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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  2. Crowdsourcing
  3. Interrogating the Phenomenon of Suffering and Smiling by Nigerians: A Mixed Methods Study
  4. Effect of yttrium addition on lattice parameter, Young's modulus and vacancy of magnesium
  5. Plant density modifies root system architecture in spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) through a change in nodal root number
  6. Learning how to request using textbooks
  7. Towards Faster IT Delivery: Identifying Factors Limiting the Speed of Enterprise IT
  8. How secondary-school students deal with issues of sustainable development in class*
  9. High resolution measurement of physical variables change for INS
  10. Neural Networks for Energy Optimization of Production Processes in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
  11. What´s in a net? or: The end of the average
  12. Value Structure and Dimensions
  13. Effect of gap distortion on the field splitting of collective modes in superfluid He3-B
  14. Effects of plyometric training on postural control in static and dynamic testing situations
  15. Hacking the Classroom
  16. Digital twin support for laser-based assembly assistance
  17. Performance of the DSM-5-based criteria for Internet addiction
  18. Internet and computer based interventions for cannabis use
  19. An Unusual Encounter with Oneself
  20. Export Boosting Policies and Firm Performance
  21. Temporal dynamics of conflict monitoring and the effects of one or two conflict sources on error-(related) negativity
  22. Operations Systems of Container Terminals
  23. NIF4OGGD - NLP interchange format for open German governmental data
  24. Improve a 3D distance measurement accuracy in stereo vision systems using optimization methods’ approach
  25. Nonautonomous control of stable and unstable manifolds in two-dimensional flows
  26. Double-fading support - A training approach to complex software systems