Imbricated to Platforms: The (Re)production of Differences in Food-delivery Work

Abstract

The debate on digital labour platforms (DLPs) postulates that algorithms engineer pervasive organizational control, but it often observes that workers can evade and resist this control by manipulating algorithms’ decisions. This article aims to unpack this dichotomic view, shedding light on the more intricate dynamics at play in the everyday interaction between workers, algorithms and related technologies in the context of food-delivery platforms. Based on a seven-months ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Milan in 2020, during which the author worked as a food-delivery courier, this article highlights the internal differentiation within an emerging occupational field that is often considered homogeneous. First, it compares two food-delivery platforms – Glovo and Deliveroo – to uncover differences in the way they prefigure couriers’ work, enabling or constraining their agency. Second, it illustrates how two groups of workers with uneven cultural and socioeconomic resources engage with both platforms. The analysis shows that pre-existing social stratification of workers is reproduced through the processes of “imbrication to platform”, leading to the emergence of different ways of working and dispositions – namely, reactive and strategic. In conclusion, however, it is argued that strategic “imbrications” result less in practices of resistance to organizational control and more into self-optimization tactics that, to some extent, are envisaged and tolerated by DLPs.

Keywords

• digital platforms
• algorithms
• food-delivery work
• ethnography
• imbrication