Platform workers’ everyday experiences in the Nordics

2024-02-15

Special issue Editors: Lena Näre (University of Helsinki), Bertil Rolandsson (University of Gothenburg) and Stine Jacobsen (University of Aarhus)

This special issue has deadline for abstracts (max 300 words) 15th May 2024. Deadline for full papers is 30th January 2025. The special issue is expected to be published in the first quarter of 2026. Abstracts and manuscripts should be submitted to Journal manager Bo Carstens, bo.carstens@gmail.com. Please also contact Journal manager Bo Carstens, bo.carstens@gmail.com, if you have any questions regarding submissions.

Rationale:

The special issue examines the everyday experiences of platform workers in the Nordic countries. We assert that studying the everyday lives of platform workers offers an advantaged perspective to the wider structural questions of inequalities and socio-economic differences and to the changing Nordic labour markets and welfare states.

Rapid development of digital technologies since the mid-20000s has advanced online platform work, i.e., labour mediated through digital platforms, in the Nordic countries like in many others. When the global Covid-19 pandemic forced very many white-collar workers to work from home, the demand for various delivery services increased drastically and the number of delivery workers, many of whom are migrants, also increased. The pandemic hit hard on individuals working in the cultural and creative industries. Digital platforms became one source for alternative revenues (see e.g. Khylstova et al. 2022). Yet, statistical data lag behind these transformations and do not capture well the lived experiences of workers who are not necessarily permanent residents nor those of self-employed workers who use platforms as one source for revenues among others.

International research has examined how new digital platforms and algorithmic management enable companies to take advantage of freelancers, promote peer-to-peer work, and different forms of non-standard employment (e.g. Van Doorn 2017; De Stefano V and Taes S, 2023). When investigating the social, economic, and legal position of platform workers, these studies often examine industries like transportation and food delivery, (Prassl, 2018; Thelen, 2018). Nordic research also includes a strand of studies that focus on emerging challenges to the existing labour market regimes (Ilsøe and Söderqvist, 2022; Ilsøe et al., 2021), examining implications of platform work for the labour unions and employer organisations, workers’ mobilisation, collective agreements, and regulations (Jesnes, 2019; Valestrand and Oppegaard, 2022; Ilsøe and Larsen et al. 2023; Maury 2023). Jesnes and Oppegaard (2020) identify two main narratives in these studies: one emphasising the threat platform work poses to the Nordic labour market regime and another claiming that the Nordic institutions have the capacity to tame and minimise the pitfalls of platform work. Further studies also stress that platform workers in the Nordics include a variety of rather different groups (such as migrants and students), providing a stepping stone for some and dead ends to others being caught in low wage precarious work (Maury et al. forthcoming, Newlands, 2022; Weidenstedt et al., 2023).

We recognise the importance of existing literature, analysing the implications of platform work from a macro level or institutional perspective. Drawing on previous research, this special issue nevertheless invites studies to move closer to the micro level and investigate the implications for platform workers’ everyday lives in the Nordic countries. The issue invites studies addressing and conceptualising how platform work is being lived, enacted, and practised in diverse ways using various methodological approaches.

We invite abstracts that touch upon the following topics, but not only limited to:

  • Everyday experiences of various kinds of platform work
  • Forms of precarity: employment, bogus self-employment, subcontracting on platforms
  • New forms of work and combining online platform work on different platform
  • Racial, ethnic and gendered divisions in online platform work
  • Contrasting experiences of migrant and non-migrant workers
  • Experiences of unionisation and non-unionisation
  • Experiences of ambivalence in platform work
  • Conceptualisation of doing platform work
  • Managing family-work balance in platform work
  • Inclusion and exclusion of platform workers from welfare services

Preliminary Timeline of the Special Issue

15th May, 2024 Abstracts of max 300 words to be sent to Journal manager Bo Carstens, bo.carstens@gmail.com.

