Periodic Reporting for period 4 - PLABOR (Platform Labor: Digital transformations of work and livelihood in post-welfare societies)
Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2023-06-30
Digital platforms are transforming how people work, generate an income, and care for each other in "post-welfare" societies. As such, platforms are becoming increasingly ubiquitous as new institutional actors that redraw relations between civil society, the market, and the state. Yet, as many scholars have shown, such relations have historically been shaped by pervasive inequalities based on gender, race, class, and legal status. It is therefore crucial to ask to what extent platforms, as new sites of capital accumulation, governance, and norm-making, remediate existing inequalities and if/how they also generate new vulnerabilities or tools for empowerment. Accordingly, four objectives have to be met:
• determining how on-demand labor platforms distribute new opportunities and vulnerabilities for workers along lines of gender, race, class, and legal status (subproject 1);
• determining how short-term rental platforms, specifically Airbnb, create new opportunities and challenges with respect to social reproduction in post-welfare societies (subproject 2);
• determining how platform that organize care and social support are creating new opportunities and challenges with respect to social reproduction in post-welfare societies (subproject 3);
• determining which policy and regulatory issues arise when labor and social reproduction are increasingly organized through platforms and identifying ways to tackle these issues (subproject 4).
These objectives are met through a cross-national comparative study that examines how platforms operate in three global cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, and New York City. The study combines ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and methods from platform studies to examine how often globally operating platforms interact with local places, routines, and infrastructures.
The project concludes that - despite their promised and actual added value - platforms tend to perpetuate and sometimes intensify inequalities based on class, gender, race, and legal status. This is especially the case for vulnerable migrants and non-white households who turn to platforms as they struggle to make a living and/or receive care. Moreover, the Covid pandemic has consolidated the infrastructural power of platforms in the delivery and care sectors. Yet we also demonstrate the variety of platform models and the heterogeneity of the 'platform economy'. This leads us to advocate for a more tailored approach to platform regulation and policy that protects the most vulnerable users. Furthermore, rather than seeing public governance/policymaking and platformization as distinct and often antagonistic, we conclude that platformization is an 'endogeneous' outcome of neoliberalization processes that have created a political and socio-economic environment in which platform companies are able to position themselves as market-based solutions to problems related to work and welfare.
• determining how on-demand labor platforms distribute new opportunities and vulnerabilities for workers along lines of gender, race, class, and legal status (subproject 1);
• determining how short-term rental platforms, specifically Airbnb, create new opportunities and challenges with respect to social reproduction in post-welfare societies (subproject 2);
• determining how platform that organize care and social support are creating new opportunities and challenges with respect to social reproduction in post-welfare societies (subproject 3);
• determining which policy and regulatory issues arise when labor and social reproduction are increasingly organized through platforms and identifying ways to tackle these issues (subproject 4).
These objectives are met through a cross-national comparative study that examines how platforms operate in three global cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, and New York City. The study combines ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and methods from platform studies to examine how often globally operating platforms interact with local places, routines, and infrastructures.
The project concludes that - despite their promised and actual added value - platforms tend to perpetuate and sometimes intensify inequalities based on class, gender, race, and legal status. This is especially the case for vulnerable migrants and non-white households who turn to platforms as they struggle to make a living and/or receive care. Moreover, the Covid pandemic has consolidated the infrastructural power of platforms in the delivery and care sectors. Yet we also demonstrate the variety of platform models and the heterogeneity of the 'platform economy'. This leads us to advocate for a more tailored approach to platform regulation and policy that protects the most vulnerable users. Furthermore, rather than seeing public governance/policymaking and platformization as distinct and often antagonistic, we conclude that platformization is an 'endogeneous' outcome of neoliberalization processes that have created a political and socio-economic environment in which platform companies are able to position themselves as market-based solutions to problems related to work and welfare.
Results
Our research has found that digital platforms offer people new work and income opportunities, as well as opportunities to receive or give social support. So-called "gig economy" platforms in particular provide much needed income opportunities for people who have a distance to regular labor markets due to their legal status or gendered care duties at home. We have established that platform-based gig work is predominantly migrant work, given how relatively easy it is for (irregular) migrants to get started on a platform. Yet we also document how gig platforms introduce new risks and vulnerabilities in the lives of already vulnerable migrants, who have to work long hours for little pay, face discrimination, lack labor protections, and can be 'deactivated' at will. Short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, meanwhile, offer the best income opportunities for households or businesses that own significant housing assets (and are mostly led by men), providing them with tailored tools/services to better monetize these assets. Meanwhile, hosts who rent out their single family home are facing increasing challenges on the platform. Finally, we have documented how platforms for volunteer-based care services form an increasingly important resource for both households in need of help and local governments facing increasing social welfare responsibilities and insufficient budgets. These "post-welfare" platforms, which have grown more popular since the Covid pandemic, primarily take on the tasks of matching care-seekers with care-givers and recruitment of new users. While this offers a new solution to ameliorate pressures on social care provision, the "logistical" approach of these platforms privileges numbers over quality (of matches) and short-term fixes over more sustainable and tailored solutions. This disadvantages the most vulnerable care seekers, who tend to be elderly women, migrants, and non-white families.
