Bortom servicefronten. E-handelsarbetets platser och ojämlikhetsmönster

Abstract

The digitalization of retailing is restructuring consumption as well as retail work. Unlike front-line service work in stores, online retail work is defined by indirect service work at a distance from customers at warehouse sites. The rapid pace of change means that knowledge about online retail workplaces and its employees is still fragmentary. Empirically drawing on Swedish national statistics and an ongoing study of five online retail warehouses, this article explores intersections of online retail warehousing, gender and racialization, and meanings of place therein. National statistics show that online retail employs more men and more foreign-born than retailing in general. While retailing is dominated by small workplaces, online retail warehouses are either small or large and the proportion of women and Swedish-born is lower at the larger warehouses than the small ones. Occupational data show that the proportion of women and foreign-born people is significantly lower among online retail managers than among warehouse workers. Further nuances are provided by the qualitative insights from the five studied warehouses. Almost only women worked in the two smaller warehouses, which was explained by references to the nature of the work. At the larger, more gender-balanced warehouses, examples of segregation between employees of the same category were found, as was the importance of place for hierarchies between workers and managers. More so, the study makes evident that place matters also for the boundary making around and between online retail workplaces, especially in relation to racialization processes. While inequality, place and work in retail stores are about conditional access to employment, in online retail warehouses the matter seems to be more about how certain bodies’ lack of mobility and opportunities in the labor market at large left them “stuck” in online retailing.