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title: "Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance"
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# Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance
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Similarly, as Samrat said:
“My CTC (cost to company) on paper is 10 lakh per annum. Out of which 5 lakh is basic and 5 lakh is variable. But, my company will deduct 50% of the variable though it is not running in any loss. So, I would get (5 50% of 5) 7.5 Lakh per annum, which is in direct violation of the contract I had. But, there is no one to raise the voice.”
While wage-related issues and the degradation of work-life quality became key drivers for tech-worker organising, Bengali tech workers played a critical role in setting up the union, similar to their counterparts from Kerala in the city. This reflects the political temperament inherited from their home states, shaped by the ongoing legacies of parliamentary communism and trade union involvement in provincial politics. Many of our participants had prior engagement with Left-wing political parties and their youth and student fronts from their college days. This involvement shaped their political consciousness, which they carried into their work in the tech sector and their efforts in unionising. However, unions like the All India IT and ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU), affiliated with traditional trade union Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), were not region or ethnicity-specific. As our participant Sumit explained, “To fight an multinational corporation (MNC), the struggle must be national. If we protest locally, tech companies will just move operations elsewhere, making the fight pointless.”
Also, for many migrant tech workers, organising was not just about addressing workplace exploitation; it was also a means of building associational culture and power, and creating a sense of community for an otherwise alienated workforce. As Sumit explains:
“When the AIITEU was formed, and we had to campaign or take part in the marches, I felt a certain connection to the city and the space. It seemed like a continuation of the past life. So we proactively found time for Union work, even during office hours too, breaks were used to connect workers with the union members. And since Union was not a thing back then in our trade, there was a thrill doing it. It’s like you are using the time, space and salary provided by the company to organise against them only.”
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Similarly, Dipak stated:
“We unite to make work in the technology sector enjoyable, meaningful, socially useful, and personally fulfilling.” Thus, our participants, Bengali tech workers, were involved in civic actions with lower-class Bengali migrant workers communities as well as unionization efforts within the tech sector. Many of the tech workers had overlapping engagements in both areas. These efforts were primarily aimed at navigating the alienation they experienced as tech workers, while also fostering a sense of community centred around rights and social citizenship.
Nonetheless, the Bengali tech workers’ involvement with Bengali lower-class migrants living in the bastis—initially through civic interventions and later, as we show in the subsequent sections of this chapter, through sustained efforts to unionize them into the Inter-state Migration Federation of Karnataka (IMFK) and the All India Gig Workers Union (AIGWU), both affiliated with the traditional trade union CITU—also revealed an inherent contradiction, not just solidarity. The tech workers were relatively privileged, not only in terms of class status but also within the caste hierarchy when contrasted with lower class migrant workers living in bastis. Yet, they continued their efforts to organize these workers.
As described by our participant Samrat:
“Even though we get a 6 digit salary, wear nice clothes, but don’t forget we are also nothing but petty labour. Maybe we are a bit sophisticated. The hire and fire regime in the corporate world has made every job insecure now, these workers, rag pickers also have the same insecurity. The only difference is we still have some place to raise our voice, they have nothing. If I demand for job security these people should also have that platform too right? they cannot be simply jailed because of suspicion [as illegal citizens] right?”
While many members of AIITEU earn better wages and identify with both professional roles and tech management, the labour conditions they face expose their proletarianized reality. This contradictory class position (Wright, 1980), coupled with the absence of meaningful civic and socio-political participation in the host city’s formal structures, pushed these workers to seek solidarity and collective action as a means of asserting their rights and visibility. However, when they also foster solidarity with other marginalized and precarious workers—specifically, those who share their ethnic and linguistic background, this solidarity is not solely born from a labour stand point, but also because they interpreted the frames of migrant labour precarity through cultural frames. As Dipak expressed when asked why, as a tech worker, he engages with the lowerclass Bengali migrant workers in the bastis, “The kind of injustice and hard life that they go through, I feel compelled to contribute in my limited capacity, however possible. They are my people, after all.” Therefore, the Bengali sub-national consciousness shaped their socio-political engagements within Bengaluru city.
