Unequal taxi geographies: Antagonisms in platform-driven urban restructuring in Delhi, India

In this article, we investigate Norwegian taxi drivers’ perceptions and experiences of the introduction of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) such as Uber. We find that taxi drivers are highly critical, but not over technology or TNCs as such. Their critique is directed at government deregulations of the taxi industry, which paved the way for TNC re-entry. Our findings suggest that, if we are to understand how the platform economy changes work-life and its social consequences, we need to comprehend (1) current digital change in its political context, which in our case pertains notably to deregulations. Equally important (2) is that consequences and struggles are seen in light of the history and social trajectory of the specific occupations affected; a central factor in our case being that the taxi industry has become a typical migrant occupation. Our paper contributes to a more comprehensive picture of structural changes in the digital work-life.

There is a growing consensus that emerging forms of flexibilized platform labor (e.g., Upwork, Uber) necessitate new forms of mobilization to resist exploitation, given workers’ atomization and lack of statutory rights. However, Euro‐American concerns about radical reductions in labor security are countered by workforces in the “near South,” where precarious, unprotected work has long been the norm. I explore incrementalist organization in motorcycle taxi (ojek) drivers’ resistance to the flexible labor regime of Go‐Jek, an Indonesian ride‐hailing app. I examineojek pangkalan(older‐style informal‐sector drivers) and Himpunan Driver Bandung Raya (HDBR, a grassroots app‐based driver association) in the city of Bandung. Although antagonistic toward each other, ojek pangkalan and HDBR employ similar improvisatory strategies, notably micro‐territorial basecamps and grassroots social security, to establish claims to their working lives. Incrementalist strategies in Indonesia are thus highly flexible in helping workers manage precarity across formal and informal contexts. By examining organization repertoires among app‐based and older‐style ojek drivers, this paper contributes to discussions about how the precarity of platform labor is produced and managed in a global context.

‘Platform urbanism’ has recently gained traction as a designator for emergent dynamics and material configurations associated with the increasing presence of digital platform enterprises in cities. Initial scholarly engagements with platform urbanism have tended to coalesce around critiques of digital platforms as progenitors of inevitably dystopian urban futures. In this paper, I advance a counter-topographical minor theory of platform urbanism. I do so by drawing on Legacy Russell's notion of the glitch as a tendency toward both error and erratum (correction) in digital systems, mobilizing space/times where platforms appear ‘glitchy’—unexpectedly, otherwise than anticipated, or not at all—as the margins of platform urbanism. Through the narration of three specific platform/city interfaces from the minors of their glitchy margins, I capture the ways in which platform–urban configurations are demonstrably open to negotiations, reconfigurations, and diffractions through tactical maneuvers rooted in everyday digital practices of urban denizens. Theorized from the minor, platform urbanism is a phenomenon that may beget an array of possible outcomes that remain shapeable by mundane tactical interventions in the platform-mediated present. This ultimately underwrites possibilities for more hopeful digital urban politics, theory, and futures.

The recent emergence of new employment types called as platform labor has different characteristics from the traditional employment type. Therefore, unlike the traditional employment relationship, the platform labor has the protective problem under the labor law. In fact, the platform labor consists of tripartite relationships (Demand-Platform-Supplier) in general although the contractual types are various. In this regard, this may lead to controversy over which the supplier’s employment pattern may be classified in its substance(Employees or self-employed). This controversy may lead to the following assignments of legislative policy for platform workers.BR First of all, the assignments of future legislative policy on the platform labor shall go through the social discussions and consultations sufficiently based on the survey of platform workers. In other words, it is necessary to prepare for the legislative measures to improve the working conditions and the environment by classifying the employment types after the fact-finding of platform workers is identified. In particular, the specific protection subjects and scopes shall be considered under the positions of interesting parties and the consistency of the labor-related law system. Finally, the law that is enacted or amended through social discussions and agreements shall be reviewed subsequently.BR Thus, the assignments of future legislative policy related to platform labor may be largely composed of three aspects. First, the systematic survey of platform workers is needed. The reason for this is that it has been difficult to prepare for the measures of legislative policy for platform workers since there are no official government statistics until now. Second, there is a need to prepare for the legislative measures for platform workers because the rapid spread of platform labor around the world recently so that Korea also needs the legislative action against it. Third, the Korean government needs to create the conditions in order that the stakeholders related to platform labor may prepare for a voluntary common code of conduct. The reason is that the legislative measures for platform workers are expected to take considerable time so that a short-term approach is needed.

With this article, I propose an alternative to research platforms in the urban ‘south'. The debate on platform impacts has been divided between those embedded in platform determinism, predicting a utopian urban environment mediated by the digital, and those critics who see platforms as the portrayals of dystopian urban futures. However, some recognize ‘glitches’ in platforms as opportunities for corrections, opening the debate for flexible and negotiable futures of platforms in cities. This ‘glitchiness’ of platform urbanism (Leszczynski 2020) is particularly evident in the evolution of platforms in cities from the global south. Regulatory stagnation and fragile governance put platforms in the space of marginality, requiring a minor theory of ‘glitchy’ platform urbanism to understand their impacts. Through the narration of the interface between mobility platforms and three cities in Latin America, I recognize the ways in which platform glitch theory informs how digital actors re-shape cities in real-world contexts. I explain how a perspective on the everyday bottom-up practices on platform mediated realities show an alternative way to research platform urbanism and the new digital denizens. Ultimately, this can allow for building new possibilities in which southern urban policy, theory and futures can be engaged in their relationship with technology.

