Urban governance of platform work. A European survey

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Maurilio Pirone
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/163 Language Italian
Pages 16 P. 191-206 File size 225 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2022-163010
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Alongside a general process of work digitisation, a business model has emerged - that of the platforms - which has brought a new type of economic actor into the forefront. These companies - whose development should be placed within a more general trend towards the de-structuring of subordinate labour relations, the ero-sion of wages and a logistical rationality - are now making a decisive contribution to the redefinition of what we conceive of as work. These changes, of course, can-not be analysed purely in terms of a technological increase but cut across a range of relationships - economic as well as social and political. Put differently, the ex-pansion of platform capitalism has not been exempt, and is structurally accom-panied by a broad spectrum of resistance and conflict. The sudden development of both platforms and conflicts has increasingly stimulated a public debate that has shifted from the general discussion on the future of work and our societies to the present need to govern this development, primarily with regard to the condi-tions of digital and digitised work. This article proposes a mapping at European level of the different practices of urban governance of platform work, analysing limits and possibilities.

Keywords: Platforms, Digital labour, Urban governance, Industrial relations

  1. Benvegnù C., Cuppini N., Frapporti M., Milesi F., Pirone M. (2021). Platform Battlefield: Digital Infrastrucutures in Capitalism 4.0. South Atlantic Quarterly, 120(4): 689-702.
  2. Casilli A.A. (2017). Digital Labor Studies Go Global: Toward a Digital Decolonial Turn. International Journal of Communication, 11: 3934-3954.
  3. Casilli A.A. (2020). Schiavi del clic. Perché lavoriamo tutti per il nuovo capitalismo. Milano: Feltrinelli.
  4. Chicchi F., Simone A. (2017). La società della prestazione. Roma: Ediesse.
  5. Cini L., Maccarrone V., Tassinari A. (2021). With or without U(nions). Understanding the diversity of gig workers’ organizing practices in Italy and the UK. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 21: 1-22.
  6. Cruddas J., Pitts F.H. (2020). Postcapitalism and the Politics of Work. The Political Quarterly, 91(2): 275-286.
  7. Ferreri M., Sanyal R. (2018). Platform economies and urban planning: Airbnb and regulated deregulation in London. Urban Studies, 55(15): 3353-3368.
  8. Fisher E., Fuchs C., a cura di (2015). Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age. Londra: Palgrave Macmillan.
  9. Forlivesi M. (2018). Alla ricerca di tutele collettive per i lavoratori digitali: organizzazione, rappresentanza, contrattazione. Labour & Law Issues, 4(1): 35-58.
  10. Funke C., Picot G. (2021). Platform work in a Coordinated Market Economy. Industrial Relations Journal, 52: 348-363.
  11. Fuster Morell M., Espelt R. (2019). A Framework to Assess the Sustainability of Platform Economy: The Case of Barcelona Ecosystem. Sustainability, 11(22): 6450-6470.
  12. Graham M. (2020). Regulate, Replicate, and Resist – the Conjunctural Geographies of Platform Urbanism. Urban Geography, 41(3): 453-457.
  13. Grohmann R. (2021). Rider Platforms?: Building Worker-Owned Experiences in Spain, France, and Brazil. South Atlantic Quarterly, 120(4): 839-852.
  14. Harvey D. (2001). Globalization and the Spatial Fix. Geographische Revue, 2(3): 23-31.
  15. Huws U. (2009). Working at the interface: Call-centre labour in a global economy. Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 3(1): 1-8.
  16. Ilsøe A., Söderqvist C.F. (2022). Will there be a Nordic model in the platform economy? Evasive and integrative platform strategies in Denmark and Sweden. Regulation and Governance: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12465
  17. Zuboff S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The fight for a human future and the new frontier of power. New York: Public Affairs.
  18. Joyce S., Neumann D., Trappmann V., Umney C. (2020). A global struggle: worker protest in the platform economy. ETUI, The European Trade Union Institute, 5 Novembre. -- www.etui.org/publications/policy-briefs/european-economic-employment-and-social-policy/a-global-struggle-worker-protest-in-the-platform-economy.
  19. Kall K., Roosalu T., Unt M., Ojamäe L. (2021). Platformisation of Tallinn’s taxi industry: Results from the PLUS Project. RASI toimetised, Tallinna Ülikool, 13.
  20. Kitsing M., Vallistu J. (2021). Future of Governance for Digital Platform Ecosystems. In: Yang X. S., Sherratt S., Dey N., Joshi A., eds., Proceedings of Fifth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol. 1184. Springer, Singapore.
  21. Leonardi E., Pirina G. (2020). Uber in the Portuguese gig economy: a laboratory for platform capitalism. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 14(2): 46-63.
  22. Loonam J., O’Regan N. (2022). Global value chains and digital platforms: Implications for strategy. Briefings in Entrepreneurial Finance, 31(1): 161-177.
  23. Marrone M. (2021). Rights Against the Machines! Il lavoro digitale e le lotte dei rider. Milano: Mimesis.
  24. Mezzadra S., Neilson B. (2019). The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
  25. Muñoz P., Cohen B. (2016). The Making of the Urban Entrepreneur. California Management Review, 59(1): 71-91.
  26. Pirone M. (2019). Il mondo in un click. Piattaforme digitali, nuova logistics metropolitana e fine del lavoro. In: Cuppini N., Peano I., a cura di, Un mondo logistico. Sguardi critici su lavoro, migrazioni, politica e globalizzazione. Milano: Ledizioni.
  27. Pirone M., Frapporti M., Chicchi F., Marrone M., a cura di (2020). Covid-19 Impact on Platform Economy. A Preliminary Outlook. Bologna: Ams Acta.
  28. Plantin J.C., Lagoze C., Edwards P.N., Sandvig C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1): 293-310.
  29. Raimondi E. (2019). Il lavoro nelle piattaforme digitali e il problema della qualificazione della fattispecie. Labour & Law Issues, 5(2): 57-94.
  30. Schor J. (2021). Dependence and Heterogeneity in the Platform Labor Force. -- https://digitalage.berlin/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Brief-3_Schor_final.pdf.
  31. Seta G. (2021) Digital Infrastructure, Liminality, and World-Making Via Asia| Gateways, Sieves and Domes: On the Infrastructural Topology of the Chinese Stack. International Journal of Communication, 15: 2669-2692.
  32. Stark D., Pais I. (2020). Algorithmic Management in the Platform Economy. Sociologica, 14(3): 47-72.
  33. Timko P., van Melik R. (2021). Being a Deliveroo Rider: Practices of Platform Labor in Nijmegen and Berlin. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 50(4): 497-523.
  34. Trappmann V., Bessa I., Joyce S., Neumann D., Stuart M., Umney C. (2020). Global labour unrest on platforms. The case of food delivery workers. Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
  35. Van Doorn N. (2020). At what price? Labour politics and calculative power struggles in on-demand food delivery. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 14(1): 136-149.
  36. Wentrup R., Nakamura H.R., Ström P. (2019). Uberization in Paris – the issue of trust between a digital platform and digital workers. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 15(1): 20-41.
  37. Woodcock J. (2016). Working the phones. London: Pluto Press.

Maurilio Pirone, La governance urbana del lavoro di piattaforma. Una ricognizione europea in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 163/2022, pp 191-206, DOI: 10.3280/SL2022-163010