Becoming “Platform workers”

• Verfasst von: Stingl, Isabella [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Orth, Barbara [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Becoming “Platform workers”
• Titelzusatz: a biographical exploration of temporary visa and worker subjectivities in the gig economy
• Verf.angabe: Isabella Stingl, Barbara Orth
• Ausgabe: Online first
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: December 10, 2024
• Umfang: 23 S.
• Fussnoten: Gesehen am 14.02.2025 ; Online veröffentlicht: 10. Dezember 2024
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: International migration review
• Ort Quelle: Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications, 1966
• Jahr Quelle: 2024
• Band/Heft Quelle: (2024), online first, Seite 1-23
• ISSN Quelle: 1747-7379
• DOI: doi:10.1177/01979183241299717
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 1917277962

Abstract

As studies worldwide have highlighted, place-based platform work is predominantly carried out by migrant and/or racialized workers. By tracing the migration trajectories of Chilean and Argentinian gig workers on Working Holiday Visas (WHV) in Germany, we shed light on how platform-mediated work fits into the larger life trajectories of these migrant workers. Applying a lens of time and temporalities, we conceptualize migration as a process of becoming that involves the temporalities of particular visa regimes, wider scales of institutional and social temporal ordering, and progression through an individual's life course. We find that the temporal horizons of the visa and the transient nature of platform work foster distinct worker subjectivities that make platform work acceptable despite its precarity. We therefore argue that the temporariness of the WHV is a crucial factor in explaining why highly educated young people engage in low-status and low-waged platform work.