While digital platform-based gig work has often been painted as work that allows for flexibility for the worker, this talk investigates the constraints under which workers enjoy this “autonomy”, where they do so at all.
Based on five years of research on the conditions of such work in five Indian cities as part of the Fairwork network, this talk argues instead that the prevalent asset-light model of gig work - alongside the modes of algorithmic governance platforms deploy in work allocation, in deciding pay, and in penalising workers - transfers most of the risks of doing this work to workers in the name of offering them flexible jobs.
The talk will examine how platforms and gig workers characterise the types of risks they navigate in the daily course of their work, and in their interactions with platform management, the state, customers and their fellow workers. Furthermore, what these differences in the characterisation of risk by platforms and by workers might tell us about the very nature of gig work as it has currently been operationalised and is being governed in the Indian context, and in much of the world.
About the speaker
Dr Janaki Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Digital South Asian Studies at the Oxford School for Global and Area Studies and the Oxford Internet Institute. She was previously on the faculty at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore and convenor of its Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy. She has a PhD in Information Management and Systems from UC Berkeley and Masters degrees in Physics and in Information Technology from IIT Delhi and IIIT Bangalore.
