Student Number

10910

Degree

Master of Science in Development Studies

School

School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)

Date of Submission

Fall 12-23-2024

Supervisor

Dr. Ahmad Azhar, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts

Committee Member 1

Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar, External Examiner, Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy

Committee Member 2

Dr. Arslan Waheed, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi

Keywords

Platform Capitalism, Labour Process, Gig Work, Social Identities, Algorithmic Control, Non-Algorithmic Control

Abstract

This thesis examines the variegated nature of digital labour platforms in the Global South, specifically in Karachi, Pakistan – a region overlooked in research. The paper draws on a conceptual framework derived from the extensive literature of classical and contemporary labour process theories to map out and analyze the complex labour process that plays out in the algorithmic and digital, the offline and informal spheres of a popular food delivery platform that operates in Karachi, Pakistan, and impacts platform workers’ consent, managerial compliance, co-optation, and contentions with the process. Two key questions guide the research: What distinguishing features characterize the labour process of working through and for a digital platform in Karachi, Pakistan? How do workers experience and comprehend the labour process of a digital platform? This qualitative study utilizes semi-structured interviews with twenty-five male delivery riders and two platform managers to map out a comparative labour process of food-delivery mediated via the platform’s app. The paper is conducted with an intersectional feminist lens that foregrounds riders’ subordinate masculinities in its analysis, incorporating their gender, social class, age, literacies and competencies, ethnicity, and migrant status, which exist simultaneously in their working lives to understand how intersectional identities and subjectivities influence their experiences, comprehension, embodiment of, and agencies within, the labour process. This dissertation concludes that the labour process of digital platforms needs to be examined as a whole, with its algorithmic, non-algorithmic, social relationality, and gendered angles to generate knowledge that is beneficial to, first and foremost, the riders to comprehend the labour process, and to academics, governing bodies, and policymakers to investigate the discrepancies between the officially stated labour process by platforms vis-à-vis how it actually unfolds, constructs, reproduces, embeds geography and physicality, exploits, and contextualizes in different settings with distinct workers’ identities.

Submission Type

Thesis

Document Type

Restricted Access

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