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7 Unionization Through Migrant Enclaves: from Civic Engagement to Political Rights
As Bengali tech workers sought a platform for civic and community action, their experiences and identities as migrants led them to connect with fellow migrant workers from the Bengali sub-national region. As Palash said “it is easy for us to connect with them; we speak the same language, and we all come from the same land.” For Bengali tech workers who do speak Kannada, engaging with lower-class Bengali migrant workers was also a matter of convenience. As a sub-national community, they also felt a need to uplift Bengali lower-class migrant families, through initiatives such as Pother Dabi. However, this rediscovery of sub-national community unfolded within the spatial fixity—defined as the “convergence of commodities, information, multifaceted human and nonhuman interactions, norms, customs, and social practices in a bounded geographical place” (Thuppilikkat et al., 2024)—found in the unauthorized settlements and labour bastis of lower-class Bengali migrant workers. These bastis, which house Bengali migrant rag-pickers, gig workers, and others engaged in informal labour, have become enclaves within the city, with its own rhythms and markers of identity.
As urban lower-class migrant enclaves, these bastis are surrounded by towering buildings that seem to erase their existence. Yet, within this enclave, everything needed to feel at home is present. During our participant observation, when we walked through these settlements, we passed by workers here who have carved out homes from rusting tin boxes and tarpaulin sheets, creating a semblance of stability in a city that offers little. Within it, there are tiny saloons, women managed small grocery shops, sites where men gather after long workdays to play carom game, small shops with TV set playing Bengali news channels in the evening, and films or sports at night, and streets lined with second-hand motorcycles, bicycles, and makeshift stalls, each contributing to the vibrant, albeit humble, life in the basti. We also identified a tea shop with Bengali music playing in the background, a fritter shop serving Bengali-style snacks like chop, and a mobile repair shop cum CD parlour where Bengali songs echo nonstop. In one corner, we observed a small Kalimata Mandir (a Hindu temple), where fresh flowers were placed every day. Above the tin roofs, we spotted bottle gourd vines climbing up, nurtured by the women of the family— lau, a vegetable beloved in Bengal, symbolising both their connection to home and the continuity of life in this alien city. Inside their small single room huts, posters of iconic Bengali figures like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore decorate the walls, a silent testament to their cultural pride. These workers knew they were not welcome in the city; their status as informal labourers left them marginalized. However, they are also acutely aware that the city desperately needs their cheap labour as much as they need the city to survive. In this precarious existence, they have forged an uneasy pact with the city—a city that does not fully acknowledge their presence but cannot function without them. For now, though, these workers remain rooted in the city, staying as long as their labour is needed and as long as they can send money back home to their families. The basti is their home, not by choice, but by necessity—a testament to their resilience in the face of exclusion and hardship.
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Critically, the engagement of Bengali tech workers within the lifeworld of migrant Bengali lower-class workers unfolded through their regular access to the bastis, which enjoyed spatial fixity. This provided tech workers a grounded connection to their social space and their multilayered livelihood struggles. Notably, the bastis display a deeply rooted struggle over social citizenship—an existential fight that the tech workers and educated Bengali migrants, who have found their place in the city’s corporate landscape, never had to face. With most of these workers being Bengali-speaking Muslims were routinely subjected to illogical harassment, random identity checks, and a societal witch-hunt that labels them as illegal citizens or Bangladeshis, and city administration’s threat of eviction of the bastis, many of Bengali tech-worker and educated migrant volunteers discovered that many of the workers in these bastis, whose children they teach on weekends, face imprisonment at the hands of local authorities when they are unable to satisfy official demands or clear doubts about their citizenship status. Therefore, the spatial fixity of the bastis was not merely a site where Bengali tech workers and educated classes found a space for civic intervention; it was also a learning site where, unlike tech workers, lower-class Bengali migrant workers faced significant challenges beyond workplace issues.
