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

This consideration brings us in the direction suggested by Castel (1997) to reframe the terms typically dualistically distinguished in the opposition between the ‘in’ and ‘out’ in post-wage society. For instance, the concept of adverse incorporation originates from social exclusion studies, offering a diametrically opposed perspective to residualist conceptions of poverty. It emphasises that social marginalisation phenomena primarily result from power relations, not just the consequence of more or less ascribed socioeconomic and identity characteristics (Hickey et al., 2007; Phillips, 2011; Wood, 2000). In essence, this school of thought criticises approaches that have sought to replace the concept of exploitation with that of social exclusion to explain the causes of poverty, at times indirectly legitimising the expansion of the market and financialisation as solutions (Hickey et al., 2007). As Phillips (2011, p. 390) succinctly puts it, the concept of adverse incorporation “leads us to focus not on a condition of socioeconomic exclusion as the principal determinant of poverty and marginalization, but rather on the terms on which different social groups are included and incorporated into global economic activity”. Phillips then highlights how well this concept fits the condition of informal workers and migrants. Rather than being excluded from economic processes, they are included in accumulation processes along global value chains through old and new disciplinary instruments and value extraction apparatuses. Those who have analysed the processes of differential inclusion of migrant labour have done so by looking in particular at work in detention centres or at the geographical mobility of some labour flows, not only at the transnational level but also within the same territory, for example along the urban/rural axis (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013). However, these differential and adverse conditions of the inclusion of migrant labour are historically present in many sectors of the informal economy and are now inscribed in platform capitalism. What they have in common is that they are forms of employment that offer no prospect of savings and often condemn workers to living from day to day, managing their vulnerability by relying on short-term investments and tactics to meet practical and immediate needs. This is instead of focusing on broader strategies that support medium to long-term projected needs (Wood, 2000). As many professional biographies of subjects highlight, adverse incorporation, which in turn produces entrapment, of platform workers into the labour market, “acts to reinforce the limits on workers’ prospects for longer-term security and accumulation and perpetuate their vulnerability” (Phillips, 2011, p. 391). Other authors, with a similar perspective, see today the centrality of algorithmic technologies in enabling and obscuring these processes of predatory inclusion of workers in the gig economy—forms of inclusion through exclusion that mainly affect migrant populations (Cottom, 2020). Whether we are talking about differential inclusion, predatory inclusion or the adverse incorporation of migrant labour, the result of this complex hybridisation between processes of inclusion and exclusion, as scholars have often emphasised, is to produce disempowerment of labour. However, it often also generates a series of tensions between the movement of migratory flows and the apparatuses designed to govern them (Cottom, 2020; Hickey et al., 2007; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013; Phillips, 2011).

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4 Digital Caporalato

By delving into the materiality and everyday reality of the work performed by riders and drivers for platform-based services, a phenomenon known as digital caporalato comes to the fore, providing a particularly revealing empirical illustration of the ongoing refeudalisation of the economy and the predatory conditions of inclusion of the migrant workforce in the gig economy. The term ‘caporalato’ (gangmastering) generally refers to a parasitic intermediation between labour demand and supply for the purpose of exploitation, commonly found in specific productive sectors such as agriculture and construction (Perrotta, 2015). In the context of platforms, as elaborated in the following paragraphs, similar mechanisms resurface, particularly affecting the migrant portion of the workforce. Drawing on the work of labour law experts in Italy (Cassano, 2020; Inversi, 2021; Merlo, 2020; Sartori, 2022), the Italian Penal Code (art. 603-bis c.p.) and international organisations (Corbanese & Rosas, 2021; ILO, 2005, 2009), digital caporalato can be defined as an organised intermediation activity taking place through, by means of, or outside but related to the digital platform. It is characterised by conditions of exploitation, taking advantage of the workers’ state of need and their vulnerability. In the last years, the Italian “Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on working conditions, exploitation and safety in public and private workplaces”, set up in 2019, has drawn a dramatic picture of the forms of gangmastering, highlighting in particular the new forms of caporalato affecting the world of digital work. The data that emerges about caporalato, from which apparently no region is exempt, refers to it as a “plague unworthy ofa civilised country” (Parliamentary Inquiry Commission, 2022, p. 8). The government reports specifically point to some aspects of platform-mediated work as areas easily associated with these forms of exploitation, given that “the increasingly evanescent figure ofthe employer often constitutes a favourable opportunity for the emergence of new phenomena oflabour exploitation such as digital caporalato where gig economy workers have replaced farm labourers” (ivi: 31). At international level, the ILO, which supported the creation of the Italian Commission against caporalato, has intervened on several occasions over the years with actions and guidelines to tackle forms of exploitation, human trafficking and illegal labour intermediation (Corbanese & Rosas, 2021; ILO, 2005, 2009).

