Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: On-demand delivery platforms have become a common feature of urban economies across the globe. Noted for their hyper-outsourced, “lean” business models and reliance on independent contractors, these companies evade traditional employer obligations while still controlling workers through complex algorithmic management techniques. Using food delivery platform Deliveroo as a case-study, this paper investigates the diverse array of practices that on-demand workers carry out in order to enact this new platform labor arrangement in different spatial contexts. One of us conducted an auto-ethnographic project, working as a Deliveroo Rider in Nijmegen and Berlin for a period of nine months. Additionally, we interviewed 13 fellow platform workers. The findings reveal the motley, contingent, and conditional ways in which on-demand labor comes together on the ground. The paper concludes with discussing the uneven distribution of these practices across locations and social groups, and the sometimes contradictory impacts they have on the structure of platform labor.
Authors: Peter Timko, Rianne van Melik
Institution: Radboud University Nijmegen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,000
OpenAlex ID: W3134075192