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For example, on December 3, 2018, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the city administration, issued a notification to evict the slum dwellers in Kundalahalli, which sparked massive mobilization by the residents, supported by the traditional trade union CITU, lawyers, and other human rights organizations, alongside tech workers navigating these spaces. On December 6, a stay order was issued by the Karnataka High Court, temporarily halting the eviction. This event fostered the development of political trust between the slum dwellers and the traditional trade unions, as well as other supporting actors. From that point onward, Bengali tech workers, as part of AIITEU, became involved in sustained political mobilization of the slum dwellers, including their participation in the all-India general strike organized by trade unions in January 2019.
On February 13, 2019, in Munnekollal, Bengaluru, 25 homes of migrant workers from West Bengal and Tripura were bulldozed. Armed goons attacked and ransacked the homes, injuring a woman and a child. The workers suspect the attack was orchestrated by the local MLA, driven by Hindutva politics, with the intention of targeting these individuals as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.“ When traditional trade unions and tech workers who had been organising the slum dwellers, approached the Labour Department for support, officials dismissed the incident as a petty land dispute rather than acknowledging it as a labour issue. This context paved the way for articulations of migrant labour organising around the right to the city and the demand for dignified social citizenship.
In India’s labour organizing context, which is deeply entangled with partisan politics, focusing on social citizenship also carried significant political implications. As Sumit said;
“During the effort of eviction we got to know it was the local BJP MLA who sent his musclemen to attack this slum people. The Hindutva goons are always behind these people [Muslim migrant workers], this can’t be solved with one protest or two protests.. It needs continuous political intervention for longer period.”
Similarly Dipak said:
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“The workers are seeing what Hindutva groups are doing. In bastis it’s not just Muslims. They know who wants to push them out. They will carry this back home as well. Like labour, the struggle against Hindutva is also multi-sited.”
Therefore, these tech workers, with partisan ties to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M))—once the ruling party in West Bengal but now challenged by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and the rise of Hindu nationalist party like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)— saw organizing migrant labourers as a critical site of political resistance as well. Organizing lower-class migrant workers was their way of channelling efforts to contribute to not just labour solidarity, but also to the political movements of their home state.
Nonetheless, in March, as the pandemic hit, 30 people from Dinajpur, West Bengal, stranded in Kattamanallur near KR Puram, received support from Bengali tech workers, Pother Dabi volunteers, and the traditional trade union CITU (many of them are native Kannadigas, Malayalees), who provided them with 15 days’ worth of rations. As the crisis deepened, the number of volunteers increased, with many being tech workers who were working from home. They took the initiative to support lowerclass Bengali migrants during COVID-19, using their personal vehicles to deliver essential mutual aid and food. By collecting money from friends and with the help of Gyan Vigyan Samity, they reached out to those in need, ultimately feeding 20.000 workers across Bengaluru. As Hari shared, “We started off with 2–3 people and two bikes. Later we had 18 people, 6 four-wheelers, and three bikes. From Bommanahalli to Yelahanka, even Ramnagar, we were reaching as many people as possible.” Some also expressed the futility of donating to union government funds, as they felt the state was neglecting migrant workers. As Dipak expressed People were giving [donations] to PM Cares, but they are not feeding anyone. So we had to.”
During the pandemic, lower-class Bengali migrant workers also felt the need to raise demands to their home state. As our participant Jabbar explained:
“COVID taught me a lesson. I have only one demand from the home state government: if we die and our bodies need to be returned to Bengal, it costs 20.000 rupees. Do we have that money? No. Many of our brothers are cremated in this foreign land. If the government could at least take on that responsibility, I would be happy.”