Dissemination
Members of the project team have presented research findings at various (academic and non-academic) conferences, workshops, and other types of events around the world. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, they have also shared results via online channels. The team has organized one international academic conference and three scholarly workshops. Additionally, the PI has organized one online multi-stakeholder conference and three smaller multi-stakeholder events on location (featuring platform workers, policymakers, labor advocates, and NGOs). The PI has also been invited to give multiple (keynote) lectures at academic conferences and stakeholder events internationally. In terms of written output, the team has produced 19 publications: 12 peer-reviewed articles in international scholarly journals, five peer-reviewed chapters in scholarly books, one contribution to a collection of scholarly policy briefs, and one contribution to a collection of conference proceedings. The team has also contributed to scholarly and professional blogs (published in English, Dutch, French and Italian). Results from the Platform Labor project have also been featured in numerous (news) media, including the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and Dutch national television.
Our research has found that digital platforms offer people new work and income opportunities, as well as opportunities to receive or give social support. So-called "gig economy" platforms in particular provide much needed income opportunities for people who have a distance to regular labor markets due to their legal status or gendered care duties at home. We have established that platform-based gig work is predominantly migrant work, given how relatively easy it is for (irregular) migrants to get started on a platform. Yet we also document how gig platforms introduce new risks and vulnerabilities in the lives of already vulnerable migrants, who have to work long hours for little pay, face discrimination, lack labor protections, and can be 'deactivated' at will. Short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, meanwhile, offer the best income opportunities for households or businesses that own significant housing assets (and are mostly led by men), providing them with tailored tools/services to better monetize these assets. Meanwhile, hosts who rent out their single family home are facing increasing challenges on the platform. Finally, we have documented how platforms for volunteer-based care services form an increasingly important resource for both households in need of help and local governments facing increasing social welfare responsibilities and insufficient budgets. These "post-welfare" platforms, which have grown more popular since the Covid pandemic, primarily take on the tasks of matching care-seekers with care-givers and recruitment of new users. While this offers a new solution to ameliorate pressures on social care provision, the "logistical" approach of these platforms privileges numbers over quality (of matches) and short-term fixes over more sustainable and tailored solutions. This disadvantages the most vulnerable care seekers, who tend to be elderly women, migrants, and non-white families.
Dissemination
Members of the project team have presented research findings at various (academic and non-academic) conferences, workshops, and other types of events around the world. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, they have also shared results via online channels. The team has organized one international academic conference and three scholarly workshops. Additionally, the PI has organized one online multi-stakeholder conference and three smaller multi-stakeholder events on location (featuring platform workers, policymakers, labor advocates, and NGOs). The PI has also been invited to give multiple (keynote) lectures at academic conferences and stakeholder events internationally. In terms of written output, the team has produced 19 publications: 12 peer-reviewed articles in international scholarly journals, five peer-reviewed chapters in scholarly books, one contribution to a collection of scholarly policy briefs, and one contribution to a collection of conference proceedings. The team has also contributed to scholarly and professional blogs (published in English, Dutch, French and Italian). Results from the Platform Labor project have also been featured in numerous (news) media, including the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and Dutch national television.
The Platform Labor project has established progress beyond the state of the art by developing its "actually existing platformization" approach. This interdisciplinary methodological approach demonstrates how the platformization of particular industries and sectors is a path-dependent and institutionally embedded process that happens across (analytical) scales and geographical settings. Digital platforms are indeed changing relations between market, state and civil society, but they are doing so in a variegated, complex, and multi-layered manner, depending on local (urban) contexts. At the same time, the project has broken new ground by identifying common platform tendencies, dynamics and developments across urban settings, such as the professionalization and increasing exploitation of users/workers and the development of strategic partnerships with public and private organizations. Overall, we have gathered new, substantive evidence that digital platforms are perpetuating - if not exacerbating - existing inequalities rooted in gender, race, class, and legal status, and we have thereby advanced the field of platform (labor) research.