Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the meanings of ‘control’ and ‘autonomy’ among food delivery riders in Madrid. Our aim is to show how the application-mediated practices generate different frameworks in which the riders express their agency in various ways.

Paper long abstract:

The algorithms of food delivery platforms codify the expected sequences and performance timing at each stage of the process. In operational terms, the algorithms produce coordination practices in order to optimize the times and movements needed to complete the successive step of an order. Although the practice of the riders contextually adjusts (to) these patterns, the literature on algorithms has tended to rely on approaches that emphasize their role as devices that limit the riders’ agency to a greater or lesser extent: On the one hand, when addressing the algorithms as a means that ‘control’ the riders’ ‘autonomy’ and ‘flexibility;’ on the other, when assuming that the algorithms favor dynamics of ‘precarity’ and ‘self-exploitation.’ In contrast to these approaches, we understand that algorithms do not totalize or unify workers’ frames of experience, nor do we assume that these devices necessarily privilege one of these frames. On the contrary, we understand that the meanings that emerge in rider-application agencements are expressed and embodied in situated ways. This approach gives rise to de-centering some commonly used categories in the literature, such as those of ‘control’, ‘flexibility,’ and ‘autonomy.’ Based on an ethnography carried out in Madrid (Spain) with riders from Glovo, Uber Eats, and Getir, we analyze different frames of experience among workers, considering employment relationships, workday, work experience as a rider, and gender.