Paper Short Abstract:

This paper analyzes the strategies of territorialization implemented by riders or home delivery workers in the city of Seville. Through the application of the ethnographic method we discuss their ways of appropriation, delimitation and signification of urban space as a place of work.

Paper Abstract:

Workers develop everyday strategies of territorialization, which involve specific forms of appropriation, delimitation and signification of space. Such forms of territorialization are therefore diverse, depend on the unique characteristics of each job and offer clues about the material conditions of employment, obligations, knowledge and expectations of each group of workers. In the case of the riders or home delivery workers, their strategies of territorialization are developed in a unique context marked by mobility, the mediation of virtual platforms and the potential consideration of the whole city as a workplace. In this paper we apply the TPSN approach (Jessop et al. 2008) to discuss the strategies territorialization of the riders attending to the articulation between different territories, places, scales and networks. For this purpose, we provide ethnographic data produced in an ongoing research project on the socio-spatial analysis of labor relations in the logistics industry. Specifically, we address the experience of riders in the city of Seville.