Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance

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G. PIRINA

4 DELIVERING IN THE LAGOON. CRITICAL REFLECTIONS …

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Migrant Gig Workers of India’s Consumerist Cities: The Contradictions of Platform Economy and Delivery Work in Neoliberal India

Suddhabrata Deb Roy

1 Introduction

The world today that human beings inhabit is one that has grown to accept urbanism as a distinct way of life. Urbanism has triumphed over all other pre-existing ways of life, with urban spaces becoming the representative forms of the capitalist way of life in most societies. In India as well—a country historically known for harbouring a multitude of social and financial shortages (Sau, 1984)—urban spaces have come to be deemed as one of the most important markers and drivers of progress and development along with technology (Lefebvre, 1991; Stewart, 1977). The interconnectedness of space, nature and capitalist production and

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_S. _D. _Roy ₍B₎ University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: suddhabratadebroy@gmail.com

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025 F. Della Puppa et al. (eds.), Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy, Dynamics of Virtual Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91262-7\_5

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exchange relations produces the contemporary fabric of capitalist development (Smith, 2008). Cities, in this context in India, are not only important economic drivers but are also critical to the sustenance of the country’s international commitments to issues such as sustainability, climate change and social justice (NITI Aayog, 2021). Under neoliberalism, these issues are related to factors such as economic development, environmental policies and other allied services in the urban spaces which are mostly mediated through the market (Brenner & Theodore, 2005) within the much discussed Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) guided by platform-based digital technologies providing easier access to urban spaces for both the workers and service providers (de Ruyter et al., 2018).

The 4IR is mostly sustained by urban spaces and gig work is an important part of this new form of economic restructuring. Approximately, around 56 per cent new jobs in the Indian market are being created within the gig economy.¹ These new jobs mostly depend upon mediation performed by the market that encourages open employment relations and which tend to (or desire to) replace administrative rules and social policies with market dynamics, job outcomes and profit-oriented policies (Kalleberg, 2011). In a country such as India, the basic challenge in terms of workforce creation that confronts the economy is the creation of a skilled workforce, which can cater to the demands placed by the market amidst such socio-economic changes.² At a national level, this becomes extremely difficult in a country such as India, which is plagued by extreme levels of uneven geographical development, where ‘[most] of India’s economic development in the past four decades has come from the southern and western states … which have become hubs for manufacturing and high-tech industries [while] the heartland states … have shown little sign of catching up’.³ Unequal public spending on some regions— such as Bihar—have been the key cause of such a disparity, which has been the major driving force behind unequal development in India (De Haan, 1997; Prasad, 1988).

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¹ See Sarkar, K. (2021). Why UK Supreme Court’s Uber Driver Verdict Can Impact Indian Gig Workers. The Leaflet, March 10, https://theleaflet.in/why-uk-supreme-courtsuber-driver-verdict-can-impact-indian-gig-workers/ [Accessed 04.07.2024].

² See Narayan, K. (2024). A Budget solution to India’s skilled workforce challenge: Unleash the Gig contingent. The Economic Times, January 21, https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/a-budget-solution-to-indias-skilled-workforce-cha llenge-unleash-the-gig-contingent/articleshow/107027315.cms [Accessed 04.07.2024].

³ See Para 5 of The Economist. (2022). India’s regional inequality could be politically explosive. October 27. Available at: https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/10/27/ind ias-regional-inequality-could-be-politically-explosive [Accessed 04.07.2024].

Uneven geographical development is an essential part of capitalist development, as Harvey (2006) had argued, which produces the avenues of spatial exploitation that capitalism can use for its own benefits. The growth of uneven development has an intrinsic connection with the rise of gentrification as a social ideology in the society, which gets reflected within the local and regional levels (Smith, 1982). Gentrification under contemporary capitalism, as Stein (2019) shows, has become an important part of capitalist reimagination of urban spaces based on the exclusion—either materially or ideologically or both—of the marginalised from these spaces. This manifests itself in the way different services and commodities are provided to the urban populace of the country, including certain services deemed essential for sustenance, which are based on the exploitation of the working class driving them towards states of heightened precarity and exclusion. This occurs despite certain platform workers being accorded the status of essential workers (de Neve et al., 2023). Under contemporary capitalism, the platform-based gig economy has come to occupy an important position in this regard. The gig economy refers to the economic structure created out of the usage of digital platforms and technology in certain jobs (Woodcock & Graham, 2019).

