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

App-based food delivery can be seen as the outcome of an extreme form of subcontracting, wherein the logistics and transportation services necessary to preserve surplus value are not carried out by in-house employees—such as the now-vanishing ‘pizza express’ workers or dedicated delivery staff employed by pizzerias and restaurants before the advent of food delivery platforms—nor by workers of subcontracted firms that externalize the circulation phase of the production process. Instead, these services are performed by individual workers who, while formally classified as self-employed, are in reality controlled and directed by algorithms (Kojima, 2015). This represents a return to—or more precisely, the creation of—a hybrid form of piecework and home-based labor (Toffanin, 2016). This system allows companies to adjust production in real-time to meet demand, a defining characteristic of subcontracting. More significantly, it shifts the costs of capital procurement and maintenance onto workers while simultaneously reinforcing the ideological narrative of supposed ‘self-entrepreneurship.’ This narrative is embedded in a neoliberal lexicon filled with euphemistic and sanitized expressions, such as ‘platform economy,’ ‘sharing economy,’ ‘co-working’, all of which serve to reframe subordination as ‘synergy’ and transform wage laborers into ‘collaborators,’ ‘partners,’ or ‘entrepreneurs.’ Through the coercion to perceive their material conditions as a state of ‘autonomy,’ masked by the ideological illusion that their labor is flexible, independent, and easily combinable with other productive and reproductive activities, workers experience the highest degree of external control and subjugation over their existence (Kojima, 2015).

This ideological construction appears to have influenced the members of the Italia Rider Association as well. According to Il Gazzettino, the association does not identify exclusionary migration policies—such as those tying residence permits to employment contracts, making legal entry and residence in Italy and Europe difficult, thereby increasing migrants’ vulnerability—as the cause of riders’ dismal wages and working conditions. Nor does it attribute responsibility to the gig economy platforms that reintroduce archaic forms of labor exploitation reminiscent of early industrial capitalism. Instead, the blame is placed on doubly marginalized workers: migrants who are both exploited by the platforms and further subjected to ‘digital caporalato’ by intermediaries who profit from their labor. Once again, the platforms themselves, which have a vested interest in maximizing the number of competing riders scrambling for any available delivery, are absolved. Instead, the responsibility is attributed to ‘Bangladeshi and Pakistani gangmasters’ who rent out smartphones to their compatriots and to the ‘Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers’ themselves, who are accused of lacking road safety awareness or food handling knowledge.

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2 Platform Capitalism and the Uberization of Urban Transport in London

On May 2, 2024, British newspapers reported that over 10,500 London black-cab drivers had filed a £250 million lawsuit against Uber, accusing the company of violating taxi booking regulations and deliberately misleading authorities to obtain a license. The case revives a claim first made five years earlier concerning Uber’s operations in the capital between 2012 and 2018. The cab drivers allege that Uber enabled its drivers to accept bookings directly from customers rather than through a centralized system as required for private hire services, making them suffering financial losses due to unfair competition. They claim Uber was fully aware of these regulations but misrepresented its booking process to Transport for London (TfL) to secure its license, unfairly taking business away from black-cab drivers.

If successful, the lawsuit could see cab drivers awarded over £250 million, with individuals potentially receiving £25,000 or more. Uber has denied all allegations, calling the claims ‘completely unfounded.’ A company spokesperson asserted that Uber operates legally in London is fully licensed by TfL and continues to serve millions of passengers and drivers across the city. Although Uber has denied all allegations, calling the claims ‘completely unfounded,’ if successful, the lawsuit could see cab drivers awarded over £250 million, with individuals potentially receiving £25,000 or more.

A further example of platform economy, Uber exemplifies the shift toward platform capitalism and gig work, where digital platforms mediate and extract value from user interactions. As highlighted by Nick Srnicek (2017), Uber uses data and network effects to dominate markets while disrupting traditional business models. By avoiding direct employment of drivers, the company sidesteps obligations like minimum wage, healthcare, and transfer risks to worker (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016; Woodcock & Graham, 2020).

