Beyond and Behind Platforms and Algorithms: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Gig Workers

While the literature on gig work is expanding rapidly, many are the issues that need to be answered in order to fully understand the lived experiences of gig workers and illuminate the dynamics of gig work. Despite it is widely recognized that gig workers constitute an heterogenous workforce, for instance, seminal works have focused on finding similarities among gig workers across platforms, while the mechanisms behind different gig workers’ behaviors and perceptions are still widely obscure. Moreover, most of the literature focuses on what gig workers do individually on platforms, but not – or only cursorily – on how these workers manage the interplay between their online and offline activities. Specifically, comprehending how the online dimensions of work blur or integrate with offline aspects of gig workers’ lives – such as family condition or family needs, the presence of alternative, offline jobs, the cultural context of the community and country of origin – is of significant importance. This symposium addresses these issues by examining what happens behind and beyond platforms, and by presenting four papers looking at different gig workers’ experiences and different forms of interplay between online and offline aspects of gig work.