Understanding Racism in Digital Capitalism.

Abstract

Recent literature has argued that digital technologies reinforce existent inequalities along race, class and gender. However, the relationship between digital capitalism and racism is yet to be explored in depth. How does digitalisation rework social relations and social cooperation to produce new forms of racialised hierarchisation and differentiation? The article is based on an international project on platform labour spanning seven European cities. It focuses on the sector of ride-hailing in Berlin and analyses the interactions between processes of platformisation and (de-)racialisation. Finally, it shows how racism becomes infrastructural when platforms organise its circulation.

Keywords

• platform labour
• racism
• migration
• digital capitalism
• platform capitalism
• racialisation
• uber