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

The Weberian sociological approach provides a valuable framework to understand the world of work from the perspective of the workers themselves, that is, to perceive how these immigrant workers experience the conditions of precariousness and vulnerability. This chapter brings a perspective from below, focusing on the subjective dimensions of immigrants, revealed through their personal life experiences and social identities and their vision of the world (Bogdan & Biklen, 1994; Lindlof, 1995, p. 33), analysing their access and integration process into the labour market. In this sense, it is relevant to understand not only the socioeconomic context of work, but also the individual experiences, motivations, and challenges that immigrants face in Portugal.

This chapter is divided into seven sections. After the introduction, the second section describes the context for the rising of digital work in a Portuguese gig economy; the third presents the methodology; the fourth details the scenario of immigration in Europe and Portugal; the fifth analyses the occupational trajectories of call and contact centre immigrant workers; the sixth provides the discussion; and the final section brings the conclusions.

2 Digital Work in a Gig Economy

Digital platforms brought a new form of externalisation of work (outsourcing) to an indeterminate and depersonalised mass of workers who are available through a precarious reserve army, and who work according to a just-in-time (Abílio, 2020) and just-in-place logic (Wells et al., 2021). In the 1990s, call and contact centres went from national to global through information and communication technologies. Portugal then witnessed a process of globalisation and digitalisation in the service industry through the call centralisation of work, allowing companies to offer products as a service, instead of selling them as physical objects (Batt et al., 2009; Huws, 2003). Like couriers, drivers, and other services that comprise digital platforms, call centre workers also use platforms and are controlled by the algorithm (Artificial Intelligence). In fact, call centres were the first service where this process of machine and algorithmic management was implemented, through the outsourcing and crowdsourcing of services, with access to a periphery of atypical workers who could be requested by companies to overcome the seasonality of production, leading to work fragmentation. The algorithm dictates and controls the pace of work through the metrics with which it was programmed. As such, all work tasks of a human operator in a call and contact centre are dictated by the machine (algorithm) and personified in the figure of a computer and console, which manage incoming and outgoing calls, depriving operators of any autonomy, creativity and socialisation (Roque, 2010). Operators provide information to customers, connecting them to third parties, through the sale of goods, products and services, through telephone, email, chat and video calls, that is, computer-based technologies. As in the case of other digital and platform workers, at the end of each task (gig), carried out through calls, emails, video calls or chat, the operator’s service is evaluated, either by the company or by the customer.

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The Great Recession resulted from Troika’s intervention, followed by austerity measures and a major restructuring of the labour market, commodification of public services and restructuring of capital with automation and the substitution of goods for services, resulting in mass unemployment and precarious work (Carmo et al., 2021). In the aftermath of the Great Recession, platform economy (Kenney & Zysman, 2016), tourism, and foreign investment became alternatives to overcome the accumulation crisis. Around 2015, Portugal suffered an intense wave of “touristification” within a process of transnational gentrification (Cócola-Gant, 2016, 2018; Füller & Michel, 2014). Lisbon was promoted as an ideal destination not only for tourists, but also for international students and lifestyle migrants looking for a good and cheap place to live in southern Europe. There was also a trend towards the digital management of work, which extended well beyond work carried out under the control of online platforms, that is, the platformisation and uberisation of work.

Uberisation is a new form of organisation, management and control of work, being mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs), which together with the expansion of the service sector has increased informal, unstable and precarious working conditions, especially through poorly remunerated operational activities (Antunes, 2018). It is devoid of a standard employment relationship between the employee and the employer, accommodating all the exceptions to the standard capitalist system, where the worker becomes an entrepreneur of him/herself and/or an independent contractor (Antunes, 2018, 2020; Huws, 2016).

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Nevertheless, digitalisation blurs labour market dualisation between standard and precarious workers (Schwander, 2018). These trends also reshaped the hotel sector and personal transportation business regarding goods and people, mainly through Uber that became a prime example of the gig economy (Roque, 2023b). AirBnB, Tuk-Tuks and Uber services gained strength among the new digital precariat. These aspects differentiate the digital economy from the traditional economy, mainly due to the rapid transformation of value chains, where digital technologies merge with products and industrial services, creating hybrid products, that is, the “Internet of Things” and “Internet of Services”, elements of Industry 4.0 (Roque, 2023b). This also led to migration currents that became more pronounced since 2016 with the arrival of workers from Africa, Asia, but mostly from Brazil who sought to escape the economic and political crisis by seeking better and safer living conditions. Nevertheless, the dreamland they imagined they would find ends up being a world of competition, suffering, and informality (Roque et al., 2021; Poleto Oltramari et al., 2023).

