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Abstract:

Scholarly interest in platform work - i.e., paid work mediated via online and location-based labour platforms - has surged in recent years. A significant strand of literature has examined the various ways in which platforms establish control through the use of digital technology and algorithms. More recently, researchers have also started to explore the active role of platform workers, pointing to various forms of engagement with and resistance to platform control. This thesis is part of the ERC project 'ResPecTMe' (grant agreement nº 833577) and an FWO project on digital work (nº G073919N) and examines unpaid labour - i.e., unremunerated activities that contribute to accessing and/or completing paid platform tasks - at the intersection of platforms' strategies for control and the practices developed by platform workers. The overarching research question is 'How does unpaid labour unfold from platforms' strategies for control and workers' practices of misbehaviour in Belgium?'. Unpaid labour is conceptualized through the perspective of exploitation and valorisation in platform capitalism. Drawing on labour process theory, the thesis considers platforms' strategies for control as comprising the way in which platforms commodify labour, establish labour control and shift risks to workers. Workers' practices of misbehaviour are understood as underpinning both the generation of consent and contentions on platforms, drawing on insights from labour process theory and theories on organisational misbehaviour. A qualitative multi case-study design is adopted to answer the research question, consisting mainly of semi-structured and narrative interviews with platform workers, managers and (in one case) platform users. The study covers a variety of platforms in food delivery, online freelancing, care work and domestic work in Belgium. The thesis is based on four publications, each of which answer a part of the overarching research question. The first publication (cf. chapter 2) examines commodification and control within a food delivery platform. The study sheds light on the complexity of commodification by exploring connections between the platform, its users, and workers. It highlights that control and commodification are based on platforms simultaneously empowering and disempowering participants. Platforms facilitate access to transactions by fuelling competition while at the same time fostering dependency by withholding information, enhancing their power to control and to valorise. The second publication (chapter 3) 2 delves into the digitally mediated provision of domestic care services through platforms. It discusses how platforms' strategies for control disrupt existing regulations, thereby informalizing work arrangements in domestic care work. The study illustrates how this leads to a process of individualising risks and explains unpaid labour as a cost of the risks borne by workers. In the third publication (cf. chapter 4), the discussion centres around the practices workers develop to regain a 'space' of control over their work. A comparative analysis of food delivery and freelancing platforms reveals different regime types, such as 'pay-based control' and 'time-based control' for food delivery, and 'customer-based control' and 'task-based control' for online freelancing, which are shaped by the dynamic interplay between platforms' control strategies and workers' attempts to organise consent by navigating the rules governing their labour. Publication four (cf. chapter 5) explores contentions over unpaid labour among platform workers providing food delivery and domestic services. The study illustrates workers' agency in actively navigating and purposefully using their exposure to unpaid labour to regain control over their income. The study argues that contentions over unpaid labour enable workers to regain a sense of empowerment, demonstrating the fundamentally contested nature of exploitation in platform work. The concluding chapter of the thesis highlights the main findings and the implications for theory and policy-making, as well as paying attention to the limitations of the thesis that may be addressed in future research.