30th May, 2024 Authors are notified about the outcome of the abstracts

15th December, 2024 Draft papers sent to Journal manager Bo Carstens, bo.carstens@gmail.com

30th January, 2025 Full papers submitted to the journal for peer-review process

Special issue editors’ short biographies

Lena Näre is Professor of Sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research focuses on work, migration, care and transnationalism. She is currently leading a Nordic research consortium Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic Countries funded by Future Challenges in the Nordics programme (2022-2026) and a national research team of Improving the Living and Labour Conditions of Irregularised Migrants in Europe (IClaim) funded by Horizon Europe (2023-2026). She has served as Vice-President and Member of the Executive Board of European Sociological Association in 2015-2019 and is currently the Vice-Chairperson of Nordic Sociological Association. She served as the Editor-in-Chief of Nordic Journal of Migration Research (Helsinki University Press, 2012-2022) and is currently serving as Associate Editor of Global Social Challenges Journal (Bristol University Press).

Stine Jacobsen is a PhD in social sciences and work life studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her research focuses on work life balance, organisation and management studies, social and cultural norms surrounding modern (family) life, and family platform influencers. Stine is currently on a special issue editorial board at Danish Journal of Education Studies (DJES) and serves as a reviewer for the journal Gender, Work & Organization.

Bertil Rolandsson is professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Work Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Bertil is part of the editorial board for the Nordic Journal of Working Life studies, and has during the last years coordinated a network funded by FORTE/Sweden, consisting of Nordic researchers examining emerging forms of platform work. He has conducted extensive research on the impact of organisational reforms and digital technology on a variety of occupations (e.g. health experts, journalists, technical translators, police officers). His research addresses topics like digitalization of work, platform work, co-produced public services and professionalism. He has published articles in journals like e.g. Organizations Studies, Research Policy, International Journal of Public Administration, investigating the interplay between institutional tensions and sociomaterial conditions for work.

References:

Doorn, Van N. (2017) Platform labour: On the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the ‘on-demand’ economy. Information, communication & society 20: 898-914.

Ilsøe A & Larsen TP. (2023) Why do labour platforms negotiate? Platform strategies in tax-based welfare states. Economic and Industrial Democracy 44: 6-24.

Ilsøe A, Larsen TP and Bach ES. (2021) Multiple jobholding in the digital platform economy: signs of segmentation. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 27: 201-218.

Ilsøe A & Söderqvist CF. (2022) Will there be a Nordic model in the platform economy? Evasive and integrative platform strategies in Denmark and Sweden. Regulation & Governance.

Jesnes K. (2019) Employment Models of Platform Companies in Norway: A Distinctive Approach? 1. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 9: 53-73.

Jesnes K & Oppegaard SMN. (2020) Platform work in the Nordic models: Issues, cases and responses: Nordic Council of Ministers.

Khlystova,O., Kalyuzhnova, Y. & Belitski, M. (2022) The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the creative industries: A literature review and future research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 139: 1192-1210.

Maury, O. Hakala, O. & Näre, L. (forthcoming) Strategising within the platform assemblage: a temporal analysis of bureaucratic bordering and migrant gig work. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Maury, O. (2023). The Fragmented Labor Power Composition of Gig Workers: Entrepreneurial Tendency and the Heterogeneous Production of Difference. Critical Sociology. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205231216418

Newlands G. (2022) ‘This isn’t forever for me’: Perceived employability and migrant gig work in Norway and Sweden. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space: 0308518X221083021.

Prassl J. (2018) Humans as a Service - The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy, London: Oxford University Press.

Stefano De V. & Taes S. (2023) Algorithmic management and collective bargaining. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 29: 21-36.

Thelen K. (2018) Regulating Uber: The Politics of the Platform Economy in Europe and the United States: Perspectives on Politics

Valestrand E.T. & Oppegaard S.M. (2022) Framveksten av plattformmediert gigarbeid i Norge og den «norske arbeidslivsmodellen» En analyse av drosjenæringen og renholdsbransjen. Norsk sosiologisk tidsskrift: 25-43.

Weidenstedt, L., Geissinger, A., Leick, B., & Nazeer, N. (2023). Betwixt and between: Triple liminality and liminal agency in the Swedish gig economy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X231172984