Aug 2026· Platforms & Society· Vol 3· 0 citations· 27 references
Abstract
Digital platforms are part of the reconfigurations of the international division of labor and are developing a planetary labor market. While the core countries concentrate the main platform companies in this sector, the peripheral regions constitute the source of most of the workforce involved in these new productive arrangements. This article aims to respond to the following research question: How subordinate is the insertion of Latin America in this new international division of the digital labor platform sector, and how does this condition impact the mediation dynamics companies operate in labor relations from the Latin American Political Economy Communication, Information and Culture (hereafter, LAPEC). We investigate a subset of the Latin American platform economy from a Latin American approach. LAPEC deepened the broad Political Economy of Communication, Information, and Culture perspective on the production, exchange, and consumption of symbolic goods by highlighting international asymmetries in information, communication, and culture industries (ICC), by showing how this sector has a mediation role among capital, state, and society, and pointing out the role of cultural work in these processes. We understand this phenomenon as an example of what we call ‘peripheral platformization’. This approach suggests a way to understand how the international division of labor in the platform world market reconfigures multidimensional asymmetries that reinforce uneven capital accumulation among regions, with core countries and transnational companies (TNCs) seeking to reproduce and amplify their economic and political power over peripheral nations in the Majority World. For this article, we apply this notion to the case study of a specific subset of the platform world market (digital labor platforms) in a particular periphery region (Latin America).
Since the mid-2000s, online labor platforms (OLPs) have emerged as vehicles for economic imperialism in the digitally deliverable services sector. By providing capital with instant access to inexpensive digital labor in the periphery, OLPs enable global North firms to bypass the costs associated with foreign direct investment and transnational labor migration while subjecting workers to conditions of super-exploitation. Drawing on Marxist unequal exchange theory, this paper develops the concept of digital labor arbitrage to explain how OLPs facilitate the transfer of value from periphery to core in this strategically significant sector of the global political economy. It argues that this process reinforces US dominance in key areas, including global technological infrastructure and artificial intelligence. The paper underscores the role of OLPs in perpetuating underdevelopment and considers China’s technological and digital sovereignty as a potential challenge to 21
st
-century imperialism.
Zachary Sedefian· Journal of Labor and Society· 0 citations
Digital capitalism is often described either as a clean break with the past or as a continuation of older markets. This article takes a third position: digital capitalism is a reorganisation of capitalist accumulation around platforms, data, attention and digital labour, not a departure from capitalism’s basic logic. The study uses a critical narrative review approach, drawing on Marxian value theory and recent work on platforms, datafication and surveillance. It is anchored by a curated set of publicly reported indicators from institutional and market sources, used as context rather than as a causal test. These show a platform environment that reaches most of humanity, highly concentrated advertising and cloud markets, platform labour as a global phenomenon, and a supposedly weightless economy resting on dense physical infrastructure. The article traces four contradictions: the commodification of unpaid user activity, the material basis of immaterial production, the concentration of market power, and the gap between participation and algorithmic control. The contribution is conceptual. It shows that media business models usually treated as separate, including advertising, subscriptions, creator monetisation, in-game spending and platform commissions, share one logic: user activity is captured as attention, measured as data and converted into revenue. New media therefore function as economic infrastructures for value extraction.
Murad Karaduman, M. A. Arık, Sibel Karaduman· Journalism and Media· 0 citations
This article examines the transformation of labor exploitation in Latin America within the context of digital platform economies. Moving beyond traditional conceptions of modern slavery centered on physical coercion, the study introduces the concept of digital precarity to capture emerging forms of structurally mediated exploitation. Drawing on a mixed methodological approach that combines legal analysis, institutional reports, and critical socio-economic theory, the paper identifies a growing misalignment between existing labor regulations and contemporary mechanisms of control, including algorithmic management and data-driven dependency. The findings demonstrate that exploitation increasingly operates through indirect coercion, economic vulnerability, and fragmented employment relations rather than overt force. This shift challenges the adequacy of international legal frameworks grounded in industrial labor paradigms. The article proposes the Digital Precarity Matrix as an analytical tool to assess varying degrees of labor exploitation across physical, economic, and digital dimensions. By focusing on Latin America as a region marked by informality and rapid digitalization, this research contributes to ongoing debates on labor transformation, human rights, and platform governance, offering policy-relevant insights for adapting labor protections to the digital age.