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In this context, where the labour issues faced by lower class Bengali migrant workers in bastis intersected with social citizenship and livelihood crises beyond the workplace, and with the growing realization of the need to articulate demands to the State—both in their home province and the host province—the continued civic and political mobilization of Bengali tech workers paved the way for the formation of the IMFK on September 19th, 2019. Affiliated with the traditional trade union CITU, they continued their organising efforts in various other lower-class Bengali migrant workers bastis, delivered union membership card distribution, asserting the identity of migrant workers as rights-bearing individuals in the city, further strengthening their collective presence and advocating for the rights and welfare of the workers. By the end of July 2021, the IMFK’s union expanded to bastis such as Munnekollal and Brookfield, further solidifying its presence and influence in the migrant worker communities.
8 Gig Worker Union and the Migrant Bastis: The Transversion of Migrant Networks into Gig Worker Networks
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, rag pickers and other informal workers living in lower-class migrant labour bastis faced severe unemployment and state neglect. While many of them had relied on informal kith and kin networks to find work, the pandemic and ensuing lockdown exacerbated their already precarious situation, leaving them in dire conditions. This led many in the bastis to opt for location-based DLPs, either to supplement their income or as full-time work. As our participant Hari said:
“...I also have to send money home. The pandemic made life difficult, so I took up a job in Swiggy [food delivery platform]. I used to rent electric bikes from the stand, do my duty, and then put it back. Now I got a second-hand motorcycle.”
Among our participants, many lower-class Bengali male migrants entered location-based DLPs for food delivery and ridesourcing, either by renting electric bikes or finding agents who sold Uber IDs and cabs in exchange for fixed rent or commission. As lower-class migrants, they often did not own their vehicles, so they had to rely on third parties to manage their access to these resources, facing not only fees and commissions to platforms, but also to other intermediaries. This created conditions for double exploitation, with platform and beyond platform. Furthermore, many women from these bastis entered location-based DLPs such as Urban Company, working as beauticians and domestic workers. However, their onboarding process was far from easy as many had anticipated. As our participant Jabbar explained:
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“Many people here want to do app-based work. But how will they do it? To register in Urban Company you have to submit a lump sum amount of money in the beginning. Most of the people here don’t have that kind of money. The only place that they can borrow money from is the Jhuggidar (often another Bengali migrant who has taken the land on lease from a local and is now renting it to the other Bengali workers), but if you don’t pay him in time, the torment will be unbearable. They will throw you from your home also.”
Therefore, many of our participants, the lower-class Bengali migrant workers, were dependent on intermediaries to secure jobs due to their vulnerable economic position. However, because of their reliance on informal networks, these intermediaries often came from within the Bengali migrant community itself. This created a cycle of dependence, where the lack of income from location-based DLPs could lead to further dispossession or additional challenges, such as housing eviction, as the workers navigated these informal, interconnected systems. Moreover, racialized imaginaries also pose challenges to migrant workers, particularly women, when it comes to onboarding with DLPs. As Ganesh explained:
“I work with Urban Company, but my wife works at people’s homes. We both clean their dirty bathroom. Back in the village I was a farmer, I didn’t let my wife work. But here it’s necessary, you can’t run a family alone. If only she knew beauty parlour work, she could also join an urban company, we could have earned double. But entering that section is difficult. Nepali girls are more in number, they are all fitfat (tidy-presentable) my wife dont stand a chance. (laughs).”
Nonetheless, despite such difficulties, these bastis, particularly after the post-pandemic period, have been serving DLPs with labour supply. One of the significant challenges migrant workers face is the lack of knowledge about the cityscape and the local language. If they find work outside DLPs, this lack of knowledge makes them dependent on stand-based auto drivers, who tend to charge higher fares. At least in the initial period of migration, most of our participants had difficulties using public transportation. The algorithmically dictated workflow and reduced human interactions in DLPs, was hence a blessing for many migrant workers. However, it did not eliminate their workplace challenges, as Samrat said:
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“The main problem here is language, we speak bangla. I can understand Hindi a little bit, but Kannda was very difficult to understand. Problem is if we face some issue with our customer, we can’t really argue much. They will start speaking in Kannada.”