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the trend of platformisation and uberisation of work, promoting significant changes in the world of work, exposing pre-existing social vulnerabilities and inequalities (Huws et al., 2019) and unveiling a series of trends of exploitation and domination, through the ability to organise and control (Moraes et al., 2019). Precarity and vulnerability became aggravated, since several workers had no option but to become gig workers, especially immigrants and those who were unemployed. There was the predominance of bad or bullshit jobs (Graeber, 2018), with the raise in the proliferation of multiple atypical and precarious forms of work to the detriment of waged labour associated with modern industrial capitalism, based on effective contracts and social protection (Kalleberg, 2011). Gig workers experience high levels of atomisation and pervasive monitoring, nonstandard forms of employment, intensification of flexibility, being subject to the entrepreneurial ideology, driven by a variety of forces, including demographic shifts, labour market regulations, macroeconomic fluctuations, and technological changes (Abílio, 2017; Antunes, 2018; Doellgast et al., 2018; Gandini, 2018; Kalleberg, 2018; Keune & Pedaci, 2020; Slee, 2017; Tassimari & Maccarrone, 2020). This raised issues related to (un)decent employment standards and legal status of workers with the absence of a fixed contract and a salary, informal arrangements, uncertainty, intermittence, and lack of access to labour and human rights (Benavides & Silva-Peñaherrera, 2022; Kalleberg, 2009). That is especially the case for migrant workers in Portugal who are located especially in agriculture, service (call and contact centres) and logistic sectors, most of them being devoid of any labour and human rights, suffering slavery and xenophobic harassment.

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3 Methodology

Between 2020 and 2023, 16 in-depth interviews were carried out with call and contact centre migrant operators in mainland Portugal, from the North to the South. The fact the author has worked as a call centre operator during her career professional and having collaborated with the Call Centre Workers Union (STCC), allowed us to establish greater proximity and empathy with some operators and trade unionists. Also, non-probabilistic snowball sampling was used to obtain privileged informants. The interviews and contacts were conducted using the telephone, social media and online platforms, such as Zoom, WhatsApp and Skype. Bearing in mind that call and contact centre work involves rotating days off and shifts, most interviews were conducted using online and telephone services, allowing a greater availability and anonymity for many of the operators that at any time of the day or night, including weekends and holidays, could respond to the call to participate in this analysis.

The interviews covered several dimensions related to their occupational trajectories, such as: family social class, professional experiences and/or transitions in the labour market, training, access to social protection, housing, income, immigration, trade unionism and activism, citizenship, daily and relational life, social representations of institutions, aspirations and perceptions towards the future, the affectations of the pandemic crisis and its multidimensional impacts, and also ways of coping with precariousness and suffering in call and contact centres.

A netnography method approach, comprising ethnographic and virtual fieldwork from the internet, concentrated on social networks and technoculture, where technology and social intersect was also carried out (Kozinets, 2014). It involved the nonparticipant observation in WhatsApp and Facebook groups to establish a closer relationship with drivers and deliverers and to follow not only their interactions, but solidarity and struggle arrangements. The information obtained from the interviews in the first person, it was possible to carry out a discourse analysis using MAXQDA software.

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At the time of the interviews, all workers were employed in the call and contact service and living in the various regions of Portugal Mainland. According to our interviewees, this is an activity carried out mainly by female workers, aged between 25 and 50 years old and who make this as their main source of subsistence. The sociodemographic characteristics of this sample comprise four women and two men, aged between twentytwo and forty-seven years old. Most of them have a college degree and do not have any prior experience in this service. All the data were organised through qualitative analysis techniques (Bardin, 2011, Schreier , 2012; Zwick, 2018). A flexible coding scheme using MAXQDA qualitative software was used for analysing the interviews based on the operationalisation of the central concepts of the case study (Carmo et al., 2021; Schreier, 2012).

