Mind the gap between discourses and practices: Platform workers’ representation in France and Italy

Abstract

This article, based on a 6-month cross-national ethnography conducted in France and Italy, aims at contributing to comparative debates on the representation of platform workers. The study takes the cases of both traditional and alternative actors that currently represent platform workers. In particular, by investigating both trade unions and grassroots groups, research findings show the gap between discursive and effective representation in the two European countries studied. Drawing on Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick’s concept of ‘variable geometry of resistance’, we discuss how these gaps are wider or narrower depending on to what extent – in the two countries and in the studied organizations – there is capacity to build both solidarity in difference and alliances between traditional and alternative actors.