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

Suddhabrata Deb Roy focuses on migrant gig delivery workers in three Indian cities: Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. It analyzes their everyday lives and brings out their struggles for sustenance in light of the growing digitalization of the overall urban experiential lived space. The author focuses on thirty interviews conducted with migrant delivery workers, and brings forward the choices that these gig workers have to make in the cities to sustain and get cared for, which again are dominated by the implications of the entire labor process involved in delivery work along with the effects that it has on their Right to the City.

Finally, Isabel Roque analyzes forms of resistance and the consequences of precarious work on the lives of digital workers in Portugal, especially in terms of psychosocial and occupational risks. Specifically, she focuses on risk of social vulnerability, precariousness, insecurity, poverty, and social exclusion. In fact, during the Covid-19 pandemic, class inequalities were accentuated through the demarcation between second line and first line essential workers, who were exposed to the virus.

Paolo Borghi and Annalisa Murgia open the second section ofthe book with a chapter that analyzes the intersection between agency, collective resistance, and trends toward self-exploitation of migrant and BAME platform workers involved in specific protests supported by the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain—IWGB. Drawing from an ethnographic study conducted in 2022, they discuss the construction of collective forms of resistance as the result of processes of continuous negotiation with migrant and BAME workers. In doing so, they focus on the perspective of both workers and unionists supporting the protests and show how the observed forms of resistance are affected by both workers’ trajectories, including trends toward self-exploitation, and their collective (and political) claims denouncing the racialized exploitation perpetuated by platforms. At the theoretical level, their chapter contributes to the debate that investigates the ways in which migrant workers mobilize and organize autonomously or supported by independent and well-established unions. In particular, on the one hand, the chapter sheds the lights on formal and informal mechanisms of union voice; on the other, they investigate how the community organizing, and the intertwining of class and ethnicity, can facilitate forms of collective resistance.

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Then, Yang Zhou examines the relationship between migration and precarity in the gig economy in the non-Western context of China. Experiences of China’s gig workers promise rich insights into this relationship because most of them were rural-to-urban migrant factory and service workers before they ‘migrate’ to platform-based gig work. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, the author argues that migrant gig workers in China are trapped in the platform by China’s state-led, tech-driven economic restructuring project, through a new mode of migrant labor differentiation comprising three factors, including changes in the labor market, hegemonic gender norms, and the reformed hukou system. Yet in the meantime, being migrants also contributes to ‘cultures of solidarity’ they develop among themselves, which provides the micro-foundation of solidarity for frequent yet often small-scale collective actions. The nature and strengths of this culture of solidarity will be examined, so do its potential to forge cross city/region solidarity and for institutionalization.

Finally, Dipsita Dhar, Soham Bhattacharya, and Ashique Ali T. focus migrant digital platform workers within the process of rapid urbanization or metropolitization that has gifted India. With the replication of the Silicon Valley model, India too started building Tech cities that pulled a large number of workers from outside. Along with a pool of whitecollar IT professionals, it brought in people who were required to fulfill the newly developed demand for domestic labor, transportation workers, and sanitation workers. Interestingly, these socially dispersed population of migrants were distinctive in their skill endowment, nature of occupation and social location. But there were two things common among them, their identity as outsiders and their exploitation on the hand of capital. The Karnataka IT employee Union, All India Gig Workers Union, and Inter-State Migration Federation of Karnataka are three unions affiliated to Centre for Trade unions that showed an exceptional trajectory of collaboration, solidarity, and what can be called a collective inter-union reciprocal relation. A large number of unskilled Bengali Muslims came to Bangalore as waste pickers, but their religio-lingustic identity have easily exposed them to different kind of racial and communal targeting, where they are called Bangladeshis, arrested by police and even their huts being demolished. The working-class vulnerabilities are coupled up with the question of citizenry, of being illegal, infiltrators (ghuspetia). The CITU used the leading Bengali workers from the IT unions to go and mobilize among these migrants on the basis of their linguistic commonality to form union. The network of the migrant union was then further used to track down the workers engaging in the digital labor platform and registering them with the gig union. The informal connection based on their cultural identity of migrant, enabled them in forming cross-occupation solidarity and a range of joint initiatives. Their collective actions ranged from providing aid during the calamities, protest against the harassment of police, and so on so forth. Specifically, the authors explore what made this reciprocal relation work, how they bring resolution to a conflict of interest, and whether this model can be an ideal to be replicated elsewhere.

