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

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Modeling and simulation of the microstructural behaviour in thermal sprayed coatings
  2. Photodegradation of micropollutants using V-UV/UV-C processes
  3. Toward Automatically Labeling Situations in Soccer
  4. Exploring the implications of the value concept for performance assessment of sustainable business models
  5. Rapid Prototyping of a Mechatronic Engine Valve Controller for IC Engines
  6. Some surprising differences between novice and expert errors in computerized office work
  7. Framework for empirical research on science teaching and learning
  8. Teaching content and language in the multilingual classroom
  9. Global finite-time stabilization of a class of perturbed planar systems with actuator saturation and disturbances
  10. Disassembly and reassembly
  11. The importance of product lifetime labelling for purchase decisions
  12. Active suspensions decoupling by algebraic feedback
  13. Effectiveness and Moderators of an Internet-Based Mobile-Supported Stress Management Intervention as a Universal Prevention Approach
  14. Mathematical Modelling of molecular adsorption in zeolite coated frequency domain sensors
  15. Finding the Best Match — a Case Study on the (Text‑) Feature and Model Choice in Digital Mental Health Interventions
  16. An Integrative and Comprehensive Methodology for Studying Aesthetic Experience in the Field
  17. Individual differences and cognitive load theory
  18. Introduction
  19. Safer Spaces
  20. Gewalt
  21. Case study analysis of laser-assisted Low-Cost Automation assembly
  22. Determiner Ellipsis in Electronic Writing - Discourse or Syntax?