Theorising the connections and continuities between gig labour/economies and platform urbanism

近年来，数字技术在工作中的使用发生了巨大的变化，互联网成为工作组织本身的关键促进因素。这包括“按需工作”，这是一种基于本地的工作形式，其中“自营职业者”使用数字平台（或应用程序）雇用，以按演出进行现场服务。随着Uber和奥拉等拼车平台、Uber Eats、Ekoo和Zomato等送餐平台以及TaskRabbit和Housekeep等家庭任务平台的日益广泛使用，按需经济如今在全球范围内的影响力不断扩大。随着人们越来越认识到数字平台正在改变城市的性质，按需工作在地球仪的城市空间中大量涌现。随着平台企业越来越深入城市结构，由此产生的工作灵活性对城市居民产生了巨大影响。随着世界范围内出现了许多法律的案例，以了解这些服务平台实际上是雇主还是将客户与他们声称的“服务提供商”联系起来的“聚合商”，理解平台与城市空间之间的关系的相关性现在比以往任何时候都更加突出。该项目的重要性在于其目标是对城市空间和工作的不断变化的性质形成新的，相关的和微妙的理解，这是由于城市中按需平台的日益突出，这是学术文献中缺少的综合视角。发展一种新的理论来整合平台城市主义和按需工作的共同广泛现象，将为学者和实践者理解当代城市和城市居民的社会关系提供相关和适用的方法。该项目分析了平台经济表现形式的众多案例，并动员后殖民主义和女权主义方法来思考城市空间中的按需服务平台，旨在提供对更平等和更少剥削的平台政治的见解，并建议在不同背景下将包括安全和福利在内的劳工权利“内置”这些平台的方法。该项目将以白皮书简报的形式提出建议，并将提交国际治理创新中心（CIGI）出版。这可以由学者，从业者，政府和其他专家在三个领域，研究将主要集中在和研究人员有联系-加拿大，英国和印度。提供背景比较和这些背景下的见解将有助于了解地球仪的城市如何变化，以及加拿大的城市如何向其他城市学习或提供学习。与Leszczynski博士合作-其目前SSHRC资助的工作着眼于加拿大背景下的按需服务平台-将促进交叉比较的见解，通过它，我们可以使用来自加拿大以外的例子来了解加拿大城市的当代转型。这也将使我能够从加拿大的背景下，这可以适用于英国和印度的城市学习。

In recent years, there has been a tremendous shift in the use of digital technologies in work, with the internet becoming a key facilitator in the organisation of work itself. This includes "on-demand work", a locally place-based form of work in which 'self-employed' workers are hired using digital platforms (or applications) to carry out in-person services on a per-gig basis. The on-demand economy now has an expanding global presence, with the growing and widespread use of ridesharing platforms such as Uber and Ola, food-delivery platforms such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Zomato and home-task platforms such as TaskRabbit and Housekeep. On-demand work has proliferated largely in urban spaces across the globe, with the growing recognition that digital platforms are transforming the nature of cities. As platform enterprises become more embedded in the fabric of cities, the resulting flexibilization of work has phenomenal impacts on urban residents. With numerous legal cases emerging worldwide to understand whether these service platforms are in fact employers or 'aggregators' linking customers to a 'service provider' as they claim, the relevance of understanding the relationship between platforms and the urban space is now more prominent, than ever. The significance of this project is rooted in its aim to develop new, relevant and nuanced understandings of the changing nature of urban space and work as a result of the growing prominence of on-demand platforms in cities, an integrated perspective which is missing from scholarly literature. Developing a new theory to integrate the co-extensive phenomena of platform urbanism and on-demand work will provide relevant and applicable ways for scholars and practitioners to understand the contemporary social relations of cities and urban denizens. Analysing numerous cases of platform economy manifestations, and mobilizing postcolonial and feminist approaches to think about on-demand service platforms in urban spaces, the project seeks to provide insights into a more egalitarian and less-exploitative platform politics, recommending ways in which labour rights including security and welfare can be 'built into' these platforms in different contexts. Developing nuanced narratives and addressing approaches required for different types of work platforms - e.g. transport, food-delivery, domestic work, care work, home services - the project will present recommendations in the form of a whitepaper brief which will be submitted for publication with the Centre for International Governance innovation (CIGI). This can be taken up by scholars, practitioners, government and other experts in the three areas that the research will be primarily focused on and that the researchers have links to - Canada, the UK and India. Providing contextual comparisons and insights from these contexts will contribute to an understanding of how cities across the globe are changing, and how Canada's cities can learn from, or provide learnings to, others. Working with Dr Leszczynski - whose current SSHRC-funded work looks at on-demand service platforms in the Canadian context - will facilitate cross-comparison insights through which we can use examples from outside of Canada to understand the contemporary transformations of Canadian cities. It will also enable me to take learnings from the Canadian context, which can be applied to cities in UK and India.