1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE PLATFORM

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Vulnerability and Inherent Precarity of Migrant Workers in Gig Economy

PART I

Migrant Labour in the Greek Gig Economy

Lefteris Kretsos and Vassilis Charitsis

1 Introduction

Numerous scholars have analysed migrant labour within the gig economy, as it remains to be a topical theme of scholarly research (Urzi Brancati et al., 2020; van Doorn et al., 2023; Katta et al., 2024; Lenaerts et al., 2018; Piasna et al., 2022). Other scholars have also highlighted a significant intersection between the gig economy and labour migration (Zwysen & Piasna, 2024). Migrant labour influences the gig economy, and, conversely, the gig economy affects migrant labour. This dynamic encompasses both quantitative and qualitative aspects of migrant work on digital platforms. Notably, migrant workers make up the majority of individuals working on digital platforms (Urzi Brancati et al., 2020; ILO,

CHAPTER 2

_{L. Kretsos (}B₎ Brunel University of London, London, UK e-mail: Lefteris.Kretsos@brunel.ac.uk

V. Charitsis Independent Researcher, London, UK e-mail: vassilischaritsis@protonmail.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\_2

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2021; Kowalik et al., 2023; Piasna et al., 2022; van Doorn & Vijay,
2024).

According to relevant studies, this significant migrants’ presence in the gig economy may either contribute to the further precarization of working conditions including the entrapment of migrant workers in a vicious cycle of exploitation and vulnerability (Goods et al., 2019; Kowalik et al., 2023; Lam & Triandafyllidou, 2024). In the opposite vein, digital platforms may offer significant employment opportunities for many migrants. Within a politicized framework of migration policy driven by anti-migration sentiments and xenophobic media narratives emphasizing the need for stricter controls of migration flows, the significance of such employment opportunities becomes increasingly critical (Fekete, 2018; Fouskas et al., 2022; Lucassen, 2018; Trimikliniotis, 2019).

Nevertheless, the lack of data complicates the full understanding and exploration of the dynamic relationship between migrant labour and work on digital labour platforms. Additionally, this lack of absolute documentation in both statistical and qualitative terms exacerbates the difficulty of comparing the working and living conditions of migrant gig workers with those of other workers and non-migrant groups. These challenges, already highlighted in previous studies, are likely exacerbated in disorganized capitalist settings and socio-economic environments, where labour law violations, lack of opportunities to unionize, unfavourable dispute resolution systems for workers, and an increased likelihood of managerial dominance (Urzi Brancati et al., 2020; Lam & Triandafyllidou, 2024).

The current analysis delves into the complex dynamics where migrant labour and digital work converge within Greece’s unstructured socioeconomic and employment landscape. The objective is to investigate whether gig work could be considered a preferable employment option for migrant labour within Greece’s landscape of deregulation, shaped by the ongoing neoliberal trajectory. The analysis draws from various resources, such as statistical data from the Labour Force Survey, a review of earlier surveys examining the working and living conditions in both rural and urban environments of Greece, as well as other studies that focus on the interplay between precarity, individualism, and collective agency. Finally, the contribution uses interview findings with digital platform delivery workers and key informants in the Greek trade union movement regarding aspects of resistance and exploitation in platform work.

The analysis is structured as follows. The description of the Greek gig economy, including its peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, establishes the knowledge gap on the issue. We begin with a rigorous analysis, synthesizing earlier studies on the position of migrants in the Greek labour market. Then, in the next part, we elaborate on the dynamics of gig work and migrant labour. Findings are based on data collection and analysis that include in-depth interviews with union leaders, rank-and-file activists, and gig workers in transport, delivery, and courier services, as well as on the analysis of available statistical data from the Labour Force Survey and other secondary data including policy documents and recent labour law acts. The final section includes conclusions and a critical reflection on the current situation.

