Organisers: Barbara Orth (Free University Berlin) & Isabella Stingl (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)
The gig economy and the spread of platform-mediated service work have attracted considerable academic interest. Many studies find that this kind of work is predominantly performed by migrants and/or racialised minorities. Yet, there is still a need for anaylses that move beyond this empirical reality, and theorise the relationship between migration and the platform economy more thoroughly (cf. Altenried, 2021; Barratt et al., 2020; Lam & Triandafyllidou, 2021; Van Doorn et al., 2022; Zhou, 2022). This session seeks to address this gap by bringing together scholars who explore platform-mediated work within migration studies to situate the phenomenon at the intersection of migration regimes, migrant workers’ individual aspirations and strategies, and the operations of the venture-capital driven platform economy. Taking migrant workers’ experiences as a starting point, we are particularly interested in understanding the role of state-based migration controls in co-constituting platform labour forces, without neglecting migrant workers’ agency in utilising platform-mediated work as part of their broader biographical projects. The session thus contributes to a deeper understanding of an increasingly important labour market segment for migrant workers, which can serve as both a critical infrastructure of arrival/take-off (Van Doorn & Vijay, 2021) and a source of socio-economic precarisation.
We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions that deal with these and related issues.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
• the role of migration policies and socio-legal status in directing migrant workers towards platform-mediated work
• the ways in which migrant workers make use of platform-mediated work as part of their migratory projects, as well as the benefits and limits of thinking platforms through the concepts of infrastructures of arrival (Meeus et al., 2019)/migration infrastructures (Xiang & Lindquist, 2014)
• the role of diaspora communities and transnational ties for migrant workers’ decision to engage in platform-mediated work
• the heterogeneity of migrant workers performing platform-mediated work and how their differential positioning in terms of race, class, age, gender, ability, and legal status fosters specific im/mobilities and modes of in/exclusion
• migrant workers’ experiences in segments of the platform economy that have thus far received less public/academic attention, such as care and cleaning services as well as infrastructural support roles such as relocating carsharing vehicles
Please send a short abstract of up to 250 words (including name, affiliation, and contact details) to Barbara Orth (
November 30, 2022. Please indicate whether you prefer to participate in person or virtually.
Based on your preferences, we decide whether the session will take place fully on-site or fully online. Participants will be notified about whether their paper will be submitted as part of this panel
by December 2, 2022.
Works cited:
Altenried, M. (2021). Mobile workers, contingent labour: Migration, the gig economy and the multiplication of labour’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0).
Barratt, T., Goods, C. & Veen, A. (2020). “I’m my own boss…”: Active intermediation and,“entrepreneurial” worker agency in the Australian gig-economy, Environment and Planning A: Economy
and Space, 52(8), 1643–1661.
Lam, L. & Triandafyllidou, A. (2021). An unlikely stepping stone? Exploring how platform work shapes newcomer migrant integration, Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 5(1), 11–29.
Meeus, B., van Heur, B., & Arnaut, K. (2019). Migration and the Infrastructural Politics of Urban Arrival. In B. Meeus, K. Arnaut & B. van Heur (eds.), Arrival Infrastructures. Migration and Urban Social Mobilities. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 1–32.
Van Doorn, N., Ferrari, F. and Graham, M. (2022). Migration and Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy: An Intervention, Work, Employment and Society, 0(0).
Van Doorn, N., & Vijay, D. (2021). Gig work as migrant work: The platformization of migration infrastructure, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0).
Xiang, B., & Lindquist, J. (2014). Migration Infrastructure, International Migration Review, 48(1), 122–148.
Zhou, Y. (2022). Trapped in the platform: Migration and precarity in China’s platform-based gig economy, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0).