Does the macro-level matter? A comparative analysis of institutional frameworks and gigwork platforms across EU-28 countries

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The goal of the proposed project is to investigate and understand how national institutional frameworks relate to gigwork platforms. Specifically, we focus on gigwork platforms for transport, food-delivery and lodging services that provide salient cases for digitally intermediate, location-based, paid, work tasks - often called “gigwork.” Gigwork has received Europe-wide public attention, especially through the activities of prominent and exemplary platform companies, like Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb. While some researchers assume that gigwork platforms effectively defy regulation, other established approaches suggest that national institutional frameworks shape economic activities, potentially including work on gigwork platforms. To date, we know very little about if and how national institutional frameworks are relevant to the activities of gigwork platforms across various European countries. Addressing this research gap the project investigates the systematic interrelations between institutional frameworks and gigwork platforms across EU-28 countries. The project analyses the mechanisms by which national institutional frameworks might moderate the limits and possibilities for gigwork platforms to permeate work practices and make work efforts available through their platform models. Alongside an application of qualitative, historically comparative process tracing methods, the project applies a novel method for quantitative cross-national research. This method contracts out data collection tasks on crowdsourcing platforms to native speakers abroad. The collected data will be combined into a country-level data set and analysed with quantitative methods. The results will map the interrelations between national institutional frameworks and gigwork platforms, and discern cross-national patterns and underlying mechanisms of these interrelations.Contributing to the overall aims of the first phase of the Priority Programme (SPP 2267) this proposed project engages in a sociological approach to the digitalization of working worlds as a systemic transformation, focusing on macro-level processes and mechanisms. The project overcomes the fragmented state of the research field on gigwork and develops an overarching, comparative perspective. The project will contribute to the general question, if and how the macro-level bears relevance to digitalization processes in the working world. Here, the gigwork examples will showcase the possibilities and limits of institutionally regulating the digitalization of working worlds.