Digital Labour Platforms Research Articles

Union Makes Us Strong: Space, Technology, and On-Demand Ridesourcing Digital Labour Platforms

The entry of on-demand ridesourcing digital labour platforms (OR-DLPs) in Kolkata, India, restructured the local taxi-cab service industry's economic geography and spatial practices. Notably, they eroded the significance of the spatial fixity of taxi stands operated by traditional trade unions, enmeshed in local society's partisan political dynamics. Therefore, OR-DLPs triggered a reconfiguration of the socio-spatial and political practices around the taxi-cab industry in the city. Globally, traditional trade unions have struggled to organise workers in informal work arrangements and DLPs. However, in Kolkata, the Kolkata Ola-Uber App-Cab Operator and Drivers Union has proved to be successful. They established hybrid and networked unionism through technological affordances, placing worker-organisers rather than external organisers at the centre of their organisational structure. Furthermore, they undertook tech-mediated resistance against the OR-DLPs, local bureaucracy (e.g. the police) and the state. We explore this context to examine the impact of OR-DLPs on labour geography, worker-organising and resistance practices, along with the revitalisation strategies of traditional trade unions in response. From a non-Western context, we expand the frame for CSCW and HCI scholars' ongoing efforts to design worker-centric technologies for resistance.

Digital Labour Platforms in the Italian Domestic Sector: Approaching (In)Formalisation Processes from the Other Way Round

In this exploratory study, we investigate the effects of digital labour platforms (DLPs) on cleaning workers. The prevalence of informality in this sector leads us to suggest analysing workers’ experiences by combining the literature on DLPs with that on the informal economy. Through in-depth interviews with cleaners in Milan and Rome, as well as DLP representatives, the article highlights on one hand, how DLPs affect informal workers and their conditions, and, on the other hand, how workers represent their work and what meanings they associate with the terms formal and informal in the location-based platform economy. The study shows that DLPs seem to play a limited role in the formalisation of work, revealing new forms of hybridisation between formal and informal labour. The use of DLPs also results in increasingly confusing perceptions of what constitutes formal (or regular) and informal work.

The Business Model of Digital Labour Platforms and the Income of Platform Workers in Poland: Theory and Practice

The Business Model of Digital Labour Platforms and the Income of Platform Workers in Poland: Theory and Practice

Researching Care Platforms: Methodological and Ethical Considerations in the Broad Field of Domestic Platform Labour

This article presents a methodological reflection on the challenges of researching domestic and care work mediated by digital labour platforms. While knowledge production on gig work in the logistics sector has soared, research on care platforms is slow to catch up, especially in very relational forms of home-based work, such as eldercare. We take this uneven development in the literature as a starting point to unpack the empirical conundrums in this field. Drawing on our own experience with trying to recruit care platform workers in Germany between 2019 and 2024, we shed light on the ethical dilemmas we encountered and offer some lessons learnt. The article calls for long-term commitments, multi-sited ethnographies, longitudinal perspectives and mixed-methods designs to study care platforms in the future. Finally, we advocate for researching platform labour beyond the gig.

On-Demand and Marketplace Platforms: Gig Care Work Conditions on Two Digital Labour Platform Care Models

With worker shortages and the need for care workers projected to grow, personal care work through digital labour platforms (DLPs) is important to understand. This paper considers DLPs used by gig care workers providing personal care in Ontario, Canada. We recruited 20 women gig care workers for interviews. We examined socio-technical processes such as signing up on platforms, creating profiles, and searching for jobs. We draw on Institutional Ethnography to study the actual work on the following two DLP models: marketplace and on-demand. Marcusean theory provides a lens for the critical examination of DLP care work. We found job inequity between DLPs operating in the homecare sector, compared to DPs used in institutional settings. Jobs had disparate quality between the two platform types. Workers on both DLP types remained vulnerable to fluctuations in demand and had limited social security protections, and both models of DLP institutionalised precarity.