The gig economy that has grown through the platforms has reshaped cities and the socio-economic relations of production therein (Huws, 2014). The growth of urban infrastructures globally has resulted in a change in the dynamics of global labour processes in such a way that labouring has become synonymous with high productivity, flexibility and a sense of ‘alienated’ autonomy for the workers. Most of these changes have come in the wake of an increased presence of digital technologies in the urban spaces which have ushered in a new era of capitalist domination and networking in the society. The gig economy has emerged as a key term in most of the contemporary employment practices with it being practised increasingly in the domains of ride hailing (passenger transport), delivery work, services and freight transport. Taylor et al. (2017) define the gig workers to be those workers who use phones and digital applications— commonly known as platforms—to sell their labour power. That being said, it is also important to note, as Huws et al. (2016) have argued, that the gig economy does not survive purely through digital interactions and also requires significant physical interactions. These interactions are often managed through algorithmic management-based processes based on soft controlling structures gaining prominence within the labour process (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016). It extends a company’s customer management strategies in such a way that ‘customer, rather than managers, are […] the ones who must be pleased, whose orders must be followed, whose ideas, whims and desires appear to dictate how work is performed’ (Fuller & Smith, 1991, p. 11). The growth of such structures has proved to be ‘fatal’ for migrant workers in the gig economy who remain the most easily accessible source of cheap labour power for the platforms in urban spaces across the globe (Alyanak et al., 2023; Kowalik et al., 2023). Migrant workers get attracted towards platform-based gig workers because they provide them with an easier access to urban spaces, quick and lesser bureaucratic gatekeeping (Altenried, 2024). At the same time, some workers also prefer working as gig workers because it gives them a sense of empowerment and social status that places them at a higher pedestal than other informal workers. This is despite the fact that working for platforms in India, as De Neve et al. (2023) argue, consists of working conditions very similar to the informal economy.

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The preference for migrant workers for the platforms rests from the belief that migrant workers are usually more likely to accept precarious forms of employment often agreeing to work for lower wages than local workers (Altenried, 2024; Ness, 2023). India accounts for around 24 per cent of the global online gig workers.⁴ Around 25 per cent of the global workforce today work in the gig economy which is mostly based on the requirements focused on flexibility and a certain amount of locational autonomy (Watson et al., 2021). The development of technology and its associated devices and processes creates a condition where certain products become essential parts of the everyday ways of life for most people (Stewart, 1977). According to the NITI Aayog, there are a total of 7.7 million gig workers in India, who comprise around 1.5 per cent of the total workforce in the country and which is expected to grow to around 23.5 million by 2029–2030.⁵ The Oxford Internet Institute contrastingly argued that in 2018 itself, the total number of gig workers in India was around 15 million, far exceeding the estimates of the NITI Aayog.⁶ A large number of these workers work as delivery workers⁷ for various commodity provisioning platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy and Zomato.⁸ The growth of such delivery platforms globally— from 46 in 2010 to around 383 in 2020 as per the International Labour Organisation—⁹ has been constructed through the aggressive marketing, discounts and promotional techniques used by them that convert the services provided by them to an everyday practice rather than simply being lifestyle choices or a luxury for the middle class (Rani et al., 2022; Narayan, 2024).

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⁴ See Raman, S., & Rizvi, S. (2021). Gender pay gap and occupational segregation have followed Indian women into gig economy. Scroll, January 12, https://scroll.in/article/983727/gender-pay-gap-and-occupational-segregation-havefollowed-indian-women-into-gig-economy [Accessed 04.07.2024].

⁵ See Times of India. (2022). Gig workers in India to top 23 million by 2029–30: Niti Aayog. June 27. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-bus iness/gig-workers-in-india-to-top-23-mn-by-29-30-niti-aayog/articleshow/92493751.cms [Accessed 04.07.2024].