Since its emergence in the early 2010s, Uber has transformed urban transportation. By leveraging smartphone technology, Uber connects passengers with drivers, offering a more convenient and affordable alternative to traditional taxis. Its success lies in its affordability for customers and flexible—albeit precarious—work opportunities for drivers. Customers benefit from low fares, while drivers, often migrants or individuals from lower-income groups, gain access to flexible work with minimal barriers to entry. Uber’s asset-light business model, relying on drivers to supply vehicles and riders to use their smartphones, enabled rapid global expansion with minimal financial risk, allowing investments in branding and market growth instead of costly physical assets. London has been a key site for Uber’s success since its launch in 2012. The city’s large population and high demand for transportation made it a prime market, where Uber now dominates the ride-hailing sector with 67% market share, followed by competitors like Bolt. By 2023, Uber had over 45,000 licensed drivers in London, playing a critical role in the city’s transportation system. However, Uber’s expansion has highlighted significant social and economic inequalities. Most of London’s private hire vehicle (PHV) drivers are ethnic minorities or migrants, many of whom turn to Uber for flexible employment due to challenges in traditional labor markets. Research shows that the vast majority of Uber drivers are male immigrants, primarily drawn from the bottom half of the London income distribution (Berger et al., 2019; Gebrial, 2024). This racialized workforce contrasts sharply with the predominantly white and higher-earning black-cab drivers. Although Uber provides economic opportunities for marginalized groups, many drivers face low earnings, job insecurity, and long working hours, often leading to dissatisfaction and collective actions such as strikes.

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As evidenced by the ongoing lawsuit, Uber’s presence and economic expansion in London have faced significant challenges that questioned the narrative of autonomy and ‘being one’s own boss’ central to its ideology (Aslam & Woodcock, 2020). In 2017, TfL initially refused to renew Uber’s license, citing safety concerns and inadequate reporting of incidents, including sexual assault allegations. After legal battles, Uber implemented stronger safeguards and was eventually granted an 18- month license in 2020. Critics argue that Uber’s emphasis on growth has sometimes come at the expense of passenger safety, with its PHV license requirements being significantly less rigorous than the stringent ‘Knowledge of London’ test required for black-cab drivers. In 2021, a landmark court ruling concluded that the drivers were workers because of Uber’s level of control over them, including setting fares and not informing them of a passenger’s destination until they were picked up. The UK Supreme Court’s decision ruled that Uber must consider drivers as workers from the time they log on to the app, until they log off and provide drivers with benefits such as holiday pay and minimum wage protections, marking a significant shift in the gig economy’s labor landscape. Finally, London has also been central to driver organizing efforts, highlighting the vulnerabilities and resilience of Uber drivers. The city’s socioeconomic conditions, combined with the isolating nature of platform work, have made drivers particularly susceptible to exploitation. However, London’s dense urban environment has facilitated collective action, with drivers organizing through online forums, messaging apps, and in-person meetings at key locations like airports. Early protests and strikes in 2014 laid the groundwork for ongoing labor activism, aiming to improve pay and working conditions. Despite setbacks, such as difficulties with union partnerships, drivers have successfully raised awareness of gig economy exploitation, contributing to broader struggles for worker rights in platform labor.

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3 Migration Platform Economy and the Right to the City in Bangalore

It rained profusely last night in Bangalore; a part of the shanty homes in Whitefield slum, has started being engulfed by the rushing stream from the overpour. Fatima in her early 20s refuses to leave her home though, with her valuables like rice, atta, winter essentials, clothes and documents, she sits on the wooden bed. The bed has been already pushed up with some stones and wood logs to protect it from the incoming water.

Fatima, a domestic help, a migrant worker, wife of a Gig worker, a Muslim woman from West Bengal, does not leave her drowning home. In her mind she hopes and prays for a miracle, a sudden sun-beaming sky or some magic that solves all her problems. Fatima is not alone, there are more than 5 lakhs of migrant workers from Bengal who are surviving in Bangalore city like that, without a proper home, regular electricity and decent sanitation. They don’t have land rights, mostly manage within the gray zone of state-certified legality, work as daily wage laborers, gig workers, and often get questioned about their citizenry. While most of these people are interstate migrants within India and Indian citizens by law, it’s their linguistic and religious identity that makes their claim on citizenship rights suspicious.