Collaborative activities and flexible working

Digitalization and globalization have radically affected work organization and interaction between workers in the course of performing job duties. Co-creation activity on digital labour platforms is a new phenomenon that has been little studied. The paper aims to explore collaboration as a driving force in the evolution of work organization patterns and investigates its main effects on the labour market. Theory of cooperation and organizational theory constitute the methodological basis of the study. The research methods used are evolutionary analysis, statistical and regression analysis. The empirical evidence is comprised of open data from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 10 (2020/23). The study identifies the directions for altering the forms of collaborative activities: the key ones are associated with the enhancement of individual value, accumulation of human capital and a rise in worker autonomy. It is shown that organization of work, which is also undergoing significant changes, promotes flexible working practices. The empirical analysis indicates that high-frequency Internet use among self-employed workers significantly increases the probability of engaging in co-creation activities, particularly as education levels rise. The growing intrinsic motivation of participants to such activities leads to higher labour productivity. The findings highlight a critical issue regarding the lack of human resource management practices in platform employment. Designing a new (flexible) model of work organization aligned with the characteristics and effects of co-creation activities can serve as a promising direction for further research.

The Role of Trade Unions in Representing Workers on Digital Labor Platforms

This research examines the specific challenges faced by digital platform workers. Currently, the legal status of these workers remains ambiguous, and the regulatory frameworks, unprepared for these developments in the transformation of the labour market, significantly hinder collective bargaining efforts. The paper argues that labour law reforms are essential to explicitly recognize and regulate platform work, granting independent workers in this sector the right to form and join unions. Such reforms would empower platform workers to advocate for their rights, ensuring they are not left behind in the ever-evolving digital economy. Ultimately, the active participation of adaptive and revitalized unions will be crucial in securing fair and just treatment for digital platform workers on a global scale.

Fairness in crowdwork: Making the human AI supply chain more humane

The vast quantities of data required to build artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are often annotated and processed manually, making human labor a critical component of the AI supply chain. These workers are sourced through digital labor (“crowdwork”) platforms that often are unregulated and offer low wages, raising concerns about labor standards in AI development. Using the results of a survey, this article aims to shed light on the experiences and perceptions of fair treatment among workers in the AI supply chain. The study reveals significant variability in workers’ experiences, identifies potential drivers of fairness, and highlights how design choices by labor platforms can significantly affect worker welfare. Drawing on lessons from physical supply chains, the article offers practical guidance to managers on how to enhance worker welfare within the AI supply chain and ensure that AI technologies are responsibly sourced.

Platformed identities of female migrant domestic Ayi's in the Chinese gig-economy

Focusing on the Chinese context, this investigation addresses how digital labor platforms as specific instances of social media, mediate interactions between workers and clients. This article addresses the evolving landscape of domestic labor in contemporary China, specifically focusing on female internal migrant workers - commonly referred to as “Ayi’s” — in the gig economy. More specifically, by employing a feminist intersectional lens, we analyze the platformization of migrant Ayi’s identities on digital labor platforms and Chinese super-apps like WeChat and Swan Daojia. We also address how these rural-to-urban migrants may use these platforms to create new narratives for themselves. Based on in-depth interviews with 15 female migrant workers alongside a walkthrough study of three digital labor platforms, Ayi’s are found to represent themselves by branding themselves. This form of self-marketing offers the potential to transform their visibility in public from perceived low-skilled laborers to “pre-packaged” professionals. While enhancing visibility, and thereby improving the standing of some, the representational practices of Ayi’s also offer insights into newly emergent forms of vulnerability and marginalization, shaped by gender, migrant status, and socioeconomic class.

