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

数字技术极大地改变了工作的组织方式，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各地的城市空间激增，包括送餐、叫车和兼职等部门。在媒体报道和学术文献中很少看到的是，这些平台上的工作在多大程度上是由移徙工人承担的，他们经历了一系列与其居住身份、经济不安全和难以获得国家福利制度有关的复杂脆弱性。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，增加了工人的早产儿和脆弱性。《无国界平台》是由英国、中国和巴西的一组研究人员进行的跨国人种学研究，旨在确定按需劳动力平台如何在平台经济中为外来务工人员分配新的机会和脆弱性。它超越了对全球北方选定的几个城市进行平台劳工研究的狭隘焦点，考虑了三个不同城市的外来务工人员面临的不同情况，以及基于伦敦、北京和圣保罗的实地考察与送餐人员的国家背景。国际焦点提供了一个机会，可以考察全球平台公司在不同的监管环境中如何以不同的方式运营，这将加深我们对平台经济的理解。该项目采用了新的民族志研究方法，这些方法是从保罗·弗莱雷的“大众教育”概念发展而来的，通过这种方法，移民工人在与批判性的社会分析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因素的重要性，他们对劳动过程有独特的理解，并有能力制定新的解决办法来改善其工作条件。通过从工人的经验出发，该项目将确定与性别、种族、阶级、教育和移民地位有关的交叉权力制度如何影响移徙工人从事平台劳动的经验。它将考察更广泛的移民、福利和劳动力市场政策体系如何在不同的国家背景下运作，以及这如何影响工人的体验。这项研究将让工作人员参与进来，目的是为数字经济新出现的问题制定新的政策解决方案。

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.