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The Bengali-speaking Muslim migrants are often termed as Bangladeshi and endure routine harassment and discrimination from the ruling dispensation (Paul, 2023). Their assumed ‘illegal immigrants’/ ‘infiltrator’ positioning within the neoliberal-Hindutva state narrative, is both colonial in nature and communal in character. By eulogizing border regimes and migrant bureaucracy on the one hand it upholds the racial supremacy; on the other hand by equating religious identity with nationality, it evokes questions on the secular premises of citizenship. So, when one thinks of conceptualizing migration and gig work, often migration is imagined as a cross-border, transnational activity. But in the case of South Asia, especially India, it’s the rural-to-urban, cross-state migration that due to its peculiar religious-linguistic composition, brings in pertinent questions of citizenry rights within the national border.

The recent scholarship has shown (Iqubbal, 2021; Rathi & Tandon, 2021; Raval, 2020) that there is a significant correlation between migration and participation in gig work in India. They also argued ‘migrant gig work is always the outcome of a complex interplay between institutional (dis)embeddedness, personal and professional life trajectories, and (self-) organised forms of labor struggle’ (Katta et al., 2024). Across South Asia the lived experience of marginalized communities like oppressed castes, religious minorities and women particularly, exposes the multilayered relationship between social identity and labor process. But how these social ruptures engage with the platform capital, there hasn’t much discussion about that.

Urbanization, emergence, and expansion of cities are a direct outcome of deepening of capitalist expansion and the centralization of surplus produced within it. Right to City as a critique of the capitalist cities, as well as a slogan of inclusive and democratic cities (Lefebvre, 1968) emerged at a particular juncture of capitalism.

Harvey (2008) along with a host of other geographers deepened Lefebvre’s framework to emphasize and underline that ‘[t]he question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire.’ While Lefebvre’s framework saw Right to City more as a question of individual freedom to access resources; Harvey expanded it to include the right of the commons or the working class.

The present phase of capitalism with the hegemonic impulse of the finance capital has brought in a specific set of temporality to our universe.

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The Fordist model of production had a specific set of temporality which was shaped by the rhythm of factory production.

The present phase on the other sets in motion processes which are volatile and fluid, whose temporality shapes everything including the City and its rhythm as well. This temporality is intrinsically linked with digitality and its encompassing spread. ‘Digitality’ not only involves interconnectedness of individuals with each other within space-time that is fundamentally different from the analog, human-scale version of spacetime. Digitality as a sum total of advances in both information technology (speed and precision) and the hardware technology (affordable devices) affects and shapes all spheres including production, circulation, and consumption of commodities in capitalism. Since, cities are agents as well outcomes of capitalism; cities of today can neither be understood nor be critiqued without understanding the ways in which digitality intervenes in the daily life of the cities.

Migrants are an integral part of the working class forming the ‘surplus population’ that’s central to profit maximization and surplus generation. The denial of Right to City hence is no longer an individual denial in the Lefebvrian sense, but it’s a denial for the entire segment of the ‘surplus population.’ This section of the workforce represents the ‘hunters and gatherer’ of the present phase of capitalism who are willing (rather compelled) to sell their labor power at every possible node of production, circulation, and consumption. The expansion of platform economy presents a specific form of nodal points for these ‘hunters and gatherers.’

The manner in which platforms operate in the urban spaces is directly linked to the manner in which capital shapes the urban space and allocates specific segments for the specific purpose. Hence, we have islands of prosperity (gated societies, malls) surrounded by concentric seas of relative gentrification. Workers in the platform economy who are fashionable termed as gig workers criss-cross within this maze depending on the data points generated and controlled by big capital and dictated by the algorithms controlled by the platforms.

The Right to City in such a scenario wherein the ‘gig workers’ are reduced as automated, individuated entities waiting to spend their labor platforms at the diktats of the algorithms isn’t at all an individual question. Rather, it’s an expression of the sum total of capitalist processes (not limited to the particular urban space, but also encompassing data centers and algorithm-generating processes elsewhere) and the social processes as an outcome of it. This is where the question of giving organizational form to this aspect arises—the organizational form which can encompass, shape, and mold the surplus population in ways which can resist and fight back the various visible and invisible forms of denial of the basic rights.

