable opportunity for the emergence of these phenomena of labour exploitation. The political need to stop the unbridled use of forms of independent subcontracting is therefore an issue that is not only related to the labour protections won through decades of struggle and progress, but also to the need to stop forms of racism that operate on the basis of a second-class labour market built specifically for migrant workers.\n\n3 DIGITAL CAPORALATO AND MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE GIG …\n\n73","previous_page":72,"next_page":74}