‘I’m my own boss…’: Active intermediation and ‘entrepreneurial’ worker agency in the Australian gig-economy

Platform firm in the gig-economy are disrupting work as a social practice, production systems and recasting capital-labour relations. This qualitative study examines worker agency in the Australian food-delivery sector; a segment where platforms actively intermediate both product and labour markets....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnvironment and planning. A Vol. 52; no. 8; pp. 1643 - 1661
Main Authors Barratt, Tom, Goods, Caleb, Veen, Alex
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.11.2020
Subjects
migrant workers
Labour agency
gig-economy
labour market intermediation
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Summary:Platform firm in the gig-economy are disrupting work as a social practice, production systems and recasting capital-labour relations. This qualitative study examines worker agency in the Australian food-delivery sector; a segment where platforms actively intermediate both product and labour markets. Within this sector, worker agency poses a potential challenge to platform-organisations; however this study reveals how these platforms’ work organisation and market regulation constrain agency potential. Shaped by the work’s spatio-temporal features, organisational fixes and institutional context, it is shown how food-delivery workers, transiently attached to the labour market, predominantly engage in ‘entrepreneurial agency’ – a low-level agency expression aimed at materially improving individual conditions and aligning with, rather than challenging, platforms’ business models.
ISSN:0308-518X
1472-3409
DOI:10.1177/0308518X20914346