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4 Migrant Labor_, Platform Capitalism_, and the Digital Precarization of Work from a Global Perspecti_ve

These vignettes shed light on some of the effects of the ongoing process of profound global transformations of work that has unfolded over the past forty years, that is since the end of organization of production by the so-called Taylorist-Fordist criteria and the beginning of the neoliberal revolution (Antunes, 2015; De Stefano, 2015). These transformations have been driven by key changes in production and its organization, such as the increasing externalization of production phases, along with the consequent—enormous—growth of the service economy, and the rapid development of digital technologies (Perocco et al., 2021).

More recently, a key role has been played by the development of socalled platform capitalism and the gig economy as a way of organizing work and providing services (Antunes, 2020). As it has been introduced, some of the most important global companies, such as Uber, Amazon, Deliveroo, Helpling, operate in this booming sector, which received a further boost during the Covid-19 pandemic (Antunes, 2021). These companies supply a variety of key services such as ride-hailing, domestic and care work, food delivery, and many others, which are provided by a diverse workforce in terms of gender, nationality, and age, and in very different working conditions. One of the main effects of the expansion of the gig economy has been a further reduction of workplace rights and the growth of precarious labor. While reduced security for workers was already happening because of the financialization of the economy, which counterposed shareholders’ and workers’ interests, the intrinsic complexity of the service economy, and the impact of information technology, the gig economy has accelerated this process.

There are no comprehensive data on the precise number of people employed across this sector and even less on migrant and foreign workers (Berg et al., 2018; Pirina et al., 2024). However, even in countries with high unemployment or with a huge supply of unskilled labor, it is widely documented that migrant workers provide a large share ofthe labor power behind a range of gig economy services. They constitute a vital infrastructure for these platforms, which can rely on a perpetual influx of migrant workers in sectors, such as logistics, deliveries, care, and cleaning. On the one hand, occupations in the gig economy are often degraded, as they imply longer working hours at lower salaries, and therefore find migrant workers who can fill them. On the other hand, they also offer migrants much-needed income opportunities, particularly for those who lack skills and are not easily employable or those whose legal status is less secure.

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The labor dynamics of the gig economy, as analyzed in the previous section, frequently intersect with class, gender, and racial inequalities (Van Doorn, 2017). Within this framework, racialization operates within the broader nexus of digital society, platform capitalism, and racial capitalism, conceptualizing Internet technologies not merely as instruments of interaction but as sociopolitical regimes in their own right. While digital technologies have expanded and reshaped social relations, they are also embedded within a racialized social hierarchy. According to McMillan Cottom (2020), this dynamic is articulated through a mechanism of ‘predatory inclusion,’ whereby organizational strategies and techniques are deployed to incorporate marginalized individuals into mobility pathways that, while seemingly democratizing, function according to extractive logics.

Recent authors (Altenried, 2021; Piasna et al., 2022; Van Doorn, 2023; Van Doorn et al., 2023) have begun to define the concept of ‘platform-based migrant digital labor,’ highlighting the close relationship between migrant workers and low-skilled platform-based employment, particularly in urban contexts. Within these forms of employment, temporal dynamics are shaped by bureaucratic constraints embedded in national regulatory frameworks, which, in turn, condition migrant labor mobility according to specific ‘temporal migration regime’ (Maury, 2022). Additionally, job precarity and stability fluctuate in relation to legal status, entry and residency requirements, political dynamics, age, and physical abilities (Chacko & Price, 2021). A central aspect of this relationship between migration and platform labor is the capitalist regulation of migrant labor mobility. In this context, digital platforms function as infrastructures that absorb migrant labor through stratification and racialization mechanisms, relegating these workers to the lower and least remunerated segments of the labor market (Orth, 2024; Van Doorn & Vijay, 2021).

Against this backdrop, platform labor represents one of the few immediate employment opportunities for many migrants, regardless of their level of social integration or access to support networks (Van Doorn & Vijay, 2021). It serves as a crucial resource, particularly for individuals in extreme vulnerability, those with precarious legal status, limited professional experience, or an urgent need for income (Saucedo, 2018; Van Doorn et al., 2023). As previously noted, the ‘appeal’ of platform-based work stems from its formal flexibility, low linguistic and bureaucratic barriers, and relatively swift selection processes compared to other sectors.