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In the following paragraphs, we will examine some expressions of digital caporalato present in the gig economy that outline a situation of exploitation. The empirical material has been gathered within the framework of a broader multi-sited research on last-mile logistics platforms between Italy and Argentina carried out between 2019 and 2022. Data has been collected through an ethnography of work in the two contexts of study; more than 60 interviews were conducted with platform workers, in addition to long periods of participant observation (in the case of Italy, I was employed as a rider for one of the biggest food delivery companies present in the country, while in Argentina I approached the ride-hailing sector mainly as a passenger) and online ethnography through social media and collective chats among workers. An important part of the data also comes from secondary sources, such as court documents and newspaper articles. In the context of food delivery, Italy has unveiled through judicial investigations an illicit network of intermediation operated by a small company subcontracting services to Uber. In the case of ride-hailing, as revealed in the Buenos Aires scenario, a mechanism of digital caporalato finds space within the Uber Driver app itself and can be implemented by the drivers themselves, exposing their colleagues to scams and the risk of compromising their own accounts. In addition to these practices that immediately evoke the concept of a gangmaster, there are more discreet forms of illicit labour intermediation and exploitation of vulnerability, such as the use of bots by riders to enhance their work performance.

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The Uber Eats Trial

The phenomenon of digital caporalato has made headlines in Italy due to various legal cases, revealing its multifaceted presence in the platform work environment. In May 2020, several newspapers in Italy exposed the scandal of digital labour exploitation among UberEats riders following an investigation by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office into Uber managers and a company acting as an intermediary named Flash Road City (FRC). Essentially, FRC managed around 750 UberEats riders across Italy using unorthodox and criminally prosecutable methods. The investigations led the Court to place the Italian branch of the Californian company under receivership following convictions for illicit intermediation and labour exploitation (ex-art. 630-bis of the Italian Penal Code), setting a precedent in labour jurisprudence—alongside another case of the so-called new caporalato involving labour through fictitious cooperatives at Ceva Logistic (Merlo, 2020). The term digital caporalato aptly described the situation uncovered by investigators: compelling evidence painted a grim picture where managers recruited couriers, particularly asylum seekers residing in reception centres, coerced them to sign presumed agreements in unfamiliar spaces, withheld tips and a portion of each delivery’s earnings (amounting to around e20.000 in tips alone in 2019), enforced non-refusal of rides by riders and imposed arbitrary financial penalties. The most distressing aspect of the investigation pertained to the oppressive conditions imposed on Uber Eats riders. Phone intercepts revealed a semi-slave-like treatment by FRC executives towards riders: arbitrary disciplinary measures for alleged infractions, threats to suspend accounts for perceived misbehaviour or complaints, and tones that not only undermined work dignity but also exhibited clear racist undertones. In several cases reported in the investigation by the Court of Milan, racist and denigrating language was used towards the riders, who were often suspended for trivial reasons. For example, one of FRC’s best-known managers, according to testimonies reported to the court, referred to the sub-Saharan riders by saying that “they stink because, being dark-skinned, they normally stink”.¹ Several Uber Italy managers are also implicated in the investigation because they were aware of the methods used by FRC and because they were the only ones who could effectively block the riders accounts. The facade of apparent legality that characterises the FRC has allowed them to recruit, in the 2018–2020 period, a growing workforce made up of numerous asylum-seeking migrants, mostly living in temporary reception centres. As the Court’s report explains:

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¹ Available at: https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2023/05/24/news/caporalato\_p rocesso\_rider\_ricusazione\_giudice\_uber-401586108/ (Last access 13/03/2024).

Suffice it to say that a search carried out on some of the names that emerged from the investigations revealed that a large proportion of the riders recruited by Flash Road City came from conflict areas of the planet (Mali, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea, Pakistan, Bangladesh and others). […] The strong social isolation in which these migrant workers live provides an opportunity to find work at very low cost, as these are people who are willing to do anything to have the money to survive, who are exploited and discriminated against by unscrupulous employers who feel they have no choice but to work in order not to see their migratory dream fail, and who are therefore willing not only to do the less qualified and harder jobs, but also to be paid little and badly (Court of Milan, 2020, p. 8 ).

