--- schema_version: "library-reader-v1" source_type: "original_book" 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" library_document_id: "ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32" source_sha256: "47c7c08da0933a56a20193e0938b4f864c4eee2c4d93e47abe99898e2ac4b485" pdf_physical_page_count: 270 pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0 range_start: 240 range_count: 10 html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32?start=240&limit=10" markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=240&limit=10" previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=230&limit=10" next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=250&limit=10" --- # Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance > 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=240 | PRINTED_PAGE=232 Jabbar (name anonymized) is one of the many thousands from West Bengal who have migrated to Bengaluru, Karnataka—the so-called Silicon Valley of India in search of a better future. Hailing from a village in Murshidabad, West Bengal, he represents a generation that is forced into precarious urban work by the gradual erosion of agricultural jobs and state neglect (Mistri, 2021; NSO, 2019). Following the footprint of the people came earlier, he relied on the social network from his village and district, people who had already moved here, eventually securing work as a rag picker in Bengaluru—an occupation in which Bengali Muslims are disproportionately represented across Indian metropolizes (Chakraborty et al., 2022; Paul, 2023). Soon after settling, Jabbar brought his wife and children to live in a slum near Bengaluru’s Whitefield, one of many Bengali migrant hubs in the city. Across Bengaluru, one can find distinct ghettos or unauthorized settlements formed by the different migrant communities. There are people from within Karnataka, including Dakhini speakers from regions such as Kalburgi and Bolar; Telugu-speaking people from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; Bengali-speaking Muslims from Assam, Tripura, and Bengal; and a large number of Hindi-speaking migrants from the Hindi heartland. The people from Bengal who live in these enclaves are spatially clustered according to their place of origin, i.e., the districts. For example, workers from Nadia and Murshidabad districts primarily live in Kundalahalli, working in garbage collection, domestic work, and construction. Migrants from Howrah (Amta and Jagatballavpur) are concentrated in Varthur, employed mainly as gold artisans or zari workers. Meanwhile, those from Medinipur have clustered near Kaggadasapura, where painting work is their main occupation. These workers, many who are Muslims, face persistent discrimination and suspicion due to the language that they speak; branded as “infiltrators,” “ghuspetiyas,” “illegal immigrants,” and “Bangladeshis,” with their religious identity and place of origin in India’s porous eastern borderlands mutually reinforcing the optics of scrutiny, suspicion and exclusion. Despite over 1.3 million Bengalis in Bengaluru, lower-class Bengali migrants inhabit a distinct geography of survival and sociability, centred around their labour bastis (informal settlements), while being denied dignified social citizenship. 232 D. DHAR ET AL. S. Bhattacharya KREA University, Andhra Pradesh, India e-mail: soham.bhattacharya@krea.edu.in ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=241 | PRINTED_PAGE=233 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. 2 Traditional Trade Unions and Organizing the Unorganized Traditional 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. In 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). 9 TRANSVERSAL UNIONISM: RESISTING AND NAVIGATING 233 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=242 | PRINTED_PAGE=234 The failure of traditional trade unions to organize precarious workers in the informal sector, attend migrant workers, and the gig economy, partly because of the sole dependence on class-based universalistic approach and changing nature of work and workspace (Kulkarni & Datta, 2024), also invited an outcry for trade union revitalization and rethinking of strategies (Bensusán, 2019; Fine, 2011). This also led to experimentation of new forms of labour organizing for collective bargaining and worker representation, including the worker centres among immigrant labourers (community-based labour mediation and support institutions), worker associations and networks, informal unionism, hybrid and networked unionism, social movement unionism, forming different kinds of cooperatives (Chesta et al., 2019; Dhar & Thuppilikkat, 2022; Marrone & Finotto, 2019; Salvagni et al., 2022; Thuppilikkat et al., 2024; Webster & Forrest, 2019; Webster et al., 2021). Many of these new forms of unionism have challenged hierarchical leadership structures and reevaluated the role of external organizers, a practice that traditional trade unions typically adhered to. Furthermore, some of the emerging associational formations of workers did not even formally engage in collective bargaining with employers (Mosco, 2008, pp. 33–35), and focused on issues beyond the workplace. Recent studies, particularly on digital labour platforms, exploring cases outside of digital labour platforms, have also highlighted that migrant identities and ethnic connections play a key role in fostering cultures of solidarity and collective action, both online and offline (Zhou, 2024; Zhou & Pun, 2024). Grohmann et al. (2023) identified how WhatsApp groups of Brazilian riders in the UK, built on shared ethnicity, foster digital spaces for DLP workers to address work issues and organize collective action. Similarly, studies have highlighted how migrant status generates shared experiences, fosters communities, and even enables resistance (Mendonça et al., 2022). In this context, researchers have called for exploring migration as a source of workers’ social power, examining its strength and limitations (Zhou, 2024). 