The Carceral Geographies of Platform Delivery Work: Essential Workers and Bike Registrations in New York City

The critical platform studies literature is increasingly considering the role of social difference as a structuring logic in the platform economy, complementing understandings of worker precarity facilitated by worker misclassification and algorithmic management. Contributing to this literature, thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Antipode 2024-07, Vol.56 (4), p.1440-1460
Main Author: Ramachandran, Vignesh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capital
carceral geography
community policing
delivery work
Exploitation
Geography
Immigrants
platform capital
Police
Premature mortality
South Asian American
War on Terror
Work
Workers
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Summary:The critical platform studies literature is increasingly considering the role of social difference as a structuring logic in the platform economy, complementing understandings of worker precarity facilitated by worker misclassification and algorithmic management. Contributing to this literature, this paper demonstrates how platforms and police produce carceral geographies that manage and exploit immigrant delivery workers as surplus populations. The carceral geographies of the platform economy account for both how carceral space produces and manages the surplus populations from which platform capital draws its workers, facilitating the disposability and exploitation of workers. Focusing on South Asian delivery workers in New York City, the paper uses the example of bike registrations to show how police and platforms expand carceral spaces in immigrant communities, increasing their vulnerability to premature death and violence. Finally, it suggests how delivery worker organising offers instances of situated resistance that challenge platform capital and carceral logics.
ISSN:0066-4812
1467-8330
DOI:10.1111/anti.13027