IMBRIGLIAMENTO E RIFEUDALIZZAZIONE DEL LAVORO NELLA GIG-ECONOMY. Una ricerca sul caporalato digitale tra Italia e Argentina/Harnessing and the re-feudalization of work in the gig economy: A research on digital gangmaster system(s) between Italy and Argentina

Abstract

The contribution shows how the platform economy is today an infrastructure for migrant labour and for a pool of potential workers predatorily included in a labour market free from the formal constraints of employment. The inclusion of this mass of labour takes place under the sign of the adverse incorporation, highlighted empirically from two different case studies: Uber drivers in Argentina and delivery riders in Italy. In the same (formal and informal) rules of engagement of the gig-economy, therefore, a dynamic of labour entrapment emerges, to the point of determining a sort of parallel labour market characterised by the indeterminacy of employment, in which both the vulnerabilities of individuals and the flows of global migrations characterising this labour force are brought to the fore. In both case studies, the fieldwork has uncovered forms of digital caporalato and exploitation that predominantly affect the migrant component of the workforce, and which empirically delineate what several authors have termed a process of refeudalisation of labour.

Keywords:

Gig-economy; Digital “caporalato”; Migrant Labour; Refeudalisation.