Digital platforms and digital labour : the Uber laboratory prism

Résumé En

Based on interviews with both employees working for the company Uber and drivers usingthe Uber app, this chapter revisits the notion of work platforms by focusing on thevirtualisation concept (borrowed from P. Lévy, 1998). Defined in a simplified way as aprocess combining programming and notification, virtualisation is mobilised in two ways.First, to propose an approach to work platforms as ‘work ecosystems’ and to reassess thenotion of digital labour; as the latter is too often reduced to a click, we present it as acontinuous activity anchored in the digital and professional spaces in which driverstransmit and receive information. Second, from this perspective, we argue that thevirtualisation process refers to a productive world based on the idea of work prefigurationor representation (being virtual work). Furthermore, we build a typology of externalities(or socio-spatial effects) based on the interplay between the digital labour activity ofdrivers and the Uber platform. The chapter concludes by discussing the scope of thisframework for understanding the clashes in terms of temporality and the inevitable socialconflicts in which the Uber platform is both the scene and the object.