Platform-based working: The global sourcing of digital labour and new forms of work organisation

The aim of this project is to investigate platform-based organisations and the associated working practices and experiences.

Funded by the Swedish Research council FORTE, the project involves collaboration with Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn, at Luleå Tekniska University in Sweden. The first stage of the project began by providing a holistic overview to categorise the diversity of platforms, noting variances and highlighting common threads (see article: A typology of crowdwork platforms).

Extant research on crowdwork has largely focused on the business benefits, with less attention directed towards worker perspectives.

This project will act as a corrective to the managerialism that dominates the research area by investigating a number of case studies with a view to providing rich, in-depth analysis of working practices and experiences.

Given that a significant number of gig workers rely on platform work to supplement their income, the impact of these non-standard working practices will connect with wider debates on austerity, flexibility, casualization, and increasing job insecurity.