As labour law expert Merlo (2020) points out, the prosecutor’s report highlights a working situation that is far from self-employment and can be fully associated with a framework of gangmastering for the purposes of exploitation. Finally, in addition to the crime of illicit intermediation and exploitation of labour (ex-art. 630-bis), the Court of Milan (2020) accused some managers of FRC and Uber of the crime of aggravated fraud, criminal association, crimes of extortion, usury, laundering and use of goods and money of illicit origin. A first part of the trial ended in February 2022 with the conviction of some managers and the obligation to pay compensation of around half a million euros to the UberEats riders who were civil parties. In conclusion, that of FRC and UberEats outlines a form of top-down gangmastering, with a parasitic interposition that operates within an institutional labour regime. In effect, this form of illegal labour intermediation exploits the immunity of gig economy companies that characterise the independent contractor employment regime of platform workers.

Platform Caporalato Among Uber Fleets and Other Informal Circuits ofIllicit Intermediation ofLabour

If the Milan trial against UberEats outlines a form of gangmastering that is embedded in the institutional mechanisms of the forms of employment and makes use of intermediary companies such as FRC, other forms of digital caporalato operate behind the scenes of official organisational mechanisms and take place in a bottom-up form. One of the most revealing examples of this second level of illicit labour intermediation comes from the case of Uber drivers, observed during the fieldwork in Buenos Aires in 2020, which takes place through the app extension of UberFleet. Before explaining in detail how this informal and bottomup form of caporalato works, it is necessary to make a brief reference to the situation of the Californian company in the Argentine capital. Since its arrival in 2016, Uber has been operating in the city in a grey zone beyond the limits of legality, according to the capital’s authorities, as it violates the local transport legislation (however, in other urban areas, such as Mendoza, it operates legally thanks to agreements that have since been immediately signed with local federal institutions) (Del Nido, 2021). This means that drivers are exposed to further risks and vulnerabilities, since they can be fined if caught by the police to transport passengers on behalf of Uber. Nevertheless, the ride-hailing service has continued to grow over time and become a logistical infrastructure for local transport, despite institutional attempts to block the company and persistent protests from taxi drivers. On the other hand, Uber drivers have been able to continue working without paying commissions to the company (as there was initially no way for drivers to pay money to Uber), until the company introduced payment mechanisms (via prepaid cards) to try to collect at least part of the debts accumulated by drivers over the years. For this reason, the ‘minimum payment’ has been introduced to make drivers gradually pay part of their debt and avoid a mass flight to the competition (such as Didi, Cabify and Beat). Basically, starting in 2019, Uber asks drivers to pay a portion of their debt each month to keep their account active. In addition, a massive informal market for fake accounts has emerged, given the high number of Uber driver accounts that have been suspended or permanently blocked for non-payment of debts.

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In this situation, a fraud mechanism of digital caporalato against drivers has rapidly flourished through the official extension of the app called UberFleet. In short, thanks to UberFleet, an owner of several cars can become a platform-based micro-entrepreneur, making them profitable and renting them out to other Uber drivers via the dedicated app. Through his smartphone, the owner can monitor the fleet and has a commanding position over the drivers: he can follow their movements, check when and how they are working, and he is also the one who pays the commissions of the different drivers to Uber and collects a fee for himself. In a nutshell, it acts as an intermediary between the company and drivers who lack a vehicle of their own. But what happens, according to several drivers, is that the fleet owner often exempts himself from paying the full share of commissions and only pays the ‘minimum payment’ allowed by Uber in Argentina. In this way, he can pocket the difference in unpaid commissions on top of the percentage he is entitled to. This mechanism is therefore very similar to fraud because, as one expert driver explains, the drivers are not aware of what the owner of the fleet is doing, but it also outlines another kind of illicit and fraudulent intermediation of labour. It may also happen that Uber then decides to block the fleet due to insolvency, in which case unsuspecting drivers will find their account blocked without knowing exactly why (deactivation notices generally contain a generic reference to a breach of the ToS). Often, as one driver explains:

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When the fleet stops working because Uber tells you that if you don’t pay me your debt, I won’t activate the fleet for you, the owner cancels the registration of the fleet and creates another one with a different name or a fake account” (D., Uber driver).