First Rule: Keep Pedalling. Co-Theorising with Food-Delivery Workers How to Make Digital Platforms Capability-Enhancing

ABSTRACT In both academic and public debate, there is an increasing consensus that digital labour platforms can have both positive and negative impacts on digital workers’ well-being. This article has two aims: the first is to evaluate this impact through the multidimensional lens of the capability approach, taking the food-delivery sector in the city of Verona as a case study. The second aim is to involve selected riders in a co-theorising process to imagine how platforms should be designed to become capability enablers. To reach them, the research combines two different qualitative methods: a covert auto-ethnography, during which the author worked for a food-delivery platform, and a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews, inspired by the dynamic public reflective equilibrium technique. In addition to contributing to the principles that should govern platforms’ design, this article makes two specific contributions to the existing literature on the capability approach. Methodologically, it contributes to the so-called list debate by proposing a synthesising method for selecting capabilities that combines philosophical and empirical insights. Theoretically, it frames the relevant capabilities which were identified during the research under a meta-capability for meaningful work, opening the path to a multi-level analysis of a flourishing life’s different dimensions.

Navigating the gig economy in Romania: unveiling perceptions of working on on-demand platforms

Purpose This paper aims to explore the realm of gig work and the gig economy in Romania in an attempt to shed light on the mechanisms of this type of work and the reasons and benefits of engaging in gig-related activities.Considering the low conceptual consensus on gig work, the authors aim to explore how participants in this study define and refer to gig work, thus helping to contribute to the current conceptualization and characterizations of gig work and the gig economy. Among the wide range of services encountered within the gig economy, this research focuses on three categories of tasks, as defined within COLLEEM 2018 questionnaire (see Pesole et al., 2018), namely, online creative and multimedia work, online sales and marketing support and online software development and technology work. Design/methodology/approach Based on semistructured interviews with people working in the gig economy in Romania, the authors look to understand the meaning given to gig work and its features. The authors tackle how participants in this study perceive themselves and their work. The authors also look into perceived similarities and differences with other types of independent work. Findings In this paper, findings are organized into two main sections. The first section showcases perceptions about working in the gig economy, including how people involved with this type of work are describing them and their activity and exploring financial insecurities in connection with the independent/gig work. The second section highlights the mechanisms of gig work on digital labor platforms, developing means and ways of reputation-building and their impact on financial earnings. Originality/value This research aims to contribute to a better understanding of the environment and needs of gig workers. Although gig economy and online work are widely covered by field literature, knowledge about the experiences and perceptions of gig workers in emerging markets has more to gain by exploring European Union developing markets.

Understanding the individual labor supply and wages on digital labor platforms: A microworker perspective

The emergence of crowdsourcing as a new form of work has introduced a paradox among workers who receive small payments for piecemeal microwork yet continue to participate in microwork digital labor platforms (DLPs). To better understand what sustains microworkers’ participation, this study draws upon individual labor supply theory to quantitatively examine the impacts of microworkers’ motivations, perceptions, and preferences on their labor supply and wages. To explore the meaning of monetary rewards for microworkers, a qualitative inquiry explores microworkers’ spending patterns. Based on a survey of 306 microworkers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, our hierarchical regression analysis reveals that while individual motivations for monetary rewards, enjoyment, and microtime structure have some impact on the microwork labor supply and wages, their impact is limited. Our thematic analysis uncovers diverse meanings attached to microwork earnings. The two most noted are meeting subsistence needs and nonessential expenditures, both of which have positive effects on microwork wages. By investigating the elasticity of the microwork labor supply and wages and offering a nuanced understanding of monetary rewards, our study contributes to information management research on DLPs. Moreover, it provides practical insights for various stakeholders, including microworkers, requesters, and DLP operators.

