Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how migrants/minorities navigate urban gig economies, focusing on cleaning platforms in NYC and Berlin. It stresses the value of cross-national comparative ethnography as a methodological approach able to grasp the local iterations of a global phenomenon like "platform labor".

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how, under nationally and locally distinct conditions of neoliberal urbanism, people navigate platform-mediated gig economies. It focuses specifically on the experiences of migrants and minorities working for/on domestic cleaning platforms in New York City and Berlin. In NYC, we meet Tish and Kenny: two African American cleaners who were driven to the Handy platform - and to cleaning work more specifically - through their encounters with labor activation schemes. Each has an ambivalent relationship to the platform, which provided them with a somewhat steady income stream when they sorely needed one, while also making it difficult to transition out of gig work and into a more secure and sustainable occupation. In Berlin, we hear from Kostas and Alexis, two Greek young men who left their austerity-ravaged country to look for better opportunities in the nation widely held responsible for enforcing the measures that bled Greece dry. Yet when such opportunities proved harder to come by than they had initially imagined, they turned to Helpling as an easily accessible "employer of last resort" (sans employment). Like Tish and Kenny, Kostas and Alex have a deeply ambivalent relationship to their platform, which is nevertheless articulated in distinctive ways. The paper concludes by stressing the importance of cross-national comparative ethnography as a methodological approach able to grasp the local iterations of a global phenomenon like "platform labor" - highlighting also the need to investigate this phenomenon through the conceptual lenses of social reproduction and migration studies.