The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19

The abrupt lockdown experienced by a big part of the world population due to the COVID-19 pandemic has bestowed upon home delivery services an unexpected importance. Officially considered amongst “essential services”, their workers circulate freely while most people are advised (when not forced) to...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Vieira, Tiago
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2020
Materias:
Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7502030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34173497
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100059
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author Vieira, Tiago
author_facet Vieira, Tiago
author_sort Vieira, Tiago
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description The abrupt lockdown experienced by a big part of the world population due to the COVID-19 pandemic has bestowed upon home delivery services an unexpected importance. Officially considered amongst “essential services”, their workers circulate freely while most people are advised (when not forced) to stay in their homes. The present paper explores how this context helps to shed light on the precarious situation of the majority of the platform delivery workers (PDW). This is done through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and digital ethnography of the interactions within a WhatsApp group. The main finding is that the COVID-19 context deepened the precarization of the PDW confronting them with four dilemmas from which there is no way out.
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spelling pubmed-75020302020-09-21 The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19 Vieira, Tiago Social Sciences & Humanities Open Article The abrupt lockdown experienced by a big part of the world population due to the COVID-19 pandemic has bestowed upon home delivery services an unexpected importance. Officially considered amongst “essential services”, their workers circulate freely while most people are advised (when not forced) to stay in their homes. The present paper explores how this context helps to shed light on the precarious situation of the majority of the platform delivery workers (PDW). This is done through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and digital ethnography of the interactions within a WhatsApp group. The main finding is that the COVID-19 context deepened the precarization of the PDW confronting them with four dilemmas from which there is no way out. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2020 2020-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7502030/ /pubmed/34173497 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100059 Text en © 2020 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Vieira, Tiago
The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19
title The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19
title_full The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19
title_fullStr The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19
title_short The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19
title_sort lose-lose dilemmas of barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of covid-19
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7502030/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34173497
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100059
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