Paper short abstract:

Deliveroo, Uber, Glovo or Bolt/Food are just a few names that have become entrenched in our societies, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. But less discussed is what does it mean to be a courier when your manager is an algorithm that monitors your every move?

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to surface the reality of the under-belly "platform" or "gig" workers. "Platform capitalism" or so-called "sharing economy" literature argues that food delivery is a special case of platform mediated work. Food couriers experience a diminishing sense of self-esteem due to lack of retribution by the "mainstream" society for the work they carry out during chronic and ordinary times. Moreover, food delivery riders flooding the streets in developed countries are migrants, unlike in countries on the semi-periphery of globalization, like Romania, where most couriers are its nationals.

The first part of the paper focuses on the strategic role that migrant or non-migrant gig workers play in supporting communities in cities, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in four localities (e.g., observations, semi-structured interviews, and informal conversations). The second focus of this paper is to conceptualise two distinctive, yet overlapping issues: a) platform mediated work shapes a purpose for partially and dependent food couriers, yet it only offers them precarious means to merely hang on at the edges of sharing economy; and b) despite the promises made, that sharing economy will bring about a "new way to work", the digitalisation of work through platform algorithms only exacerbate the existing inequalities through precarisation of working conditions. Drawing upon inequalities, precarity and migration scholarship, this ethnographic account's wider implications aim to impact the emerging digital anthropology field and invites scholars to notice precarity and inequalities differently when conducting and disseminating future research on platform mediated work.