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Finally, platform-based digital labor reproduces—albeit with some variations—the structural characteristics of migrant labor, marked by internal stratification along racial, gendered, and legal status lines. These structural conditions are accompanied by phenomena of labor exploitation, discrimination, and irregular recruitment. Within this framework, forms of digitalized labor intermediation emerge, adapting to the racialized dynamics of digital capitalism and manifesting through technocratic mechanisms that perpetuate conditions of subordination and marginalization.

While there is growing academic interest in the platform economy, its technological aspects, its business model and working conditions, very little research has focused on the role of migrant labor and its governance at the intersection of labor market regulation, social welfare, international migration, and migration policies. Some research has recently focused on struggles in the logistics sector in Italy—mostly engaged in by migrant workers (Borraccino, 2021; Cillo & Pradella, 2016; SiCobas, 2017). However, there are still huge gaps in research on how platform-mediated gig work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers and how this can be addressed by welfare policies. This volume aims to fill, at least partially, this gap.

5 Structure of the Volume

The volume consists of two sections: the first section focuses on vulnerability and inherent precarity of migrant workers in gig economy and the second one presents some empirical cases and some forms of resistance implemented by workers all over the world.

In the first chapter of the first sections, Lefteris Kretsos and Vassilis Charitsis seek to scrutinize the potential avenues for workers to resist prevailing mechanisms of labor value extraction inherent in the Greek gig economy. In particular, emphasis is placed on individuals engaged in food delivery roles within digital platforms, complemented by an exploration of pertinent cancel campaigns within the realm of social media. The analysis draws from various published statistical data, a review of earlier surveys examining the working and living conditions in Greece and interview findings with key informants in trade unions and gig workers.

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Subsequently, Gianmarco Peterlongo highlights how gig economy is intertwined with informal and illegal forms of labor intermediation, especially affecting the migrant portion of the workforce, focusing on two case studies: Uber drivers in Argentina and delivery riders in Italy. Rules of engagement in the gig economy lead to a parallel labor market characterized by job uncertainty and lack of formal employment regulations. In addition, platform companies take full advantage of the vulnerabilities of individuals and the global migration flows that feed this workforce by intertwining with informal labor markets and illicit working practices. Fieldwork in both case studies reveals a peculiar form of labor exploitation and abuse that we already called ‘digital caporalato,’ which disproportionately affects migrant workers. Starting from empirical cases, the contribution presents and analyzes three different forms of gangmastering that take place inside or outside the boundaries of the apps and that involve different organizational practices. These findings point to a process of refeudalization of labor, which some authors have previously identified with the resurgence of premodern patterns of labor organization.

In his chapter, Giorgio Pirina analyzes the constant assembling of working and non-working times by platform-mediated food delivery workers and the contradictory outcomes of the algorithmic managerial model of work. This service (but more in general the platform economy) is framed as a time-space-energy field: it is an energy-intensive because of mechanism such as rating, ranking and is based (mostly) on the fast-paced piecework; the space variable is central, as the urban contextual specificities (overcrowded streets, geo-localization failure, public transportation issues, etc.), channel the work performance and increase the couriers’ energy expenditure; the time variable is longitudinal, as couriers must be constantly on-time (and online) to ensure the best orders assignment. Regarding migrant labor, it is also necessary to consider another temporality that is the residence permit, which, for example, determines how much time migrants can work. Against this background, the ‘bindingflexibility’ is defined as follows: the flexibility that formally gives to the workers the possibility to decide when and how much work, but, according to the time-space-energy dynamic, the inherent logic of digital platforms’ algorithm channels their possibilities of choice regarding the organization of working and non-working times. In order to investigate this topic, he carried out qualitative-ethnographic research in the historic center of Venice between January and September 2022, using participant observation, shadowing, semi-structured interviews, and informal conversations with research participants. His fieldwork highlights features, and tendencies of the food delivery sector in Venice and to sketch a picture of the migrant couriers, in particular their living and working conditions.

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