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2 Gig Jobs Austerity and Migration Policy

Over the past decade, the gig economy has transformed traditional markets with flexible job opportunities and app-based services (Chen et al., 2019). Ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Bolt have revolutionized personal transportation, while AirBnB has changed hospitality, and Deliveroo has impacted food delivery, while other platforms like TaskRabbit and Upwork have reshaped other service sectors and the way work is organized and regulated (Lehdonvirta, 2018; Mulcahy, 2016; Schor, 2020; Wood et al, 2018). However, this rapid growth comes with challenges, particularly regarding fair compensation and privacy, as gig workers are paid per task, lacking income guarantees, sick pay, and other benefits typical of regular jobs (Cook et al., 2021; Elliott et al., 2022).

In this context, platforms pose challenges for workers and potential issues with discrimination and fairness, as well as other behavioural effects in labour supply (Crawford & Meng, 2011; Mejia & Parker, 2021). For example, an interviewed driver, who is rank-and-file activist in the Athens Taxi Drivers Association, argued that: “Since 2012, with the liberalization of the taxi industry under law 4093, things have changed dramatically. Many colleagues now face significant debts due to over-taxation and the economic crisis. Working 12 hours a day makes me feel like part of the working class. Then Uber entered the ride-hailing market, and it was a nightmare, as we watched private cars take our jobs”. And he continues: “We are moving towards market cartelization, and a substantial portion of our income will be automatically redirected to platforms”.

In Greece, knowledge about the gig economy’s scope, trends, and potential is limited. As Mexi (2019) notes, in contrast to the situation in other European countries, the gig economy and gig work are poorly understood in Greece, particularly about labour issues. Greek policymakers and regulators have primarily shown interest in the gig economy from the standpoint of tax avoidance by digital platforms and the consequent loss of public revenue. To some extent, this is related to the domination of AirBnB in the tourism industry, and to the contention between the Greek government and taxi drivers with Uber in 2018, as well as the relatively small size of the gig economy workforce compared to the general workforce (Mexi, 2019).

2 MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE GREEK GIG ECONOMY

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The reasons behind the prevalence of AirBnB in the Greek gig or sharing economy are explained by specific socio-economic reasons. Homeowners, turned to digital platforms like AirBnB to generate income or supplement their earnings as a response to rising unemployment, shrinking incomes, and over-taxation of private property imposed by foreign creditors (Goranitis, 2016). Nevertheless, digital platforms are also integral to other economic sectors, including transportation, courier and delivery services, tourism, dating, and socializing services.

Other prominent platforms in Greece include the case of Uber (which suspended most ofits service after a dispute with the Greek government in 2018), FreeNow, e-food, Wolt, Blueground, Workable, and Doctoranytime. According to Αγγελάκης and Θανόπουλος (2022), 10% of businesses in the food, beverage, and catering industry in Greece use digital platforms in the delivery of their services, with 20% engaging with two platforms and 10% with more than three. The study highlights that these partnerships contribute approximately 23.1% of total revenues in this sector. This trend has had notable implications for employment.

For example, Table 1 shows a significant increase in delivery and courier workers, highlighted in the findings section. These workers are classified under the NACE system as drivers and mobile equipment operators in postal, courier, and delivery services. According to a union leader interviewed, the actual number ofdelivery and hire drivers is much higher, estimated to exceed 100.000, because many people work without proper documentation and use delivery jobs as a secondary source of income.

The employee turnover rate reflects the dynamism and deregulation prevalent in those occupations and industries. As shown in the Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5, despite the high turnover rate, the net result in job vacancies and recruitment is positive.

Despite the significantly high number of resignations and dismissals, workers who leave their jobs appear to be re-entering the industry. This rapid turnover rate suggests a dynamic labour market, though it does not necessarily signify a shift in bargaining power towards employees, as we will explain next. Also, the current interview data analysis indicates that this dynamism in the labour market has not resulted in increased wages or better working conditions for delivery workers in digital platforms. Instead, the statistical evidence on recruitment and turnover underscores the transient and precarious nature of gig work in the delivery and hospitality industries, as well as on working on digital platforms.

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