Building on Risk: Professional Identities and Platform Work

• In Event: 30606 - Exploring the Impacts of Platform Work

Abstract

Risk has been a constant theme in studying platform work. Researchers have approached the topic from various angles, including health risks and economic precarity. These are compounded by the classification of workers as independent contractors, which shifts the burden of risk management onto the individuals themselves. Platform workers must weigh the benefits of flexibility and autonomy against the inherent risks of their employment situation. Empirical studies have found that the workers are active, and sometimes enthusiastic participants in these processes that place significant burdens onto them. Recently, Vallas and Schor (2024) have argued that this appetite for risk is driven by the class positions of workers, with lower class workers less enthusiastic about the risk. In this paper, we focus on a platform workforce that is almost uniformly lower class and try to understand their relationship to risk. Using interviews with 50 delivery drivers working on food delivery platforms in Turkey, we argue that these drivers are all acutely aware of the risks, especially the physical risks, of their work. However, they are much less engaged with the legal/financial risks they face, given that the alternatives they might have in a high unemployment, high informality economy like Turkey are unlikely to be any different. Most surprisingly, they frame physical risks associated with the job, and the fact these risks are frequently realized, as opportunities for solidarity. Narratives of help, mutuality and mobilization around traffic accidents and crashes abound in their discussions of risk. We argue that these narratives, along with significant bouts of activism following driver deaths and associated lawsuits, are used to create a professional identity among delivery drivers. This allows the drivers to reframe work and risk as social problems rather than individual troubles.

Authors

• Mehmet Cansoy, Fairfield University

• Tayfun Mertan, Koc University

• Duygun Ruben, Boston College