Dans cet article, l'A s'interesse a l'ideologie de genre concernant la securite de l'Etat. En se basant sur les ecrits de Thomas Hobbes a propos de l'autorite, l'A revient sur le concept patriarcal de protection de la femme et de l'enfant, les subordonnant ainsi a des citoyens de seconde zone. L'A met en relation le comportement masulin traditionnel avec l'engouement pour les conflits armes internationaux, et les appels et mouvements feministes pour la paix, en s'intorrgeant sur l'avenir de la democratie aux Etats-Unis depuis les evenements du 11 septembre 2001

Cities have expanded both territorially and demographically at an unprecedented speed during the recent intense process of urbanization in China. This article investigates the material, discursive, and social dimensions of an infrastructural process that has been interwoven with the discourse and practice of urban development in the city of Guangzhou since the 1990s. It takes a 2007 public hearing concerning the short supply of taxis on workdays as an entry point into the politics of urban infrastructure, threading together long‐term changes in urban forms, the ritual dimensions of the public hearing, and taxi drivers' downward mobility. The issue at the heart of this public hearing is a pattern of traffic flow caused by intense urbanization in the late Reform period that has led to important structural tensions in everyday life. Yet, under the official ideology of urban development, these structural tensions are de‐humanized and rendered a mere technical issue of supply and shortage. In present‐day China, infrastructural projects are regarded as technological solutions to a wide range of social and political issues in the process of urbanization; yet their material results often simply make these issues invisible instead. [Infrastructure; Urbanization; Taxi; Class; Mobility; China]

Given the growing power and proliferation of digital platforms, urban research has been investigating the complex entanglements of platforms with urban social and material processes, highlighting the deeply political nature of platformization. By linking spatial theory and mobilities research, this contribution aims at offering a dialectical approach to study contested platform mobilities in Mumbai. Adopting a mobile view and research practice in the application of Henri Lefebvre’s concepts, I observe how mobilities assume different meanings in (platform) taxi drivers’ lives: on the one hand in mediating their own biographies and constraints with the urban reality, and on the other negotiating the increasingly repressive platform regimes in their everyday lives. This research approach detects differential space in the sense of Henri Lefebvre, in the way drivers appropriate or circumvent platform mechanisms beyond notions of overt resistance, thereby seeking to carve out meanings and notions of the political in the urban everyday. Besides adding to a growing body of literature under the umbrella of platform urbanism, this paper contributes to debates about empirical applications of Lefebvre’s concepts and recent engagements with his rhythmanalytical project. It also critically engages with applications of mobilities research and mobile methods beyond Europe and North America.

Recent scholarship has been critiquing the urban bias in platform research, calling for greater attention to how rural specificities shape rural platformization. Addressing this gap, this article explores how particularities of a rural territory interact with dynamics of platform economies and shape platform labor. Based on a case study in a rural Andean village in southern Chile, DeLanda's assemblage theory is employed to explore the situated interplay between place-assemblages of a rural periphery and incoming platform assemblages. Alongside the labor realities of platform workers, the findings reveal how algorithms and hardware logistics deterritorialize established labor relations, introducing unregulated and hybrid modes of platform labor. Simultaneously, ecological constraints, place-based meanings of livelihoods, and practices of more-than-human conviviality reterritorialize platform labor to fit into situated ecologies. The simultaneity of deterritorialization and reterritorialization processes outlines nonlinear and multifaceted rural platform trajectories, hinging on the diverse interactions of individual components of place and platform assemblages. These findings highlight how human and nonhuman rural components shape platform expansion, framing rural areas as more-than-human networked peripheries that actively navigate their place in the global platform economy. The article contributes a nuanced understanding of the expansion of platform economies as an interactive rather than solely extractive process.

This article discusses how Brazilian platform workers experience and respond to platform scams through three case studies. Drawing from digital ethnographic research, vlogs/interviews of workers, and literature review, we argue for a conceptualization of “platform scam” that focuses on multiple forms of platform dishonesty and uncertainty. We characterize scam as a structuring element of the algorithmic management enacted by platform labor. The first case engages with when platforms scam workers by discussing Uber drivers’ experiences with the illusive surge pricing. The second case discusses when workers (have to) scam platforms by focusing on Amazon Mechanical Turk microworkers’ experiences with faking their identities. The third case presents when platforms lead workers to scam third parties, by engaging with how Brazilian click farm platforms’ workers use bots/fake accounts to engage with social media. Our focus on “platform scams” thus highlights the particular dimensions of faking, fraud, and deception operating in platform labor. This notion of platform scam expands and complexifies the understanding of scam within platform labor studies. Departing from workers’ experiences, we engage with the asymmetries and unequal power relations present in the algorithmic management of labor.