Migrants have been an important part of the platforms focused on delivery of services and commodities because migrants help them in lowering the costs of production as most migrants remain willing to work under precarious conditions. However, the inclusion of migrants within the gig economy has complicated the analysis of gig workers in general in the country, most of whom already suffer from the lack of any socio-cultural and economic structures to fall back on.¹⁰ Migrants get attracted to the gig economy because the gig economy provides them with increased incomes, a break from traditional or routine jobs and often allows them to work flexibly (Alyanak et al., 2023). Most of these factors become extremely relevant to migrant gig workers because most of their native places suffer from massive underdevelopment. Underdevelopment can be said to be a situation where a reigning social system is unable to bear the cost of a decent standard of living (Sagasti, 1973). As a country,

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⁶ See Raman and Rizvi ibid.

⁷ The chapter uses the term ‘delivery workers’ instead of the commonly used ‘delivery partners’ so as to highlight the working-class belongingness of these workers.

⁸ Courier and delivery companies such as DTDC, Shiprocket, and XpressBees also use gig workers, but in the current chapter, only those delivery workers working for platformbased retail or service companies offering direct delivery services have been considered.

⁹ See ILO. (2021). World Employment and Social Outlook 2021: The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Available at: http://onlinelabourobservatory.org/paper/ilo-weso-report-2021/ [Accessed 04.07.2024].

¹⁰ See Yasmin, S., & Bannerjee, P. (2023). Gig Economy – The Indian Picture So Far. KREA University, https://ifmrlead.org/gig-economy-the-indian-picture-so-far/ [Accessed 04.07.2024].

India suffers from a massive underdevelopment, and some regions suffer from it more than others.¹¹ The ones that suffer the most become the sources of migrant workers for the developed areas. Certain key regions which have been fulfilling this role for Indian megacities can be said to have been the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam and other north-eastern states.¹²

The extremes of uneven development that characterise modern India have created the conditions under which urban spaces in India have been witnessing a large-scale migration of marginalised populace from the country’s underdeveloped areas to the relatively more developed ones. Capitalism creates uneven development in such a way so that a constant supply of cheap and exploitable labour force can be rendered perennially available. For platforms, it becomes very important because uneven development creates the basis for rural-to-urban migration in India, which contributes to the normalisation of capitalist social processes within the gig economy despite the income of many gig workers suffering after Covid-19 pandemic, especially in the domain of delivery work where income has almost halved with increased job insecurity and high attrition rates.¹³ Immigrant working-class individuals continue to face the dual exploitation exerted upon them by capitalism both at the local level and at the global level because while their exploitation takes place concretely at the local level, the mechanisms devised for the purpose and the effects of the same are felt globally.¹⁴

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¹¹ See The Economist. (2017). The gap between India’s richer and poorer states is widening. September 02, https://www.economist.com/finance-and-econom ics/2017/09/02/the-gap-between-indias-richer-and-poorer-states-is-widening [Accessed 04.07.2024].

¹² See https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1941077 [Accessed 04.07.2024].

¹³ See Mittal, A., & Mishra, D. (2021). Food delivery workers protest ‘exploitation’ on Twitter; companies deny charges. The Economic Times, August 04, https://econom ictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/food-delivery-workers-protest-exploitation-ontwitter-companies-deny-charges/articleshow/85016422.cms. Also see Sakunia, S. (2021). Hands that deliver food are struggling to feed themselves. The Leaflet, August 27, https://theleaflet.in/hands-that-deliver-food-are-struggling-to-feed-themselves/ [Accessed 04.07.2024].

¹⁴ It is important to understand that the platform economy remains entrenched within a web of global capital flows where change within one particular context has ramifications across the globe (Amorim & Moda, 2020).