4 Immigration in Europe and Portugal

Since the 1980s that Portugal become a country of immigration, especially from its former colonies who arrived first, followed by migrants from Asian countries, as well as from Eastern Europe in the 2000s. According to Castles et al., (2014, pp. 16–17), the abolition of geographic, political, economic and cultural borders has led to the globalisation of migration, with a tendency for a growing number of countries to be simultaneously affected by migratory movements. International migrations can be associated with precarious conditions, especially with a loss of both home and protection, placing migrants in situations where they are vulnerable and at risk of exploitation and discrimination (Steger, 2013) that Portugal has become a country of immigration, especially from its former colonies who arrived first, followed by migrants from Asian countries, as well as from Eastern Europe in the 2000s.

In fact, Bauman makes the distinction between tourists, from the global north, and migrant vagabonds from the south, who are forced to dislocate to escape poverty and to find work, asylum or refuge because of war, discrimination, climate change, and other factors (Bauman, 1998). The most common case is regarding labour migrants (Kritz, 2016) who are driven by “push” factors (e.g. a lack of work or low wage in their homeland and “pull” factors (jobs and higher pay available elsewhere)). Vagabonds tend to be those who have one or more (and often all) disesteemed statuses. They tend to be more likely to be poor, black, a member of a maligned ethnic group, female and from the South (Ritzer, 2010).

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According to the International Organisation for Migration (2019, p. 132), a migrant is a person who moves from his or her place of habitual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and across a variety of reasons. Although there was a decrease in 2008 with the socioeconomic crisis, migration numbers raised again in 2016. According to the RIFA 2020 Report, Brazil is by far the most common country of origin, with migrants from that country counting 183.993 individuals, followed by the Cape Verdean, with 36 609 people.¹ In 2022, Portugal saw its number of foreign citizen residents rise to an unprecedented 782.000 (+11.9% compared with 2021), representing 7.5% of the total resident population. It represented the fifth-highest rate of 76.9 in the EU of labour market activity by foreigners, being 18.7% higher than that of Portuguese citizens. However, in comparison with native citizens, foreigners continue to be employed in the most precarious sectors and activities, such as construction, manufacturing, garment making, assembly, platform delivery of food and people, especially in the accommodation and food service activities (11.3%),² that is, non-skilled positions.³

The immigrant population in Portugal has increased, totalling 752,252 in 2022. According to the Immigration and Borders Service (SEF), there was an increase of 58,365 immigrants in comparison to the year prior, an 8.3% increase. Nevertheless, the largest growing immigrant populations in Portugal in the last year were from Brazil and India. The Brazilian community remains the largest immigrant population in Portugal, with over 233,138 people, a 13% increase since 2021, followed by the United Kingdom (36,639), Cape Verde (35,744) and India (34,232).⁴ The Indian community also increased by 13% to around 34.000 residents, making it the fourth-largest immigrant population in Portugal.

According to Schierup (2007, p. 152), although with differences between countries, in general, the economic sectors representing the worst working conditions began to absorb in a widespread way the work of undocumented immigrants as an indispensable part of their productive system, these sectors offer a range of conspicuous examples of feminisation and racialisation of the labour market that go hand in hand with the degradation of work in the post-Fordist flexible regime. The hierarchical system of subcontracting, flexibility and informalisation (which, until then, affected nationals of those territories to a lesser extent) is indicated as key elements for understanding the characteristics of the work of these undocumented immigrants (Basso, 2003).

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¹ https://sefstat.sef.pt/Docs/Rifa2020.pdf.

² https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/promotingour-european-way-life/statistics-migration-europe\_en.

³ https://migrant-integration.ec.europa.eu/library-document/immigrant-integrationindicators-annual-statistical-report-2023\_en.

⁴ https://www.portugal.com/news/immigrant-population-in-portugal-increases-to-750 000/.

5 Portraits of Immigrant Workers

This section aims to analyse the occupational trajectories through which immigrant workers are made and reproduced under digital platform capitalism (Baglioni et al., 2022). These portraits result from interviews conducted with call and contact centre workers in Portugal during 2020 and 2023. The sample comprises 15 interviewees, where 9 are female and 6 are male workers. In Table 1, it is possible to see the sociodemographic profiles of this sample of 15 interviewees, where 9 are female and 6 are male workers.