Affective platform urbanism: Changing habits of digital on-demand consumption

This article examines the ways in which taxi driving and China's quest for global ascendency are interlinked and enmeshed. Inspired by de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life and his conceptual formulation of “strategy” and “tactic”, this article explores how taxi drivers, through their everyday practice of driving, found ways and moments to tactically challenge and appropriate so-called “civility campaigns” and a rising China. By demonstrating the numerous instances of tactics taxi drivers used, I argue that their socio-economic marginality did not, in fact, reduce them to a “powerless” position. I bring in Foucault's analytics of power and governmentality to add to de Certeau's work by helping to explain the intertwined relationship between government and governed to shed light on the complexity implicated in the dynamics of power relations and resistance. I examine the period around the 2008 Beijing Olympics as it involved large-scale attempts to showcase China through (urban) transformation.

The exercise of social control in cities has been linked in a fundamental way to a wide variety of policing mechanisms in urban contexts. This article builds on the literature on urban policing by foregrounding ‘masculinities’ as a unit of analysis for understanding everyday practices of law enforcement on city streets. It describes quotidian interactions between male public transport vehicle operators and traffic police in contemporary Kolkata, India, to make a set of analytical observations about three interrelated concerns (a) the gendered character of urban policing, (b) the emotional and moral ethos of urban law enforcement, and (c) the production of the city as a male space. Through these analyses the article develops the concept of ‘homosocial trust’ as an explanatory framework for understanding gendered dimensions of the everyday state, place-making, and mobility in the ordinary city. Such a heuristic draws thought to the vocabulary of masculinity used by men, who are otherwise framed in a conflictual relationship, to transact situational trust and make city streets inhabitable for themselves. The article shifts the emphasis in studies of urban policing away from conflict to mundane collaboration between law enforcement officers and urban publics to highlight the masculinities of everyday state practice through which the city is reproduced as a space of patriarchal power. The article draws on ethnographic interviews with autorickshaw drivers, taxi drivers, traffic police personnel, and participant observation at workshops conducted by the police with transport workers to sensitize them to safe road practices in Kolkata.

This study aims to examine domestic and international cases regarding the labor status of platform workers and explore policy implications for Korea. Recently, the number of platform workers has significantly increased due to technological advancements. Unlike traditional dependent labor, identifying the actual labor provision relationship of platform workers is challenging. Recognizing the worker status of platform workers is also difficult because they often provide forms of labor that do not meet traditional indicators of worker status. In particular, some users tend to misclassify actual workers as independent contractors to avoid the application of labor laws. There is a need to improve the system to protect platform workers who provide labor for others but are not currently protected by the law. Recently, courts in the United States and other countries have acknowledged the worker status of platform workers. It appears that countries recognize the need for legal protection of platform workers and are strengthening protection by introducing flexibility in determining worker status. In the United States, the California Supreme Court, in the Dynamex case, proposed the ʻABC testʼ as a new standard for determining worker status. The ABC test shifts the burden of proof in worker status cases to the employer, requiring them to prove that (A) the laborer is completely free from the employerʼs direction and supervision, both contractually and in practice, in the performance of the work; (B) the work is outside the ordinary course of the employerʼs business; and (C) the laborer is truly self-employed with a separate and independent business in the same field. The California Supreme Court has made it clear that if the employer cannot prove elements A, B, and C, the labor provider is considered an employee, potentially enhancing protections for platform workers. In Korea, the recent ruling by the Seoul High Court in 2023, recognizing the worker status of platform workers (Tada drivers), has garnered significant attention. Beyond the importance of this ruling for the protection of platform workers, failure to develop Koreaʼs worker concept jurisprudence in a more inclusive direction may render labor laws inadequate in safeguarding various new forms of platform labor and those who provide labor through artificial intelligence and algorithms. Indicators for worker determination and measures for protecting labor providers need to evolve to encompass various forms of labor provision, including platform labor. In this regard, it is noteworthy that courts worldwide are increasingly interpreting the worker test to extend protection to platform workers as recognized workers. While the Korean government is actively working to protect platform workers, there is an urgent need for legal protection for the growing number of platform workers. It is essential to study, review, and improve the system by drawing insights from foreign court cases to ensure comprehensive protection for platform workers.

The rapid development of digital technology and the recent Corona 19 pandemic have accelerated the trend of ‘untouch’ environment. The platform labor for such as food delivery, chauffeur service, and care labor has become the biggest concern to national industrial relations. However, the platform workers have not been treated as workers under the Labor Standard Act in Korea due to the characteristics such as non-conformity of employment, independence of work performance, and place and time autonomy in providing labor. Inspite of difficulties of platform workers such as low income levels and lack of social insurance systems, it is difficult to find a proper way to rescue their rights. They need to gather collective voices through the labor unions or voluntarily organized associations. However, in Korea, neither labor union nor voluntary association is emerged yet. Therefore, this study summarizes the definition and type of platform labor studied in Korea and abroad so far, and examines the current status of the organization of platform labor workers in Korea and in advanced countries. And based on the case studies for representing platform workers, implications are presented to platform workers, platform-based companies, and the government.