Platforms have provided many of the smaller capitalists—who would otherwise have been characterised by a low potential for financial development in India (Sau, 1984)—with a sincere opportunity to become akin to global capitalists (De Neve et al., 2023). Despite platforms and the gig work associated with them being heralded as a major advancement in the domain of labour market advancements, gig workers are yet to be accorded an equal status as other workers. They remain outside the framework of labour protections and also suffer from issues pertaining to precarious employment and social discrimination.¹⁵ This is because the gig economy, in its entirety, is composed of relations of employment which are characterised by precarious payment models, unstable employment patterns and an exclusion from mainstream frameworks of social protection. Workers who work in the gig economy, especially if they are migrants to the city, suffer more from these issues because they are bereft of the socio-legal protections that administrative mechanisms provide in the country (Deb Roy, 2024b).

This chapter highlights the plight of such migrant gig workers in India focusing on those who work as delivery workers. The chapter outlines certain key aspects of the problems that migrant delivery workers face in their everyday lives in India’s major urban centres. The qualitative data presented in the chapter was collected through fieldwork conducted in Delhi (including New Delhi), Bengaluru and Hyderabad from 2022 January until 2023 December. A total of 30 semi-structured interviews— 10 in each city—had been conducted with migrant delivery workers with respondents being selected mainly through purposive and convenience sampling methods. The interviews were of 20–30 minutes duration and were mostly conducted in Hindi, Bengali and English. Out of the 30 interviewees, six were from Assam (three in Delhi, three in Bengaluru), eight from Bihar (two in Delhi, three in Bengaluru and three in Hyderabad), five from Uttar Pradesh (two in Delhi, two in Bengaluru, two in Hyderabad) nine from West Bengal (one in Delhi, two in Bengaluru, five in Hyderabad) and two from north-eastern states, one each from Manipur and Nagaland (both in Delhi). The chapter is divided into three sections.

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¹⁵ See Sarkar, K. (2021). Why UK Supreme Court’s Uber Driver Verdict Can Impact Indian Gig Workers. The Leaflet, March 10, https://theleaflet.in/why-uk-supreme-cou rts-uber-driver-verdict-can-impact-indian-gig-workers/. Also see Sakunia, S. (2021). Hands that deliver food are struggling to feed themselves. The Leaflet, August 27, https://thelea flet.in/hands-that-deliver-food-are-struggling-to-feed-themselves/ [Accessed 04.07.2024].

The first section discusses the relationship between technological development and the migrant gig workers, while the second section discusses the effects of algorithmic management of gig workers. The third section discusses the question of migrant belongingness.

2 Technological Development and Migrant Gig Workers

The development of capitalism—from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism to informational capitalism—has always produced distinct forms of contradictions in the society, which have contributed to the concrete issues faced by the non-capitalist classes during any particular historical epoch. The platform economy—one of the major planks of contemporary capitalist accumulation—is usually composed of digital platforms which enable their users to share, lend or purchase certain goods or services with an increased access to labour markets (Kilhoffer et al., 2017). The development of platforms has led to a change within the nature of the public spaces and has also, as Huws (2020) argues, resulted in a change within the economic and social relations in the society. The newer kinds of management processes that have erupted with the growth ofplatforms require workers to be logged in all throughout the day to earn bringing in administrative processes focused on the mediating role that online platforms play (Huws, 2016a, 2016b). The growth of such structures of employment remains dictated by market dynamics and affect the structures that govern the market, including local administrative models (Huws, 2020), which has been seen as one of the key markers for determining the nature of urbanism in the society (Deb Roy, 2024b). The development and proliferation of online work cannot be analysed without taking into cognisance the relationship that they share with other broader structures that affect the socio-political and cultural fabric in place (Huws, 1984; Huws et al., 1990).

The growth of platform capitalism does not only change the economic fabric of the society but also changes the broader contours of social and political attitudes towards technology and development. The nature of labour market reflects these changes in the society, and the algorithmic management that is practised in platform-based services convert many of these platforms to electronic sweatshops suitable to exploit cheap labour power (Fernie & Metcalf, 1998). Most platforms have hastened the processes of primitive accumulation—the historical process of divorcing the producer from the product and the means of production and subsistence (Marx, 1867/1976)—and have created the socio-economic circumstances where even within a highly exploitable domain such as gig work, migrant gig workers remain relatively more exploited than native gig workers (Kowalik et al., 2023). A migrant delivery worker from West Bengal who works mostly through ‘Dunzo’ in Bengaluru states:

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