Hyperconnectivity and (Im)mobility: Uber and Surveillance Capitalism by the Global South

Abstract

Apart from governments’ increased opportunities to monitor citizens, businesses, civil servants, and services, companies are mobilizing personal data to build profitable, algorithmically based business models with profound ramifications. With companies that have rapidly become giants in this sector, such as Uber, the phenomenon is spreading to various services at the same overwhelming speed as many companies bet on what is known as Uberization. In this paper, we aim to use one example of such a phenomenon from the Global South to show how a potential hyperconnected society is, in fact, creating the possibility for expanded patterns of immobilization for certain groups. We aim to show how highly indirect corporate surveillance involved in businesses such as Uber can run in parallel with a specific direct form of worker surveillance that, without any legal or social safeguards, increases the vulnerability of the weakest link in this chain.