Digital Workers, Urban Vectors, and New Economies

Platform capitalism has enabled digital platforms to bring producers, consumers, and workers in a multisided marketplace with the purpose of collecting data. The resulting commodification of materiality and sociality in the digital sphere and the proprietary control of data open opportunities for value creation and realization, quite distinct from the value propositions of industrial manufacturing. As the relationship between value generation and human labor becomes tenuous or invisible, management strategies to appropriate value extends beyond labor control to direct appropriation. This article explores how labor responds to such devices of control and appropriation by digital platforms. Using the typological approach, the study argues that labor resistance emerges as a direct response to the management strategies of platforms in the form of granular resistance, data activism, trade unions and workers’ organization, and collective ownership.

Neoliberal Platform Capitalism and Subjectivity

Across the globe, algorithmic technologies have undeniably altered the way labor relations are governed. The purpose of this article is to investigate a particular manifestation of that phenomenon: how, in Brazil, platform capitalism consists in a hybrid rationality whose control over the sphere of work combines new mechanisms of governance with structural characteristics that are particular to a type of precarious work commonly found in peripheral areas of Brazil, known as viração. While such a scenario presents us with a multitude of aspects worthy of consideration, this article focusese on the apparatuses for the psychic management of workers deployed by platform capitalism in Brazil. Within this scope, the article develops a double analysis: first, it examines the forms of subjectivity and the libidinal economy of Brazilian peripheral workers, with a particular emphasis on how certain of their characteristics have been subordinated, controlled, exploited, and ultimately disseminated by application software companies in Brazil; second, and conversely, it evaluates how the form of subjectivity associated with platform capitalism has, through the neoliberal discourse of self-entrepreneurship, impacted viração.

Connecting the Levers of Platform Control

Drawing from a transurban field research conducted in the ride-hailing sector in Paris and Brussels regions, this article investigates platformization as a productive model defined by the articulation of an outsourced labor regime with an algorithmic and data-driven type of management. Beyond the formal sharing of an independent contractor status, nuanced by a variety of positions including salaried work, platform drivers are unified in practice by their common economic dependence on platforms. This situation gives them the role of an adjustment variable in platforms’ commercial strategy, forcing them to raise their work time to adapt to the cost decreases in the mid-2010s, which dramatically reduced their income. To ensure a flexible flow into the workforce, platforms have favored the development of small intermediaries to outsource hiring and thereby skirt labor law and evade taxes. Market pressure is also enforced by its inclusion, with other productive goals such as service fluidity and quality, into a digital model of management inspired by lean production. The application is configured to operate as a device of technical and hegemonic control that incorporates just-in-time and intensification commands. Digital control is completed by the inclusion of a customer feedback system used to implement service standardization and further involvement in work.

Actually Existing Platformization

In this article we examine the partnership as a heterogeneous boundary resource that enables platforms to generate dependencies, become locally embedded, and gain power in urban settings. Pushing back against narratives of platform-driven disruption, which tend to universalize and totalize platform power, we discuss three cases of what we term “actually existing platformization”—a path-dependent and locally situated process in which platform companies engage in various forms of “boundary work” with other actors seeking to retain and/or gain power. Each case focuses on a distinct industry: food delivery, short-term housing rental, and the social/voluntary sector. In each of these domains, we show how asset-light platforms initiate and develop partnerships as a frequently nebulous boundary resource that opens up potential avenues for (1) market consolidation, (2) logistical integration, (3) social mobilization, and/or (4) institutional legitimation. Such strategic moves, we argue, have become particularly pertinent following the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit urban areas particularly hard and is intensifying certain social dependencies and institutional shortcomings that platforms are seeking to exploit.

Momentum vs. Labour’s Bureaucracy

The creation of Corbynist organization Momentum was the way in which the wave of socialist revival in the UK tried to take an organizational form and work toward the transformation of the Labour party. The first-past-the-post system meant that the only realistic option for socialists was working within the existing mainstream left party, while at the same time developing a parallel structure to mobilize youth supporters suspicious of bureaucratic structures. However, as I argue in this article, ultimately the stubbornness of the Labour party bureaucracy used as a defensive redoubt by party centrists managed to successfully fend off attempts for deep party reforms, and once Corbyn resigned it was easy for centrists to undo the change in the internal balance of forces. The failure of the Corbyn movement in overcoming these difficulties highlights how party organization constitutes a strategic bottleneck for all transformative movements, and that the only way to reclaim existing parties is to radically reshape them as a matter of priority.

The Limits of Algorithmic Management

Much of the existing research on platform work has focused on the role of data and algorithmic management. These new techniques of management need to be critically understood, but there is a risk of overemphasizing the importance and power of these techniques. The obscuring processes of data collection and analysis make it hard to comprehend how data is being used in practice. Less is known about the ways in which workers are resisting these methods, as well as developing new forms of organization that can effectively build on this. This article reflects on the practices of algorithmic management in platform work, considering the limitations of this approach. It considers the ways in which data is, and can be, used in platform work, drawing attention to the limits. While algorithmic management and the collection of data serve a role for capital in platform work—and are increasingly finding broader applications—the article argues that is crucial that research does not lose sight of the role and agency of workers against capital.

Airbnb Lands in Havana

Sixty years after Fidel Castro’s revolution overthrew the US’s influence in Cuba, Airbnb has penetrated Havana’s accommodation market, despite strong limitations imposed by the US government. This article analyzes the methods employed by Airbnb to enter the unique Cuban tourist sector, highlighting the adoption of local norms and traditions. For decades, thousands of casas particulares have hosted exchanges between visitors and the local population. Based on ethnographic data collected in Havana, we contend that the “Airbnb model” was present before the gig economy giant arrived in the Cuban capital. On one hand, the arrival of Airbnb may contribute to (re)emerging inequalities in Cuban society, while on the other hand, it has the potential to generate economic opportunities in the island’s bourgeoning private sector. Ultimately, we suggest that the Cuban model of casas particulares should be conceptual-ized as a trailblazer of the international tourist landscape.

Platform Battlefield

Platforms are transforming society, economy, and politics and becoming essential infrastructures of our lives. In this way, digital spaces overlap with other spatialities, urban areas in particular. This process is not peaceful but generates bottlenecks, resistances, and oppositions. In this article, we propose to combine platform studies with infrastructure studies to frame the capacity of such enterprises to build new urban postindustrial environments. We focus on the potential conflicts emerging in the face of the growing platformization and sketch the outlines of a counter-platform politics.