The informal economy and digital labour platforms: Opportunities, risks, and challenges for workers

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Introduction 

Most existing literature on digital labour platforms (DLPs) focuses attention on the effects of DLPs on formal employment, highlighting processes of the informalisation of work, which has happened in some formal economic activities, and its relationship with the spread of DLPs. Moreover, critical sociologists and labour law experts have highlighted how and to what extent DLPs exercise control over labour processes through algorithms and offer poor working conditions, thus recalling some of the aspects that usually characterise the informal economy. Studies that analyse the relation between the informal economy and DLPs are still scant and mainly focused on the Global South.

Therefore, research which focuses on the imbrications between the informal economy and DLPs both in the Global South and North can contribute to the advancement of knowledge concerning the transformation of the informal economy and its relations with the formal economy and, specifically, with the economy and employment developed through DLPs.

The special issue aims to shed light on how DLPs affect the informal economy and workers in occupations that have been traditionally characterised by informality, thus placing emphasis on the secondary segment of the labour market. Moreover, it seeks to bring to the fore the perceptions of (in)formal workers in relation to their engagement in DLPs and the meanings they attribute both to this kind of employment and (in)formality in the location-based platform economy. Finally, the special issue will focus on working conditions and rights at work in the informal economy and in similar occupations managed by DLPs; on the other hand, it will explore workers’ accounts of employment conditions and rights at work, as well as their motivations and expectations when using location-based platforms.

In general, the special issue will provide new theoretical insights on (in)formal workers’ involvement in the platform economy and the relation between DLPs and informal work.

List of topic areas

• Informal economy
• Informal work
• Digital labour platforms
• Employment relations
• Decent work
• Meanings of work
   

Guest Editors 

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

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Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
 

Key deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/05/2024
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 01/11/2024