DOI: 10.1177/10519815261478116 ISSN: 1051-9815

Managing risk and reward: Exploring immigrant platform workers’ occupational safety and wellbeing through a sociotechnical lens

Atieh Razavi Yekta, Suzanne Huot, Heather O'Brien, Christopher McLeod
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Background

The rise of digital platforms and algorithmically-managed labour is reshaping traditional understandings of job quality, safety, and wellbeing.

Objective

This study examines how human and non-human factors shape immigrant workers’ perceptions and experiences of safety and wellbeing in the platform economy of Metro Vancouver, Canada.

Methods

Guided by a sociotechnical lens, the study employed a focused ethnographic design, drawing on content analysis of twenty-one policy-relevant documents and thirty semi-structured interviews with immigrant platform workers.

Results

Analysis of policy documents and interview data identified three interconnected themes shaping platform workers’ safety and wellbeing. The first theme, Misclassification Dilemma in the Context of Algorithmic Management , shows how ambiguous employment status and opaque algorithmic control conceal subordination, limit recourse, and undermine job quality and psychosocial wellbeing. The second theme, Empowered Yet Exposed , captures the paradox in which perceived autonomy and flexibility co-exist with physical risk, stress, and regulatory uncertainty and inconsistency, leaving workers unevenly protected. The third theme, Safety Overlooked and Migrant Frame Overused , demonstrates that immigrant platform workers face heightened safety and wellbeing risks shaped by socially and technologically mediated forms of marginalization, while migrant-focused policy framings obscure safety and wellbeing gaps affecting the broader platform workforce.

Conclusion

These findings underscore the need to move policy and scholarly debates beyond a narrow focus on ride-hailing and food delivery to address the diverse forms of platform work and the sociotechnical conditions shaping workers’ safety and wellbeing across platforms.

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