Paper short abstract:

This paper situates the urban delivery workers’ experiences of and hopes for work in the concurrent political discussion on digital platform work that took place during my fieldwork in 2018. By engaging different understandings of work, I attempt to outline the moral economies they relate to.

Paper long abstract:

Digital food delivery platforms mediate between delivery workers who seek out the flexible work of bicycle delivery, hungry customers, and restaurants that want to increase their takeaway business. The mediation of the digital delivery platforms makes it possible for the delivery worker to work without having a human manager. Instead, they work through apps being managed by algorithms. The apps facilitate experiences, understandings, and imaginaries of work that can be difficult to marry with the current labour market legislation in which social security is closely tied to regular employment.

Taking my outset in the delivery workers’ experiences of and hopes for work, this paper will present the different understandings of digital platform work that I encountered in my ethnographic fieldwork on digital platform work in Brussels in the first half of 2018.

By engaging the different understandings of work among the interviewed delivery workers and situating these understandings in the political discussion of digital platform work that took place during my fieldwork, I will attempt to give an outline of the moral economies at play.