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This book explores the gig economy and the role of migrant workers, which has been widely documented, but under-researched. In the last forty years work and employment in the advanced economies has undergone profound transformations and, more recently, a key role has been played by the development of platform capitalism and the gig economy as a way of organising work and providing services.
There are still huge gaps in research on how platform-mediated gig work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers and how this can be addressed by welfare policies. The aim of this book is to address some of these issues. It includes empirical and theoretical contributions from across the globe on topics such as migrant workers and digitalised work, artificial Intelligence and work, digitalisation and work-related policy, digital surveillance, labour struggles in the digitalised service sector, unionism and self-organisation in the gig economy. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of work and employment, the future of work, social movements, migration and labour studies.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction. Migrant labour in the platform economy. The intersection of labour digitization, platform capitalism, migration, and resistance Francesco Della Puppa, Dipsita Dhar, Nicola Montagna.- Part 1: Vulnerability and inherent precarity of migrant workers in Gig Economy.- Chapter 2: Migrant Labour in the Greek Gig Economy Lefteris Kretsos and Vassilis Charitsis.- Chapter 3: Migrant Work and Informal Circuits of Labour in the Gig-economy: the case of digital caporalato Gianmarco Peterlongo.- Chapter 4: Binding-flexibility in the platform economy. Some reflections from the platform-mediated food delivery service in Venice Giorgio Pirina.- Chapter 5: Wake Up Deliver Repeat: and the Delivery-Partners Suddhabrata Deb Roy.- Chapter 6: Vulnerability and resistance among digital and platform (im)migrant workers in Portugal Isabel Roque.- Part 2: Strategies of resistance.- Chapter 7: Organising Migrant and BAME Platform Workers in London: The Intersection Between Agency, Collective Resistance, and Self-exploitation in the Case of Food Delivery Riders Paolo Borghi, Annalisa Murgia.- Chapter 8: Migration, precarity and solidarity among migrant gig workers in China s food delivery and ride-hailing sectors Yang Zhou.- Chapter 9: Can inter union collaborations help in cushioning the migrant labour in a platform capital regime and an increasingly gated society? Dipsita Dhar, Soham Bhattacharya, Ashique Ali T.
About the author
Francesco Della Puppa is Associate Professor in Sociology at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University, Italy. He carries out teaching and research activities relating to international migration, migrant families and family reunification, transformations of masculinity in migration, migrant labour and racial discrimination, refugees and asylum seekers, digital labour. He has published widely in books and journals.
Dipsita Dhar is an activist and early career research scholar, who works on Migration, Unionisation and Digital Labour. She recently has co-edited a book titled Education or Exclusion (2022) discussing the adverse effect of the New Education Policy on the young students of India. Her work on digital labour platform has been published in journals like Gender and Development and others. Apart from the academic journals she often writes for Jacobin and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung on various issues.
Nicola Montagna is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University, UK. He has extensive research experience in social movements, urban conflicts, international migration, borders and migration policy and has published in several leading international journals, including Sociology, International Migration Review, Ethnicities, Ethnic and Migrant Studies, The Sociological Review, International Migration, and Citizenship Studies. With Palgrave Macmillan, he co-edited Gendering Nationalism: Intersections of Nation, Gender and Sexuality (2018).
Summary
This book explores the gig economy and the role of migrant workers, which has been widely documented, but under-researched. In the last forty years work and employment in the advanced economies has undergone profound transformations and, more recently, a key role has been played by the development of platform capitalism and the gig economy as a way of organising work and providing services.
There are still huge gaps in research on how platform-mediated gig work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers and how this can be addressed by welfare policies. The aim of this book is to address some of these issues. It includes empirical and theoretical contributions from across the globe on topics such as migrant workers and digitalised work, artificial Intelligence and work, digitalisation and work-related policy, digital surveillance, labour struggles in the digitalised service sector, unionism and self-organisation in the gig economy. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of work and employment, the future of work, social movements, migration and labour studies.