234 D. DHAR ET AL. ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=243 | PRINTED_PAGE=235 However, ifwe zoom into the Indian scenario, particularly after neoliberal economic reforms from the mid-1980s, unions are faced with the struggle to organize new regimes of work. Many have argued that traditional trade unions need to focus on emerging industries such as the IT and Business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, their success in organizing these sectors has been limited (Sundar, 2006). Even in the early 2000s, IT employees in Indian cities like Bangalore formed groups like the IT Professionals Forum but largely distanced themselves from unions. This was due to factors such as a desire to distinguish themselves from blue-collar workers, coupled with many employees’ direct access to higher-ups and efficient communication systems (Sundar, 2006). Nonetheless, trade unions also have struggled to organize lower-class migrant workers, predominant in the informal sector. Scholars have examined the internal dynamics of traditional trade unions to understand their lack of inclusivity towards the migrant labour force. They have highlighted factors such as challenges in aggregating workers’ interests, where unions carried assumptions ofworker homogeneity (Menon, 2020; Sundar, 2007, 2019). Furthermore, the dominance of local majorities within unions in respective provinces has further marginalized migrant workers (Sundar, 2007). Furthermore, particularly in the case of lowerclass migrant labour, their distinct spatio-temporalities, such as mobility and temporary residency, is also identified as hindering unionization efforts (Rogaly, 2001). Evidently, the traditional strength of trade unions, rooted in their ability to engage in bipartite or tripartite wage bargaining between labour, employers, and the state—particularly when employers violated workers’ rights enshrined in laws and procedural norms—has eroded, as such clear agreements are largely absent in the informal sector. With the rise of digital labour platforms, where weak state regulations, labour misclassification (e.g. “partner”/independent contractor) and opaque algorithmic management defined the work atmosphere, unions are encountering similar challenges in advocating for workers’ rights and representation. Nonetheless, recent studies indicate that trade unions have diversified their strategies, shifting from a class-based, universalistic approach to incorporating a more particularistic approach that acknowledges the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences of migrant workers (Kulkarni & Datta, 2024). With this shift, unions also started extending support beyond the workplace, addressing issues in workers’ broader social environments (Ibid). However, existing literature lacks an examination of how unions concretely address these ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences. Similarly, there is also evidence of traditional trade unions’ organizing attempts among IT workers and digital labour platform workers (Thuppilikkat et al., 2024; Thuppilikkat et al., 2025). In this context, we explore a scenario where a traditional trade union in India organized both lower-class migrant workers and workers on digital labour platforms, with tech workers playing a crucial role. We examine how the union framed strategies that went beyond class universalism, incorporating the unique needs and identities of these diverse worker groups. 9 TRANSVERSAL UNIONISM: RESISTING AND NAVIGATING 235 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=244 | PRINTED_PAGE=236 3 Bengaluru: The Migrant City Bengaluru, often referred to as the city of aspirations, drew energy from India’s liberalization policies in the mid-1980s, positioning itself as a hub for IT firms from the global North seeking low operational costs and access to a growing pool of skilled, affordable labour. This led to the rapid growth of IT, software industries, and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sectors, and Bengaluru soon earned the label of India’s Start-up Capital (Heitzman, 1999; Parthasarathy, 2004; Patni, 1999; Saxenian, 2002). With the IT boom, skilled human capital from both within India and abroad flocked to Bengaluru. The city actively encouraged the influx of migrant tech workers, drawn by opportunities to work for global giants like Infosys, Wipro, Google, and Microsoft. Bengaluru’s welcoming atmosphere, combined with promises of long-term career growth and access to robust healthcare and education systems, made it an attractive destination for tech professionals seeking career advancement and stability. However, alongside their expertise and the flow of capital and technology, the contributions of lower-class migrant workers— from rag pickers, construction workers and sanitation workers to domestic workers—were equally vital in facilitating the city’s expansion both vertically and horizontally. This rapid transformation led to significant changes in the “human-nature-space” of the city (Vakulabharanam & Motiram, 2024), prompting the expansion of urban boundaries and the conversion of areas once considered part of the mofussil or deemed “uninhabitable”—such as water bodies and forests—into urban spaces (see Table 1, Appendix). 236 D. DHAR ET AL. ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=245 | PRINTED_PAGE=237 While lower-class migrant workers supported the social and reproductive needs of the “white-collar” class and tech workers, they often found themselves navigating the harsh realities of informality. These workers were unable to aspire to a quality of life that included decent housing, basic sanitation, access to safe drinking water, healthcare, fair working conditions, and a fulfilling social life (Zabeer et al., 2019). In a city producing 5.000 tonnes of solid waste daily, where migrants make up 51% of the population, working populations such as rag pickers forced to live in informal settlements not only endure unhygienic conditions but also face constant threats of dispossession by authorities. Most migrant workers remain trapped in a cycle, oscillating between the dehumanising conditions of urban life and the economic hardships of their villages, with no reprieve in sight (Muktiar & Sharma, 2024). Since 2014, Bengaluru’s urban landscape has also been shaped by the growing presence of digital labour platform (DLP) workers, many of whom are migrants providing essential services like transportation, care work, and food delivery. Similar to the domestic work sector, which absorbs a large portion of rural and semi-urban migrants, locationbased DLPs have become a major source of employment for these workers (Tandon & Rathi, 2023). While DLPs play a crucial macroeconomic role by absorbing migrant labour and enabling their mobility through simplified onboarding and tech-mediated workflows (e.g., GPS and algorithmically managed tasks), they also exploit racialized and castedetermined migrant labour flows, leveraging their precarity to impose long hours and further entrenching inequalities (Van Doorn & Vijay, 2024; Katta et al., 2024). Notably, the migrant workers in digital labour platforms (DLPs) exhibit high tolerance for degraded working conditions—an imposed position due to their structural vulnerabilities (Zhou, 2024). Urban economic growth has clearly relied on the exploitation of lowpaid migrant labour, with workers’ rights systematically denied through extra-legal and informal labour market mechanisms (Jayaram & Varma, 2020). Typically engaged in subcontracted jobs and digital labour platforms, where employer accountability is often obscured, these workers are excluded from labour laws and state oversight, resulting in severe exploitation (Jain & Sharma, 2018; Jayaram, 2019). In this context, our case study will explore how traditional trade unions have organized migrant workers, despite the fact that many of these workers lack direct employer accountability. 9 TRANSVERSAL UNIONISM: RESISTING AND NAVIGATING 237 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=246 | PRINTED_PAGE=238 4 Background: Bengali Migrants and Its Quest of Building a “Home” Bengaluru has seen significant migration from eastern Indian states such as West Bengal, with many migrants choosing the city due to the hostile social environment in northern and western India, as well as the relatively higher wages offered in southern India (Chakraborty et al., 2022; Reja & Das, 2019). Unlike educated and high-income Bengali migrants who often bring their families, most lower-class migrant workers face conditions that prevent family relocation, with Bengaluru’s rag pickers being a critical exception (Chakraborty et al., 2022). Many of these migrants also move across different destinations, navigating uncertainty along the way (Ibid). Furthermore, West Bengal, with its long border with Bangladesh and shared Bengali ethnicity, hosts many Bangladeshi migrants, who, while not facing significant divisions locally, are often seen as infiltrators elsewhere in India, affecting mainly lower-class migrant lives (Shamshad, 2017). With the rise of Hindutva politics, undocumented Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants are increasingly seen as threats to national security, making life particularly difficult for Muslim migrants (Ramachandran, 1999). Notably, with the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act under the Modi regime, migrant workers, particularly those living in Bengaluru’s informal settlements, became highly vulnerable, often facing eviction without notice and facing power and water disconnections by authorities (Chandran, 2020). For example, in 2020 the Bengaluru Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) razed a labour settlement at Kariyammana Agrahara to the ground, with Bangla-speaking Muslims being labelled as Bangladeshis (Bhat, 2020). 5 Data and Methodology This paper draws on qualitative field data collected in December 2023, which includes participant observation, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions conducted in various Bengali bastis in Whitefield and Electronic City, Bengaluru. In total, 13 participants took part in the in-depth interviews, including five worker-organizers and eight union members. The interviews were conducted at union offices and in Whitefield, one of the largest Bengali slums in Bengaluru, with one worker-organizer interviewed via telephone. Additionally, four focus group discussions were held, with each group consisting of 20 to 30 participants. Two of the groups consisted exclusively of young men; one group comprised only women; and the fourth was a mixed-gender group. To complement these primary data sources, we also analysed social media content, such as union Facebook pages and Facebook posts by union members, with their consent, to understand the chronology of events and track the unions’ routine activities. 238 D. DHAR ET AL. ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=247 | PRINTED_PAGE=239 9 TRANSVERSAL UNIONISM: RESISTING AND NAVIGATING 239 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=248 | PRINTED_PAGE=240 6 The Alienated Tech Workers and Bengali Sub-national Consciousness: Civic Interventions & Tech-Worker Organizing Bengali migrants, particularly tech workers and the educated Bengali middle class—many of whom are from privilaged-caste backgrounds— enjoy access to a vibrant associational life in Bengaluru. The city is home to over 120 Bengali associations (DHNS, 2019), celebrated for fostering Bengali culture in Bengaluru. Events such as Durga Puja, a quintessential Bengali festival, are prominently celebrated and occasionally attended by chief ministers and other prominent state politicians, who commend Bengali tech workers and educated migrants for creating a “slice of Bengal” in the city (Ibid.). In stark contrast, lower-class Bengali migrant workers are often met with suspicion and discrimination in their daily lives, particularly from administrative authorities. Nonetheless, while tech workers and educated migrants leverage their skills for higher incomes in multinational corporations, many also engage in civic actions within the city, particularly among the lower-class Bengali migrant workers, striving to foster a sense of purpose and social belonging beyond their professional aspirations. For example, during our field study, we got to know about an organization in Bengaluru named “Pother Dabi,” a name popularized in West Bengal through the novel by Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay. Established in July 2018, the organization identifies itself as a youth-led initiative with the motto, “Serve the oppressed, serve the country.” It explicitly states that it is not an non-governmental organization (NGO) or a corporate social responsibility (CSR)-funded organization, instead they appeal to the Bengali residents in Bengaluru to contribute financially and engage their families in its activities. Through this community-driven approach, the organization aims to undertake social initiatives, such as providing education to Bengali migrant children in sites such as Kundalahalli, Bengaluru. Our participants involved in the Pother Dabi initiative indicated that their social action was primarily a response to the alienation they experienced as first-generation migrant tech workers in Bengaluru. Palash, our participant said: “Bengaluru for me was strictly a workplace. I didn’t have many people to socialize with. Monday to Friday you act like a Corporate Majdoor. Wake up, work and come back exhausted to sleep. We have nothing much to do on weekends as well. How much partying can one do? You will start to feel the hollowness. Back there in Kolkata we had a vibrant political culture. Meeting, Michil (rallies) were like a part of our life, here you don’t see all that happening.” 240 D. DHAR ET AL. ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=249 | PRINTED_PAGE=241 The opportunities for civic, social, and political engagement that they had in their home state were absent in Bengaluru, where they felt reduced to migrant labour within multinational corporations. In an effort to reclaim a sense of social citizenship, they identified the lower-class Bengali migrant workers community in Bengaluru as a critical site for community action, enabling them to reconnect with their ethnic identity and language while engaging in meaningful social work. These workers’ recognized an opportunity when they discovered that, despite the affordability of nearby government schools, the mandatory use of Kannada as the medium of instruction posed significant challenges for lower-class migrant children, leading many to become early school dropouts. Even children who had received preliminary education in West Bengal were unable to continue their education in Bengaluru due to the language barrier. As a result, during the weekends, the tech workers and other educated Bengali youth began holding regular educational classes for lower-class migrant children in subjects such as Maths, Science, English, and Bengali, with the aim of empowering them and providing opportunities for learning. Initially focused on weekend teaching, their initiative gradually expanded to include organising blood donation camps, lake cleaning drives, and cultural programs for lower-class migrant workers, all aimed at improving their social habitat and making it more livable. As our participant Dipak stated, “Many of our friends, who were never part of any union or organisation, started joining us for the school. There was a sense of community.” Therefore, the Pother Dabi initiative also provided an avenue for tech workers and the educated Bengali class to find a community for social action. On Saturdays and Sunday evenings, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm, they found fulfilment in volunteering for marginalized Bengali children, taking on the roles of dada (elder brother) and didi (elder sister). Furthermore, in addition to the vulnerabilities, insecurities and exploitation within the corporate tech world, many Bengali tech workers became involved in tech-worker organising. On January 6, 2018, the All India IT and ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU) was founded, offering membership to any employee working in the Information Technology (IT), Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS), or computer/ software-aided industries in the state of Karnataka. This included workers employed directly, through contractors, or on work-based contracts, among other forms of employment. The intent behind the unionization was to fight for better and fairer working conditions for all employees in the IT and ITeS industry, regardless of their background or area of service. As one of our participant Sumit explained, around 40 million personnel work in the IT sector, it remains largely unmonitored. Some states exempt the IT sector from the Shop and Establishment Act, resulting in no specified working hours, no provision for overtime pay, and the ability for employers to hire and fire at will. 9 TRANSVERSAL UNIONISM: RESISTING AND NAVIGATING 241 下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=250&limit=10)