We highlight the following article: The Algorithmic-Bureaucratic Precarization of Migrant Food Delivery Workers in Italy by Gianluca Iazzolino, Eleonora Celoria (Fieri Researchers), and Amarilli Varesio (Researcher, University of Milan-Bicocca), published in the International Migration Review.

Part of this work was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101004714, Dignity For Irregular Migrants in EU Farm2Fork Labour Markets (DIGNITYFIRM).

ABSTRACT

In this article, Iazzolino, Celoria and Varesio use a socio-legal lens to examine the construction of precarity among migrant food delivery workers in Turin, Italy. By drawing on ethnographic data collected during the Covid-19 pandemic, they chart the growing centrality of food delivery platforms in the political economy of migration and argue that the Italian migration system, and the way it is implemented, narrows the range of sources of income, and pushes migrants into a condition of liminal legality, formatting the malleable workforce upon which food delivery platforms deploy their biopower. In so doing, they show how the interaction between shifting migration policies, information asymmetries of digital platforms and legal loopholes exacerbates the socio-economic vulnerability of migrant workers. The article advances the novel concept of algorithmic–bureaucratic precarization to describe the entanglement of legal and procedural failures that illegalise migrants and asylum seekers and put them at risk of exploitation. The overall contribution of the article is thus to highlight how the platform economy is reshaping the nexus of neoliberal flexibilization and restrictive migration policies.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01979183251343886