Plataformas digitales del trabajo de cuidado doméstico remunerado en Colombia: el caso de Hogarú

This article explores how digital platforms have changed working conditions and labor relations in domestic and care work in recent years. The study focuses on Hogarú, a digital platform in Colombia. Through a qualitative study involving interviews and focus groups, we analyze Hogarú’s business model, along with the changes in working conditions for domestic workers compared to traditional employment methods. The study highlights two main findings. First, digital platforms can enhance domestic workers’ bargaining power by raising awareness of their rights, professionalizing their work, promoting physical meeting spaces with other workers, providing ongoing training, and ensuring fundamental rights. Second, while digital platforms can shift the traditional labor relationship from one where the domestic worker directly offers care services to one managed by the company, power imbalances and low recognition of this work persist. This article offers insights into digital labor platforms from the perspective of the workers involved.

Domestic and Care Work Platforms in Latin America: A Typology Based on Worker Employment Classification

Domestic and care work is a largely feminized sector marked by high levels of informality, low wages, and precarious working conditions worldwide. Over the past decade, particularly in the United States and Europe, new intermediaries have emerged, organizing search and hiring services through digital platforms. More recently, significantly driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, these platforms have proliferated in Latin America, raising questions about the effects of this new form of intermediation in the region. While the dominant global view on digital labor platforms is that they lead to the precarization of working conditions, emerging international literature questions whether they might contribute to the formalization of the sector. This hypothesis is based on recognizing certain characteristics of digital intermediaries that can institutionalize the employment relationship in an activity that largely operates outside of regulation, where direct hiring and personalized negotiation of working conditions prevail. At the same time, the literature warns that certain business models of these platforms contribute to non-formalization and promote hiring practices that deepen precariousness. Within this debate, this article aims to contribute to understanding the intermediation methods of these new actors in Latin America, considering that the employment classification of workers is crucial for their access to rights. To this end, the article presents a regional mapping of digital platforms operating in the sector and proposes a typology based on the business models and types of hiring promoted by the studied platforms.

Digital Platforms for Care and Domestic Services in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Initial Analysis of the Business Model and It’s Role in the Formalization of the Sector

Numerous digital labour platforms have emerged across various Latin American countries, connecting users with domestic services and care for children, the elderly, and dependents. Despite this growth, regulatory debates have largely ignored the digitalization of this sector, and there is a lack of research documenting the impact of these new technologies in the region. The purpose of this article is to enhance the existing body of knowledge on the platform economy in Latin America and the Caribbean with two main objectives: firstly, to provide an initial mapping of the platforms operating in the domestic and home care services; and secondly, to analyze the potential role these digital platforms can play in formalizing the labor market for workers in these sectors.

A taxonomy of business models of digital care platforms in Spain

AbstractIn the last few years, the proliferation of digital labour platforms has led to the transformation of business models and labour relations in an increasing number of economic activities, including highly feminized and informal traditional sectors, such as care and domestic work. Drawing on an analysis of 37 digital care platforms in Spain, this research compares the distinctive features and structural power dynamics they engender, and it constructs a taxonomy of business models of these care platforms. By analysing the main features of their operational models, we are capable of distinguishing three main types of platforms: marketplace, on‐demand, and digital placement agencies. First, the paper argues that the distinctive features of each digital platform business model have differentiated impacts on working conditions in terms of access to tasks, remuneration, flexibility and means of control. This differentiation allows us to understand what is transformative and what is continuous in platforms' precarization or formalisation of care work and working conditions of carers, mainly women and migrants. Each business model has its differentiated outcomes in terms of labour control and reorganization of women's and migrants' reproductive work. Second, more broadly, while digital care platforms may have contributed to facilitating workers' access to jobs, reducing transaction costs and standardising processes, this has often been through the creation of more flexible and insecure forms of work and to increased market pressures. Therefore, this study contributes to existing research addressing the degree of formalization of labour relations in digital platform work through a nuanced analysis of their business models.

