Platforms without Borders: Examining Migrant Labour on Global On-Demand Labour Platforms

无国界平台：审视全球按需劳动力平台上的移民劳动力

• 批准号: ES/W011638/1
• 负责人: James Muldoon
• 金额: $ 29.87万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW011638%2F1
• 关键词: Platforms; without; Borders; Examining; Migrant

Digital technologies have dramatically changed the organisation of work, creating new forms of "on-demand" work in the gig economy. On-demand work facilitated via digital platforms has proliferated in urban spaces across the globe in food delivery, ride hail and handy work sectors, among others. What is rarely appreciated in media narratives and the scholarly literature is the extent to which work on these platforms is undertaken by migrant workers who experience a set of compounding vulnerabilities related to their residency status, economic insecurity and difficulties accessing national welfare systems. Platform labour offers much-needed opportunities to migrants, but has also been claimed to degrade working conditions and increase workers' precarity and vulnerability. "Platforms without Borders" is a cross-national ethnographic study by a team of researchers based in the United Kingdom, China and Brazil which aims to determine how on-demand labour platforms distribute new opportunities and vulnerabilities for migrant workers in the platform economy. It moves beyond the narrow focus of platform labour studies on a select few cities in the Global North by considering the different circumstances facing migrant workers in three distinct cities and national contexts based on fieldwork in London, Beijing and Sao Paulo with food delivery riders. The international focus provides an opportunity to examine how global platform companies operate differently in distinct regulatory environments, which will deepen our understanding of the platform economy. The project employs novel ethnographic research methods developed from Paulo Freire's notion of 'popular education' to engage with migrant workers through which workers critically reflect on their own experience of work in dialogue with critical social analysis. The methodology emphasises the importance of workers as active agents with their own distinct understanding of the labour process and the capacity to develop novel solutions to improve their working conditions. By starting from the experience of workers, the project will determine how intersecting regimes of power related to gender, race, class, education and immigration status affect migrant workers' experience with platform labour. It will examine how broader systems of immigration, welfare and labour market policies operate in different national contexts and how this affects the experience of workers. The research will engage workers with the aim of generating novel policy solutions to the emerging problems of the digital economy.

数字技术极大地改变了工作组织，在零工经济中创造了新的“按需”工作形式。通过数字平台促进的按需工作在全球城市空间中激增，涉及食品配送、网约车和便捷工作领域等。在媒体叙述和学术文献中很少有人认识到，这些平台上的工作在多大程度上是由移民工人承担的，他们经历了一系列与居住身份、经济不安全和难以获得国家福利体系相关的复杂脆弱性。平台劳工为移民提供了急需的机会，但也被认为降低了工作条件并增加了工人的不稳定和脆弱性。 “无国界平台”是由来自英国、中国和巴西的研究团队进行的一项跨国民族志研究，旨在确定按需劳动力平台如何为平台经济中的农民工分配新的机会和脆弱性。它超越了对北半球少数几个城市的平台劳动力研究的狭隘关注，基于伦敦、北京和圣保罗对食品配送骑手的实地调查，考虑了三个不同城市和国家背景下农民工面临的不同情况。国际关注提供了一个机会来研究全球平台公司如何在不同的监管环境下以不同的方式运作，这将加深我们对平台经济的理解。该项目采用了从保罗·弗莱雷的“大众教育”概念中发展出来的新颖的民族志研究方法，与农民工进行接触，通过这种方法，工人们在与批判性社会分析的对话中批判性地反思自己的工作经历。该方法强调工人作为积极行动者的重要性，他们对劳动过程有独特的理解，并且有能力开发新颖的解决方案来改善他们的工作条件。该项目将从工人的经历出发，确定与性别、种族、阶级、教育和移民身份相关的交叉权力制度如何影响农民工的平台劳工经历。它将研究更广泛的移民、福利和劳动力市场政策体系如何在不同国家背景下运作，以及这如何影响工人的经历。该研究将吸引工作人员参与，旨在针对数字经济中出现的问题制定新颖的政策解决方案。