The Politics of Gig Work in Asia and Africa brings together researchers from India, Indonesia, and South Africa in a transregional dialogue about the politics and political economy of gig work on the Asian and African continents.
Specifically, we intend to compare and contrast the trajectories of gig work and collective organising and politics among gig workers across the three countries with a view to gaining a clearer understanding of the role that the politics of work and workers’ politics play in shaping the dynamics of uneven and unequal development in the twenty-first century. A full abstract is provided below.
Date/Time: 17 October, 2 pm SAST, 5:30 pm IST, 7 pm WIB, 9 pm KST
Speakers:
Anjali Chauhan (Department of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Diatyka Yasih (Asia Research Centre, University of Indonesia)
Edward Webster (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies)
Full abstract - The Politics of Gig Work in Asia and Africa
In the early decades of the twenty-first century, gig-work has become a central pillar of growth in the global capitalist economy, including in Asia and Africa. Predicated on advances in digital technologies, more and more businesses have come to rely on temporary and flexible workforces to deliver various services, such as transport, cleaning, and running errands for customers who place orders via digital apps (Aloisi 2016; De Stefano 2016). These digitally-mediated labour markets have contributed to the normalisation of precarious employment practices. These trends are concurrent with neoliberal ideologies and policies that promote the transfer of most work-related risks from business and the government to workers. Workers in the gig economy have little or no access to employment rights, including those associated with collective bargaining. Moreover, the absence of physical workplaces and the digitally-mediated labour process also contribute to the atomisation and fragmentation of the workforce (Kalleberg, 2020). Despite these formidable challenges, gig workers in Asia and Africa, as elsewhere, have engaged in solidarity actions to improve their working and living conditions. Indeed, across sites of struggle in Asian and African economies, gig workers play a central role in reinvigorating and reinventing labour politics in the age of digital capitalism (Anwar and Graham 2020; Webster and Ludwig 2023; Yasih 2023). Considering the different histories of work, and of workers in the North and in the South, it becomes especially important to understand the specificities of gig workers politics in Asia and Africa as a part of contemporary struggle among Southern workers. Against such a backdrop, this webinar aims to initiate a transregional dialogue on the politics of gig work in Asian and African contexts, with a specific focus on Indonesia, South Africa, and India. Specifically, we intend to compare and contrast the trajectories of gig work and collective organising and politics among gig workers across the three countries with a view to gaining a clearer understanding of the role that the politics of work and workers’ politics play in shaping the dynamics of uneven and unequal development in the twenty-first century. In doing so, we hope to begin the work of creating a space for Afro-Asian co-production of knowledge about urgent global challenges and the potential that labour movements represent in terms of bringing about progressive social change across the two continents. |