Furthermore, fleet owners typically try to attract drivers through messages posted on WhatsApp groups or social media message boards, announcing better rates, or even promising not to pay commissions. On Facebook in 2020, countless posts were published in Uber driver groups saying: “stop paying commissions and join my fleet!”. In the same social groups, many drivers denounce the inappropriate behaviour of fleet owners by reporting their own experiences: “I was in a fleet and yesterday they suspended my account, the owner disappeared, it seems he didn’t pay any commission and so Uber blocked the fleet!” (source: Facebook Public Group). In most cases, it is migrant workers from other countries who fall into this kind of trap. In the case of Uber in Buenos Aires, for example, it is mainly drivers from Venezuela, Paraguay and Bolivia who end up in these informal digital gangmaster mechanisms. Parasitic and fraudulent fleet intermediation therefore mainly affects the migrants, less experienced drivers or more vulnerable components of the workforce and represents another form of caporalato. Furthermore, in the world of Uber in Buenos Aires, there are countless other forms of intermediation between drivers and the platform that are not entirely transparent. One of the most common and widespread is the use of fake accounts, known as ‘cuentas truchas’. These accounts are sold mainly on social media and often have a short-term guarantee, even a few weeks or months. However, these services allow those whose accounts have been blocked or irregular migrants present in the country to work. Finally, other forms of informal labour intermediation involve renting out one’s account to third parties—again, this trading market generally takes place on social media.

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In the case of food delivery in Italy, one of the mechanisms of illegal labour intermediation that finds a place in the environment of official apps concerns the self-booking mechanism of work slots. During the pandemic and up to the present day, illegal services have proliferated that allow the acquisition of greater work opportunities and that operate through specific software, known as pirate bots. Bots are a shortcut to work for those with low rankings and unable to get enough work slots. However, bots are also a burden on the shoulders of the workers themselves, increasing unfair competition and forcing those who use them to pay large sums of money each week. As a rider in Turin explains:

Using bots is stupid, and most of all, it hurts your colleagues. Bots are made to enslave us and blackmail us even more, you pay to get them, if they were for free, it would be different. To use them, you must spend a certain amount per week, it’s a system to make bastards rich, who profit from the competition of underclasses like the riders (A., Glovo rider).

As another rider from Turin explains, platform companies are more or less directly responsible of this kind of racket:

Between the accounts that are for sale and now the hours that can be bought by these bots, we are immersed in a Wild West labour system. We should publicly denounce the companies because they favour the black market, they have created a working environment without rules, a war of all against all, where the smartest or most ruthless wins (D., Glovo rider).

In sum, the bot market represents a further form of illicit labour intermediation and, therefore, can be understood as an informal expression of digital caporalato. Of course, there are even more discreet forms of parasitic interposition of riders’ work that take place face to face; but it is also possible that the informal exchange, sharing or transfer of riders’ accounts takes place simply on the basis of solidarity, acquaintance and personal friendship—without any form of exploitation involved.

5 Conclusion

Over the last decade, the gig economy has proven to be a particularly favourable arena for migrant labour. This is happening not only in Europe, with massive extra-continental labour flows, but also in other global regions, as in the case of Argentina, where labour flows are predominantly—but not exclusively—intra-continental Latin American. The paper confirmed this hypothesis, which has been widely discussed in the literature, but also revealed some hidden aspects of platforms as migration labour infrastructures. If it is true that easy access to platforms, represented by low entry barriers (mainly easy registration and no need to know the native language), allows migrants to quickly find employment in host countries, the working conditions offered can often be a trap rather than an opportunity for them. The flourishing of forms of digital caporalato within the gig economy demonstrates that the gig economy offers a deliberately crafted race to the bottom specifically designed to include the migrant component of the workforce in its political economy, revealing a model of labour entrapment with little chance of escape. The recruitment policies of managers (as in the case of FRC and UberEats) as well as the informal circuits of illicit labour intermediation (such as Uber’s fleets) seem in fact designed specifically to differentially and predatorily include the migrant portion of the workforce in platforms. But more than a negative spillover effect, the phenomenon of digital caporalato is the consequence of the same organisational design that structures platform work. As also argued, for instance, by the Italian Commission on gangmasterism, the evanescent figure of the employer in platform work constitutes a favourable opportunity for the emergence of these phenomena of labour exploitation. The political need to stop the unbridled use of forms of independent subcontracting is therefore an issue that is not only related to the labour protections won through decades of struggle and progress, but also to the need to stop forms of racism that operate on the basis of a second-class labour market built specifically for migrant workers.

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References

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