Labour futures: Intersectional policy making for the platform economy

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This project set out to achieve the following main research questions:

1. What are the determinants and characteristics, historical and emergent, of digital platform entities’ recruitment, workforce management, and economic value creation strategies?

2. What institutional roles, vis-à-vis civil society, markets, and the state, are digital platform entities in the global south(s) occupying and seeking to occupy?

3. What are (a) regulatory, (b) corporate policy, and (c) individual/collective labor responses that can generate equitable and gainful outcomes for workers in the digital platform economies?

WHY IS THIS RESEARCH IMPORTANT

Research on the platform economy in Global South contexts has explored the expanding role of digital platforms in delivering goods and services. While policy-oriented research had addressed issues such as data governance, consumer protection, and labor rights, much of this work was shaped by regulatory developments in the Global North. However, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the extent to which digital platforms are filling “institutional voids” in neoliberal state structures, which made it urgent to revisit and deepen research on their evolving functions.

The literature on platform labor is still catching up with models that go beyond the widely known “Uber for X” formats. This gap has limited attention to the distinctive labor market dynamics in the Global South, where occupational histories are deeply marked by caste, race, and gender. These intersectional factors presented complex challenges for regulation and demanded a sector-specific approach supported by robust, evidence-based research.

While prior studies had yielded valuable qualitative insights into worker experiences, platform business models, and regulatory recommendations, a significant lack of large-scale quantitative data remained across diverse sectors—crowd work being a notable exception. This shortfall was largely due to the challenge of identifying platform workers at scale.

METHODOLOGY

The research project employed a multi-pronged strategy guided by feminist and participatory methodologies. This cornerstone approach involved close collaboration and co-creation with platform workers, their collectives, and key worker unions in India, including the All-India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU), the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union (TGPWU), and the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT). The intent behind this partnership was to ensure the research was grounded in the lived experiences of platform workers and their movements, thereby producing high-impact, applied work and co-creating public evidence rooted in their realities. This collaborative framework was deemed essential for effectively driving discursive and policy change.

The methodology also integrated the extensive use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative data was gathered through various techniques, including semi-structured interviews with multiple stakeholders, in-depth interviews to analyze exploitation, particularly in beauty work, exploring metaphors used by gig workers to make sense of platforms, and collecting first-person accounts from grassroots organizers. Concurrently, the project employed large-scale, structured surveys to collect quantitative data from platform workers across numerous sectors. A significant undertaking involved surveying 2,000 workers across nine sectors, with a focus on women workers, resulting in a first-of-its-kind quantitative dataset on working conditions and outcomes for women in India.

MEDIA AND PUBLICATIONS

Platform Work

Platforming precarity: Data narratives of workers sustaining urban platform services