Class formation and relations among Filipino cloudworkers

Abstract

This chapter examines the emerging class formation and relations among cloudworkers as well as its underlying institutional structures. As an empirical anchor, it focuses on the Philippines, which has actively embraced platform labour, with millions of Filipino workers obtaining gigs from cloudwork platforms. The chapter discusses the inter-relationships between and across class hierarchies, highlighting how the experiences and narratives of influencers, worker-agencies, and highly specialised workers are cascaded to shape the imaginaries of the majority of new entrants and precarious Filipino platform workers. It argues that cloudwork, like labour migration where the State plays an instrumental role in promoting and facilitating, reinforces the view of class structures still as national formations. Cloudworkers are integrated into digital circuits that activate exchange and sales in global markets and they embody ‘technocultural agency’ in varying degrees depending on their literacies and negotiation of global and local spheres.