Labour Within the Platform Economy

Abstract

This chapter elucidates how labour is transformed with the Indian platform economy. The workforce in the platform economy in India is heterogeneous. It includes a vast array of on-demand gig workers who work for platforms such as Uber (and many others), as well as freelancers who engage in online labour on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). This chapter showcases how platforms perpetuate informality, precarity and exploitation of their workforce. Platforms in India reproduce the old hierarchy through technological artefacts. This chapter analyses the role played by social reproduction: how family, kinship networks and neighbours provide support for gig work and thus help sustain the platform business. Finally, the chapter also explores the collective resistance and unionization among gig workers and freelancers, detailing both the possibilities and constraints of organizing within the dispersed production sphere. This chapter demonstrates how platforms within India’s economy simultaneously formalize informality and deepen precarity in the age of digital capitalism.