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变化，互联网成为组织工作本身的关键促进者。这包括“按需工作”，这是一种基于当地的工作形式，使用数字平台（或应用程序）雇用“自雇”工人，以每零工为基础进行现场服务。随着Uber和Ola等拼车平台、Uber Eats、Deliveroo和Zomato等送餐平台以及TaskRabbit和Housekeep等家政服务平台的日益普及和广泛使用，按需经济的全球影响力正在不断扩大。随着人们越来越认识到数字平台正在改变城市的性质，按需工作在全球城市空间中大量涌现。随着平台企业越来越多地嵌入城市结构，由此带来的工作灵活性对城市居民产生了显著的影响。随着世界范围内出现了许多法律案例，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“聚合者”，理解平台与城市空间之间关系的相关性现在比以往任何时候都更加突出。这个项目的意义在于，它的目的是发展新的、相关的、细致入微的理解，以了解城市空间和工作的变化性质，这是城市按需平台日益突出的结果，这是学术文献中缺失的一个综合视角。发展一种新的理论来整合平台城市主义和按需工作的共延现象，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的众多案例，并动员后殖民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劳工权利（包括安全和福利）“构建”到这些平台中的方法。为不同类型的工作平台（如运输、送餐、家政、护理、家庭服务）制定细致入微的叙述和解决方法，该项目将以白皮书简报的形式提出建议，提交给国际治理创新中心（CIGI）出版。这可以由学者、实践者、政府和研究人员将主要关注的三个领域的其他专家承担，这些领域是加拿大、英国和印度。从这些背景中提供背景比较和见解将有助于理解全球城市如何变化，以及加拿大城市如何向其他城市学习或提供学习。Leszczynski博士目前的sshrc资助的工作着眼于加拿大背景下的按需服务平台，与他合作将促进交叉比较的见解，通过这些见解，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中吸取教训，并将其应用于英国和印度的城市。

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.