Platform workers and digital agency: Making out on three types of labor platforms

Abstract

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Much of the research on platform workers has focused on individuals involved in low-skilled and highly standardized tasks. However, platform workers are not a homogeneous group. Utilizing a classification system that makes a distinction between different layers of platform control and grouping platforms according to how they divide decision rights between platforms and workers, we examine how and for what purposes platform workers operating in three types of control contexts have practiced and developed their digital agency for making out. The study, based on an analysis of platform webpages and 32 semi-structured interviews of food couriers, freelancers, and interim managers, shows that workers can exercise their digital agency on all three types of platforms, but different platforms create different conditions for this depending on their special forms of control. In addition, the forms of control also affect to what extent workers are motivated to direct their agency for making out. Instead of regarding platform work as just another layer of a periphery segment in the labor market, our analysis suggests that platforms exercising algorithmic control are new types of arenas for work, which seem to reproduce, or even amplify, the inequalities found in the offline world of work in the digital world.

Keywords

• agency
• algorithmic management
• autonomy
• control
• labor platform
• making out