They are aged between 33 and 60, and are from Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Cape Vert, Germany and France. Also, the majority lives in rented apartments (T2), in the Lisbon region, and has access to a private vehicle. Their family background is mostly from the workingclass, even though there are people whose grandparents and parents were middle-class holding a degree. In other cases, there are people who have Portuguese lineage, while others descend from a family who was prone to migratory movements and that is printed in their DNA. Some of them were married with Portuguese men, in Portugal and abroad, and then came alone with their children searching to obtain their Portuguese nationality, while others had Portuguese relatives.

“I moved due to the social, economic and political crisis in Venezuela. My children’s father is the son of Portuguese parents, and my children had Portuguese nationality. Then the opportunity arose to leave. One of my children already lived here in Portugal and in search of a better future for them and stability, I left a country that was on the verge of a civil war. (…) I have no complaints about how Portugal opened its arms to me and I found a job 9 months after arriving, but I always say that I was very lucky because I entered a call centre speaking my native language in Spanish and earned a little more than a minimum wage and 670 euros (…) It was back and forth on the same day, sometimes more than three hours to get home, but it was worth it because it was work (…) There was always this instability at work, I didn’t know if I would leave or no (…) I loved my job, but it was manageable. Until the end of 2020, I loved my work. I was there from August 2015 until March 2020”. [E5, Woman, 55 years old, Venezuela]

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(continued)

“My grandfather was Portuguese, according to the citizenship law I would have a direct dependence because it is up to the 3rd generation, my son would still have the right to Portuguese citizenship. However, when my father was born, my grandmother was separated from my grandfather and the What did she do? When she registered my father, she didn’t put her father’s name”. [E13, Man, 43 years old, Brazil]

With the exception of two persons, all the interviewees had completed academic degrees, ranging from Management, Biochemistry, Accountability, Information Technology to Human Resources. Most consider that having a degree did not allow the access to a better job in Portugal.

“No, because I have overqualified colleagues such as doctors, lawyers, graduates and Portuguese specialists in call centres”. [E4, Man, 44 years old, Venezuela]

“Before going to work for a call centre, I tried a lot to try in my field (…) what emerged in terms of response first were call centres. I sent my CV and the next day they got in touch with me”. [E9, Woman, 33 years old, Cape Vert]

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They came to Portugal, especially in the aftermath of the Great Recession, to search for better living, working and safety conditions, although they had a qualified occupational trajectory in their countries of origin. Many have worked in call and contact centres for more than two years, finding themselves subject to turnover resulting from flexibility and job insecurity, transitioning contractually between the various temporary work agencies. However, when they arrive in Portuguese territory they are forced to accept precarious and informal jobs, such as in the call and contact centre, cleaning, agriculture, construction, logistics and tourism sectors. According to Huws (2014), they form the cybertariat, the new proletariat of the digital age, who risk their lives, even though they might face several challenges, especially during the first two years, where they feel obliged to accept informal and independent working conditions to survive.

“Life as an emigrant is not easy, the first 2 years are a constant battle. I started preparing, I spent a year planning. Until the last minute I had nothing, not even a job, I just arrived with the money I had and tried my luck. After 2 years, things have started to ease up. It is challenging”. [E13, Man, 43 years old, Brazil]

“Your experience has no relevance here in Portugal, only for working in a call centre. When I came in 2013 with my son, I didn’t have any work. I went to the interview, enjoyed it and ended up staying (…) The first call centre was in January 2014, where I worked 8 hours initially with green receipts and without a contract (…) When you arrive in a new country you have to adapt to the conditions there. I can’t claim to have what I had in Colombia (…) I was just starting out, I didn’t know much about the Portuguese language. It wasn’t a happy job, but it gave me peace of mind. I provided customer service to Spain. I spent approximately 8 months with green receipts, but then I gave up looking for something better (…) the situation was a bit complicated and there wasn’t much professional stability”. [E14, Man, 60 years old, Colombia]

Although some of these immigrants had already worked in call and contact centres, most suffered a downgrade in their employment status and quality of life, just to find the opportunity to escape war, insecurity and crime. Among the male interviewees there were logistics and control administrators, commercial managers, public accountants, and among the women there were hairdressers, secondary teachers, insurance intermediaries, logistics secretariats, administrative secretaries, and receptionists.

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