Results enable us to approach Ibero-American platform workers’ experience. We organized our analysis into two main questions. On the one hand, we can compare total results according to countries and genders. On the other hand, ambivalent results stand out regarding the characteristics that objectively detect on-location platform work and workers’ perceptions.
a. Comparative analysis
a1. Differences between countries. In global terms, we seem to have found a higher relative prevalence of positive expectations toward working conditions and negative expectations related to living conditions (Table 8). However, openness by country shows large disparities. First, we evinced a spectrum from negative to positive perceptions; Argentina has most of the cases with negative perceptions, essentially focused on working (working journey intensity and salaries) and living conditions (transition to other types of labor insertion). The only appreciable advantage refers to the low barriers to entry into this type of employment (Figure 2). Chile comes next. Its workers’ negative perceptions of living conditions related to labor transition (platform work is a vehicle for survival or extra income while waiting or planning for another type of work). We also found parity positions referring to job certainty and positive valuations of personal well-being. On an imaginary gradient of expectations, Brazil follows — although we find it difficult to draw firm conclusions about platform workers residing in that country due to sample size issues. In Brazil, expectations seem to be more balanced between positive and negative aspects, lying in situations of transition and individual well-being (possibility of tending to other personal interests within the work routine). Finally, at the other extreme of perceptions stand Colombia and Spain, countries showing predominantly positive expectations about future on platform work. Positive references in Colombia are more dispersed across job opportunities, followed by learning opportunities and personal well-being. Again, we found negative perceptions of transition decisions between jobs. In Spain, positive expectations concentrate more on working on platforms as an opportunity to transition to other jobs or as a source of income while transitioning from another job. Secondly, workers deem platforms as positive job opportunities. Platform workers residing in Spain highlight the uncertainty of such work as negative.
This analysis seems to give rise to a certain correspondence between response direction or expectation and the referent object: when platforms generate positive perceptions among workers, they tend to expand job opportunities or may improve workers’ well-being by enabling them to accept (or not) orders or transfers according to their personal agenda outside the platform since they tend to be jobs in transition situations with low expectations (we found more places in which transitions are associated with negative perceptions). The remaining referents show greater dispersion between countries, probably linked to local contexts (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Main reference objects of work on platforms by country and direction
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References: positive expectations in green, neutral expectations in yellow, and negative Expectations in red.
Source: own elaboration based on primary data
a2. Gender. The evidence of on-demand work in platforms indicates that men predominate in this type of work (Balaram et al 2017), whereas women have a higher relative participation in crowdwork-type platform jobs (remote execution) due to the greater possibility the latter offer to reconcile the work-care binomial, especially in young mothers, as per Gerber (2022) or Beerepoot and Lambregts (2015). Moreover, transport and delivery workers in Latin America tend to be mostly men due to insecurity on public roads, whereas women are/or perceive themselves as more vulnerable to robberies, violence, and traffic accidents or consider that public spaces are designed for others (Agencia de Información Laboral, 2021; Estrada-Revelo and Guadamud-Vera, 2022). In view of this, we anticipated that women’s expectations toward platform work would be worse than that of men. However, results show that women working in this area express better prospects than their male counterparts. Nevertheless, this result fails to indicate the absence of gender issues; non-binary people and/or those with dissident gender identities show less conformity with this type of work, confirming the hypothesis that the most vulnerable sectors have worse expectations about working in such platforms. In sum, regarding the subjective factors of platform work, we are unable to claim that women necessarily constitute the least satisfied or least entrenched population. However, we found gender issues registered in dissident minorities.
b. Ambivalences between objective and subjective conditions of platform work
b1. Ambiguity of the transitory: Macro-social conditions in each country influence perceptions on the use and usefulness of digital platforms. Workers in a country with a strong economy would be unable to consider adhering to austere business models such as those proposed by some platforms (Srnicek, 2019). Rather than claiming their absence, the market should propose business models that contained the protections social struggles had institutionalized, thus contributing to weaving workers’ expectations above social welfare, rather than below it.
Platform workers experience the transitory component of this work with a certain ambiguity. The fact that they conceive it as a transitory job enables them, on the one hand, to endure some negative conditions in face of a future they imagine and desire as better, whereas, on the other hand, this character prevents them from projecting or imagining a present development into a place providing them the human need for stability. The major expectation then constitute self-referential results (in the sense of Bandura, 1977b) because, despite considering that labor relations should procure welfare, what these workers really expect is the desire to be neither economically nor socially excluded so they can adhere to the world of work and survive (Cruz Bolaños and Cifuentes-Leiton, 2021). This enables them to problematize their scarce opportunities to make decisions and shape a prosperous future from the activity of working.
b2. Labor precariousness versus opportunity for the precarious: A positive aspect transport and platform-mediated delivery workers pointed out is that it constitutes a job opportunity or refers to the scarce specialization or previous knowledge required to effectively begin work.
In Ibero-America (and especially Latin America), a large number of young people face obstacles to enter the labor market essentially because they live in households with a low socioeconomic level or educational background. These traits bar their access to formal jobs, remuneration or acceptable working conditions. As a result, young people from socially vulnerable strata end up in jobs that require few skills or certifications, which, in part, replicate the precariousness in which they grow up.
Transportation and delivery platforms have expanded the stock of precarious jobs, which are historically linked to construction, domestic service, auxiliary positions in lodging establishments, restaurants, bars, cafeterias, or temporary jobs in recreational activities (clubs, nightclubs, etc.). Therefore, a considerable proportion of participants assimilate them as opportunities, rather than focusing on their objective disadvantages referring to working hours, income, insecurity, or uncertainty. Thus, on-site execution work on platforms paradoxically postulates job precariousness as job opportunities. This reading also somewhat explains why women show higher numbers of positive expectations about working on platforms.
c. Limitations
The limitations of this study include different sample sizes between countries (especially Brazil, which contributed few cases), limiting the generalizability of our results in that domain. However, since this is a qualitative study, we could access this valuable content with only a few cases.