Digital labor platforms, which bring together labor supply and demand, are widely seen as creators of economic opportunities for clients and workers alike. Such platforms present opportunities on physical (eg Uber, Deliveroo) and digital tasks (eg UpWork, Freelancer, Amazon Mechanical Turk), which offer flexibility to workers and bypass the barriers imposed by labor markets. This positive view is, however, questioned by accounts that highlight the precarity and vulnerability of digital labor, which put workers in positions of structural weakness and lack of protection.
This thesis project invites the students (1-4) to engage with research on digital labor, to be performed via a first desk-research phase and a second one involving data collection and analysis. The second phase will include survey research methods and / or interviews with workers on the platform or policymakers / regulators, depending on access and interest. Following the desk-research phase, students will be invited to formulate their own research questions in relation to digital labor, around topics that include, but are not limited to:
- Economic effects (what sorts of impacts does digital labor have on workers and clients in the platform economy? What income effects can be observed?)
- North-South disparities (how does digital platform work, and its effects on workers, compare across the Global North and South? Which similarities and differences can be observed?)
- Gender effects (how does the experience of digital labor differ across genders? If any, which differences can be observed?)
- Unionisation and self-organization (what do we know about the formation of solidarity networks among digital workers?)
The project may, depending on access and interest, include a participatory component based on interaction with workers and collaboration with them towards the design of risk-mitigation systems for digital platform work.