Digitisation of Labour: Configurations of Real and Virtual Migration

Project: Research

Project participants

Description

Digitisation is profoundly changing labour relations and patterns of mobility. On the one hand, almost all existing areas of work are changing. On the other hand, digitisation produces new forms of digital labour which, with the help of the internet, are increasingly globally distributed. One central element of this transformation is the rise of digital platforms: from online retail, over taxi and food delivery services, through to crowdworking platforms for digital labour. While the platform-driven digitisation of labour and life is beginning to receive attention within the social sciences, there is a lack of studies with ethnographic depth, especially concerning the practices of mobility and the migration projects produced by this transformation of the world of work.On the basis of two exemplary cases, the project researches how the practices of mobility and labour migration – and, as such, labour itself – changes under digital conditions. The case studies are globally distributed digital labour on crowdworking platforms and digitised labour on the ‘last mile’ of parcel and delivery services as an example of the digital transformation of ‘traditional’ professions. In both fields, platform-driven digitisation changes labour; not only through flexibilization and algorithmic management, but also in terms of the mobility requirements faced by workers. Crowdworking platforms allow the global distribution of digital labour down to the personal computers and smartphones of the workers, who become ‘virtual migrants’ (Aneesh 2006) without changing their location. The economic importance of ‘last mile’ delivery services has increased enormously due to online retail and platforms, while requiring place-bound forms of digitised labour that are also connected to new mobility practices. Here, a high number of ‘real life migrants’ are employed whose flexible mobility practices correspond with the requirements of labour.A demand-oriented, flexible and just-in-time allocation of labour is characteristic of both fields. The interplay of forms of virtual and real migration shows how processes of digitisation produce and reconfigure heterogenous mobility practices which are increasingly flexible, differentiated and temporalized. This raises epistemic and socially relevant questions about the concept of migration, and for research on migration. These will be addressed theoretically and in relation to the ethnographic research.
StatusFinished
Period01.05.1830.04.21

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Publications

  1. The roles of artists in the emergence of creative sustainable cities
  2. Vegetation mapping in central Asian dry eco-systems using Landsat ETM+.
  3. Entwicklung eines virtuellen Lernraums zum digitalen Kompetenzerwerb
  4. Geographische Restrukturierung internationaler Wertschöpfungsketten
  5. Zum bildenden Potenzial experimenteller und künstlerischer Kurzfilme
  6. Determinants in Pay-What-You-Want Pricing Decisions—A Cross-Country Study
  7. The environmental and economic effects of European emissions trading
  8. Rahmenbedingungen der Sozialarbeit mit alleinstehenden Wohnungslosen
  9. The Relationship Between Theory and Practice in Vocational Education:
  10. Zur Indexierung des Rundfunkbeitrags in der digitalen Transformation
  11. Theorie-Praxis-Verzahnung als konstituierendes Element des ZZL-Netzwerks
  12. Der modifizierte Körperleib als Ausdrucksraum in der Sozialen Arbeit
  13. Measurement invariance in a grid-based measure of academic self-concept
  14. Analyse menschlicher Fehler in gefahrengeneigten Industrieunternehmen
  15. Consumer Preferences for Local Food: Testing an Extended Norm Taxonomy
  16. Teachers’ Well-Being and Associated Factors during the COVID-19 Pandemic
  17. Deterministic Pod Repositioning in Robotic Mobile Fulfillment Systems
  18. Sustainable Supply Chain Management and Inter-Organizational Resources:
  19. Role-Determined Information Needs of Sustainability Management Control
  20. Exploring the Corporate Reality of Sustainability Accounting Practice
  21. Spatial and seasonal distribution of trace metals in floodplain soils
  22. Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement mit einer Sustainability Balanced Scorecard
  23. Die Sustainability Balanced Scorecard als Integrationsrahmen für BUIS
  24. The ground beetle tribe Cyclosomini s.l. in Israel (Coleoptera, Carabidae)
  25. The Low-Code Phenomenon: Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research
  26. Transitorische Normen in einer entwicklungssensitiven Schreibdidaktik
  27. Der Einfluss des Jugendsports auf den Bildungs- und Arbeitsmarkterfolg
  28. Fallstudie 1: Die Inhaberschuldverschreibung von Hamburg Energie Solar
  29. Wechselwirkungen zwischen Grundwasserleitern und Oberflächengewässern
  30. Die Zukunft der Allgemeinen Betriebswirtschaftslehre als Wissenschaft
  31. Elevated temperature and varied load response of AS41 at bolted joint
  32. Explaining the Heterogeneity of the Leadership-Innovation Relationship