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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and oral narratives of gig workers in New Delhi, this paper shows how memories of past work shape entry into and persistence within gig labour. It challenges “new precarity” by situating platform work within India’s histories of informality and jobless growth.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the oral narratives of food delivery workers to illuminate the relationship between precarity and the choice of work within India’s urban informal economy. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with gig workers engaged with food delivery platforms in New Delhi, it explores how memories of prior work experiences shape workers’ present engagements with platform labour. The paper argues that workers’ decisions to enter and persist in gig work cannot be understood solely through platform strategies or algorithmic management, but must be situated within workers’ longer labour histories of informality and insecurity.

Methodologically, the study is grounded in immersive ethnography. The author worked as a food delivery worker, enabling access to opaque dimensions of the labour process and facilitating trust with interlocutors. Through oral narratives, workers engaged in retrospective sense-making practices, comparing and hierarchising different labour regimes across time. These narratives reveal how gig work is evaluated relationally, against past experiences of unemployment, casualisation, and exploitative informal work.

Theoretically, the paper draws on labour process theory and debates on precarity from Global South. While much of the literature treats precarity as a novel condition associated with platform capitalism, this paper demonstrates significant continuities in precarious work conditions in India. By situating gig work within the longer trajectory of jobless growth and income insecurity following economic liberalisation in 1991, the paper challenges the dichotomy between “old” and “new” precarity. It contributes by foregrounding oral methods as a bridge between the sociology of work, labour history, and political economy.