Fifth Global Conference on Economic Geography (GCEG2018), July 24-28 2018, Cologne
Session: Digital Labour Geographies, ‘Sharing’ Economy Work Futures Organisers: Al James, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University UK, al.ja...@ncl.ac.uk Hannelore Roos, Faculty of Business Economics, Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium, hannelore.r...@uhasselt.be BACKGROUND: This session engages with the series of dramatic, digital transformations of work, employment and labour relations that have accompanied the extraordinary growth of on-demand labour in the so-called ‘sharing’ economy. Underpinning these transformations, the internet is used to unbundle production and value creation from formal employment, with online labour markets and algorithms used to manage and motivate work carried out beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of ‘typical’ workplaces (Huws 2015). Other monikers include the collaborative / gig / on-demand / and peer-to-peer economy. Whatever the label used, many commentators are excited about the digitally-mediated possibilities for enabling workers from a wide range of backgrounds to access new forms of ‘flexible’ work and income opportunities in multiple sectors (notably in professional services, household services, and personal transport). This excitement is particularly apparent in the EU, where the ‘sharing economy’ is worth an estimated €28 billion in 2015 (PwC 2016). Crucially however, the quality of those on-demand work opportunities in the ‘sharing economy’ is also prompting growing criticism around attendant working conditions, wage levels, and distributions of income and wealth (see Schor 2017). With reference to a range of online work platforms (Uber, TaskRabbit, Upwork, Amazon M-Turk, Helpling), critical work to date has explored: the ‘dark side’ of ‘sharing’ economy labour relations for workers who have limited legal protection as ‘independent contractors’ (the cybertariat) on for-profit platform apps; how digital platforms and clickwork are potentially crowding out old jobs rather than creating new ones; and how digital on-demand work is reinforcing stubborn labour market inequalities rooted in gender and race, re-inscribed through customer reputational reviews and the digital platform algorithms which route jobs out and set the terms under which digital workers labour. These critiques find expression in a range of provocative terms including ‘sharewashing’, ‘crowdfleecing’, and the ‘share the scraps economy’. NEW AGENDA: This session takes issue with a striking asymmetry within this growing research agenda. In short, while internet geographers have begun to engage with issues of work and ‘digital labour’ in the sharing economy, labour geographers have for their part been rather slow to engage with digital work platforms from ‘the other direction’. The result is a very partial set of analyses of digitally-mediated work-lives, and scope for developing a digital labour geographies research agenda (cf. Herod 1997: 30: see also Castree 2007, Lier 2007, Rutherford 2010). So motivated, this session is concerned to bring the nascent research agenda around digital work in the ‘sharing economy’ into new productive conversation with the labour geographies research agenda. It aims to prompt new conversations around how workers are capable of actively making and remaking the geographies of the ‘sharing economy’ and ‘platform capitalism’ and effecting positive changes in their work and employment conditions - rather than simply watching passively from the sidelines and being affected by the dynamics of economic change writ large by platform developer companies and their shareholders. Likewise, to explore how place matters in shaping patterns of ‘constrained worker agency’ (Coe and Lier 2010), focused on digitally-mediated labour markets as the ‘spatial settings and contexts… that specific employment practices, work cultures, and labour relations become established’ (Martin 2000: 456; see also Peck 1996 2003). FOCUS: The session will bring together established and new scholars with diverse research interests around digital transformations of work, to learn from each other and to explore new possibilities for animating more progressive worker outcomes in the sharing economy in the global South and global North. In so doing, the session responds to growing international calls for economic geographers to develop more critical analyses of how and where economies function, for whom, and to what ends (Christophers et al. 2016). As such, the substantive focus of this session is crucial to GCEG2018’s core concern with the geographical outcomes of uneven economic growth, economic futures, and scope for effecting positive change that narrows the gap between winners and losers. Specific topics might include, but are by no means limited to: • Analytical contradictions between celebratory media and policy commentaries of digital labour market ‘flexibility’ with the negative realities of digital work (focus on e.g. corporate globalisation, increasing precariousness of incomes, wage inequality, the institutionalisation of labour market risk, and shifting welfare policy priorities). • Comparisons between everyday work-lives in the sharing economy with previous/simultaneous work-lives in ‘mainstream’ paid employment • On-demand career building and gig economy advancement – geographical possibilities for online labour market progression? • Variations in worker experiences between different online work platforms, and between workers who use the sharing economy to generate all versus some of their annual income? • Feminist geographies of digital work; and how gendered and racialized identities and varied responsibilities of care differently shape workers’ abilities to participate and succeed as digital microentrepreneurs in the sharing economy. • Geographical possibilities for organising on-demand platform workers in the face of digital ‘subcontracted capitalism’ (Wills 2009). • Alternative platform work models (cooperative platforms) that seek to ‘take back the sharing economy’ a la Scholz and Gibson-Graham. • Mutual gains / interventionist possibilities to improve the work-lives of on-demand workers in a manner that simultaneously improve service delivery for customers and increase revenues for digital platforms (in short, are these necessarily competing alternatives?) • The methodological challenges and useful strategies for doing research on digital labour geographies in practice and using online work platforms as a robust source of survey data. Please send expressions of interest and abstracts to Al James (al.ja...@ncl.ac.uk) and Hannelore Roos (hannelore.r...@uhasselt.be) by Thursday March 1 2018. -- Dr Al James British Academy Mid-Career Research Fellow (2017-18), Reader in Economic Geography School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Daysh Building, Newcastle University, NE1 7RU Tw: @Re_AlJames | Ph: +44(0)191 208 6346 | www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/aljames.html<http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/aljames.html> New book (Nov 2017): Work-Life Advantage: Sustaining Regional Learning and Innovation http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118944836.html --