Unraveling opportunism in platform-mediated work within the Nordic working life model: An institutional complexity perspective

The Nordic working life model (NWLM) promotes ‘good work’ on societal and workplace levels. However, this model is now challenged by emerging business models in the platform economy. This study investigates how digital labor platforms respond to conflicting institutional logics and how platform-mediated work intervenes with the inherent logic of the NWLM. The authors examine platform business strategies and their implications for working environment regulations, co-determination, and collective bargaining. Empirical data comprising 50 interviews with food delivery workers, platform managers, union representatives, employer association representatives, and occupational health and safety regulators from the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority were analyzed by applying institutional complexity as a theoretical framework. The findings illustrate that a high degree of institutional complexity provides companies with discretionary space, which they utilize to achieve legitimacy and competitive advantages. The authors introduce the term institutional opportunism to describe how adaptation is performed. The study reveals that the platform economy, characterized by workers with limited experience of and knowledge about working life and strong market pressures, poses a challenge to the NWLM.

Predictability and transparency of working conditions for food delivery platform workers across selected EU countries

AbstractWhile prior research has demonstrated the poor and unpredictable working conditions and ambiguous working arrangements characteristic of platform‐based food delivery, we lack research on the question of how well these workers are informed about essential aspects of their work, including protection of their rights, working time and schedules, and earnings. Comprehensive and transparent information on working conditions at an early stage is indispensable if workers are to be able to make informed decisions on taking up work and, where relevant, investing in equipment and exercising rights linked to a specific job. Drawing on the multi‐dimensional job quality literature, this article focuses on digital labour platforms in the food delivery sector across four countries: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. We exploit firm‐level variations, including with regard to the types of work arrangements used and the application—or not—of collective agreements. We draw on information provided to riders during the application process prior to the start of employment, including via websites and FAQs, as well as scrutiny of contracts, service agreements and collective bargaining agreements, where relevant. This information is complemented with interviews with trade union representatives. Our findings point to the relationship between a firm's choice of employment status and form of contract, on one hand, and the predictability and transparency of information provided to workers, on the other. Differences and similarities in such information seem to be more strongly bound to firm‐level decisions than to the welfare and industrial relations regimes in which the platform companies operate.

Pushed or Pulled? Becoming Gig Workers in Sri Lanka

The gig economy is expanding with more workers joining digital labour platforms globally. Gig work has become popular in Sri Lanka as well, especially during the recent past. Since the gig economy is still a relatively new concept in Sri Lanka, the area is understudied. Hence, the objective of this research is to examine what motivates Sri Lankans to become digital workers. We use push-pull theory as the theoretical lens of the study. Based on qualitative research methodology under the interpretive research paradigm, 22 digital workers from various backgrounds were interviewed in person to identify their motives and experiences with web- based digital labour platforms. This study found four important reasons for Sri Lankans to choose digital work, 1) pursuit of passion 2) pursuit of money (earning in foreign currency, gaining financial independence and an additional source of income), 3) pursuit of agency and 4) pursuit of developmental opportunities. While the motivation for participants to join gig work was mainly identified as pull motivation, in some instances it was identified that the participants were also pushed to join gig work.

Platformization of Inequality: Gender and Race in Digital Labor Platforms

We contribute empirical and conceptual insights regarding the roles of digital labor platforms in online freelancing, focusing attention to social identities such as gender, race, ethnicity, and occupation. Findings highlight how digital labor platforms reinforce and exacerbate identity-based stereotypes, bias and expectations in online freelance work. We focus on online freelancing as this form of working arrangement is becoming more prevalent. Online freelancing also relies on the market-making power of digital platforms to create an online labor market. Many see this as one likely future of work with less bias. Others worry that labor platforms' market power allows them to embed known biases into new working arrangements: a platformization of inequality. Drawing on data from 108 online freelancers, we discuss six findings: 1) female freelance work is undervalued; 2) gendered occupational expectations; 3) gendered treatment; 4) shared expectations of differential values; 5) racial stereotypes and expectations; and 6) race and ethnicity as an asset. We discuss the role of design in the platformization and visibility of social identity dimensions, and the implications of the reinforced identity perceptions and marginalization in digital labor platforms.