Miguel Esbrí Montoliú, Agustín Torres-Rodríguez· Journal of Intelligent Decis...· 0 citations
This study examines the gig economy as a site of contested employment relations, interrogating how algorithmic governance reshapes the social contract between workers and platforms. Drawing on a scoping review of 145 studies, this paper develops a conceptual framework integrating precarious work theory, power dynamics, and employment relations constructs—including worker voice, collective agency, and dispute resolution—to analyse the structural conditions of platform-mediated labour in India. The analysis reveals that algorithmic management operates as a form of digital Taylorism, systematically eroding worker autonomy and bargaining power while reconfiguring the boundaries of the employment relationship. India’s gig workforce, projected to reach 23.5 million by 2029–30, represents a critical case where informality, rapid digitalisation, and weak institutional frameworks converge. The paper argues that addressing these conditions requires a ‘new social contract’ that reconceptualises obligations between platforms, workers, and the state, moving beyond descriptive cataloguing toward theoretically grounded employment relations analysis. Implications are drawn for voice mechanisms, collective bargaining models, and regulatory reform in the Indian context.
Sazzad Parwez· Discover Global Society· 0 citations
The platform and gig economy exemplifies a profound change in the structuring, exchanging and rewarding of labor in the economy. Typically, the traditional employment relationship is based on long-term contracts, and identifiable employers, while gig work is based on digitally mediated, decentralized work transactions between service providers and clients. This in turn has significant implications for the legal system, labor rights, and social protection systems in India. Given its growing digital infrastructure and surplus labor force, India is a site of such work.
According to estimates from the International Labor Organization (ILO), there were more than 777 digital labor platforms worldwide by 2023, thus generating millions of jobs and exacerbating employment precarities. In addition, the NITI Aayog estimated that gig and platform employment workforce was 7.7 million and would grow to 23.5 million by 2030, which would be about 6.7% of the non-agricultural workforce in India. This was reaffirmed in the ILO’s 2024, “Expansion of the Gig and Platform Economy in India Report” which agrees and takes note that platform workers have developed into a new class of economic actors that still have an unclear legal status and recognition.
The ambiguity that workers faced was further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the lockdowns imposed did halt many sectors, platform based services, such as delivery, online freelancing, and logistics, quickly expanded. This underscored both the resilience and the vulnerabilities present in the gig work sector. Questions of social security problems escalated, as did the issue of declining incomes due to rising platform commissions and algorithmic opacity. In response to this uncertain political economy of labor, questions around the employment categorization of platform workers have become urgent. Are these workers employees, independent contractors, or a categorization of something in between? This paper examines these issues through the lens of the Indian laws, comparative global analysis and emerging policy responses
Avadhi Jain, Daksh Dhariwal· ILE LABOUR LAW REVIEW· 0 citations
Abstract This article examines the future of the world economy from the standpoint of middle powers, with particular attention to Canada in the wake of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s renewed emphasis on middle-power coordination. It argues that the central economic transformation is not simply digitization, but a deeper pivot from the production of goods and knowledge toward the valuation of data generated through those production processes. Agriculture, manufacturing, health, education, logistics, and public administration are increasingly organized around data capture, platform intermediation, and AI-enabled recombination. This shift intensifies economies of scale, network effects, and economies of scope, thereby concentrating economic power in a small group of multinational technology firms. For middle powers, the resulting challenge is not to reject global platforms, but to avoid operational dependency on them. The article advances digital sovereignty as a framework based on control, interoperability, public-interest data governance, sovereign compute, and contestable digital markets. It concludes that middle powers must develop the state as a platform: a provider of trusted digital foundations that can sustain innovation, democratic accountability, and strategic autonomy in an increasingly platformized world economy.