While working in DLPs was their critical reliance, these migrants faced crises and exploitation within and beyond the workplace, such as reliance on intermediaries, threats of eviction, and harassment. Moreover, political forces driven by bigotry and insider-versus-outsider discrimination further compounded the severe challenges faced by many of these migrant DLP workers. Responding to the harassment and nativist rhetoric from sections of Bengaluru’s population, one of our participants, a DLP worker Jabbar, remarked:
“These people call us outsiders, Bangladeshis, and what not. But just look around—take any food delivery boy from the streets. How many local people will you find?? So, our labour is not an outsider, only our body is an outsider?”
Therefore, due to their multiple axes of marginality suffered by Bengali-speaking lower-class migrants in Bengaluru, these workers, often with the sustained efforts of tech workers who had long engaged with them, were mobilized not only into the IMFK but also into the AIGWU, often with dual memberships. Along with unionization the migrant basti found their own strategies of micro-resistance or bypassing the algorithmic control using their social network. Our respondent Jabbar interestingly told:
“I started working in Urban Company as a sanitation worker from 2022. After the covid other business was down, I also became a father so needed extra money. The work was doing fine, but the job was very draining. I could do maximum one job a day. So, I devised a strategy: I will take along one person from the Basti. Though I am the only one registered with the company. Since two people will work, I can save up energy and time and get more orders. I usually do a 50-50 but days I can’t work right I can do 40-60 as well. In this way daily I can get 3 orders now. During the holiday season I even have taken two more people with me looking at the demand of the work, if you do the work right, people don’t complain. Though at times I get scared that what if the company finds out, but benefits everyone. The client, me and other workers. Not everyone can join apps like that no, so many got their ids blocked without a reason. What will these people do? Remain unemployed? They also have families to feed. I do this much sin, I hope Allah will forgive me after looking at my intention.”
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They mindfully dodge the algorithmic surveillance of DLPs, relying on members of their bastis to generate additional employment and support through informal, under-the-radar networks that operated beyond the digital panopticon. Thus, even before unionising with gig worker union, the well-established labour networks within IMFK and the spatial fixity of the bastis provided lower-class migrant gig workers with breathing space to find workarounds against the exploitative nature of DLPs.
While organising workers in algorithmically enforced, spatially dispersed workforces, such as those in location-based DLPs, has often proven challenging for unions (Dhar & Thuppilikkat, 2022; Thuppilkkat, 2024), in this context, the spatial fixity of lower-class migrant workers bastis provided a unique entry point. It allowed tech workers to step in as external organizers, leveraging these anchored spaces to build solidarity and mobilize workers not only for workplace issues but also for broader livelihood struggles.
Notably, the effort by tech workers to organize gig workers navigating DLPs was also a conscious political decision, taken up by their AIITEU union. On the one hand, gig workers were critical infrastructures supporting the lives of tech workers in the city. On the other hand, it represented an experiment in finding converging points between tech workers and gig workers, both navigating tech-mediated workspaces. As Palash explained:
“We could see them being exploited every day. In Electronic City, where I live, half of the population is either part of these gigs or dependent on them. Many bachelors come here who don’t have the time or skills to cook, but they have money. What do they do? They order. For groceries, you can have home delivery, and for transportation, you can take an auto or bike through an app. Going out, finding an auto, and bargaining with the driver in a foreign language for the fare is like a massive task. But with the app, you’re free from all those hassles. So, gig workers are part of our everyday life.”
Furthermore, as tech-worker Sumit argued:
“If you are politicised enough, you will understand how the corporations that send you abroad on business trips are actually exploiting you. It is natural that you would understand the precarity these people [Gig workers] are going through. So, it was a thoughtful attempt from the union’s side to think in this direction.”
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