Introduction: Migrant Labor in the Platform Economy. The Intersection of Labor Digitization, Platform Capitalism, Migration, and Resistance

In the last forty years, since the end of organisation of production by the so-called Taylorist-Fordist criteria and the beginning of the neo-liberal revolution, work in the advanced economies has undergone profound transformations. These have been driven by key changes in production and its organisation, such as the increasing externalization of production phases, along with the consequent – enormous – growth of the service economy, and the rapid development of digital technologies. More recently, a key role has been played by the development of platform capitalism and the gig economy as a way of organizing work and providing services. Some of the most important global companies, such as Uber, Amazon, Deliveroo, Helpling, etc. operate in this booming sector, which received a further boost during the Covid-19 pandemic. These companies supply a variety of key services such as ride-hailing, domestic and care work, food delivery, and many others, which are provided by a diverse workforce in terms of gender, nationality, and age, and in very different working conditions. One of the main effects of the expansion of the gig economy has been a further reduction of workplace rights and the growth of precarious labour. While reduced security for workers was already happening because of the financialization of the economy, which counterposed shareholders’ and workers’ interests, the intrinsic complexity of the service economy and the impact of information technology, the gig economy has accelerated this process. There are no comprehensive data on the precise number of people employed across this sector and even less on migrant and foreign workers. However, even in countries with high unemployment or with a huge supply of unskilled labour, it is widely documented that migrant workers provide a large share of the labour power behind a range of gig economy services. They constitute a vital infrastructure for these platforms, which can rely on a perpetual influx of migrant workers in sectors such as logistics, deliveries, care, and cleaning, etc. On the one hand, occupations in the gig economy are often degraded, as they imply longer working hours at lower salaries, and therefore find in migrants workers who can fill them. On the other hand, they also offer migrants much-needed income opportunities, particularly for those who lack skills and are not easily employable or those whose legal status is less secure. While there is growing academic interest in the platform economy, its technological aspects, its business model and working conditions, very little research has focused on the role of migrant labour and its governance at the intersection of labour market regulation, social welfare, international migration and migration policies. Some research has recently focused on struggles in the logistics sector in Italy – mostly engaged in by migrant workers. However, there are still huge gaps in research on how platform-mediated gig work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers and how this can be addressed by welfare policies.