Social Media As a Tool of Resistance for Migrant Platform Workers

In Chile, protests and strikes led by migrant food delivery workers since 2020 have challenged the literature that suggests that migrants are less likely to appeal for better conditions or to unionize for fear of losing their jobs and/or deportation. Through social media platforms, migrant workers have organized and gathered to demand better conditions. Drawing on multi-sited and digital ethnography and 30 interviews with workers in food delivery apps in Santiago and Valparaiso, this article delves into the different forms of resistance migrant riders have pursued through social media. This study shows that virtual communities have been built to organize and support each other collectively. Virtual communities also serve as countermeasures to fight racist representations from society and media. Riders’ social media accounts and virtual communities have been vital to migrant workers’ resistance. First, to resist the precarious working conditions in the platform economy by organizing protests and strikes; second, to build community and solidarity among workers; and third, to resist racialized representations of Latin American and Caribbean migrants. Through Instagram and X/Twitter, migrant workers endeavour to build a positive image, self-portraying themselves as both allies in the control of street crime and as “good migrants” who are contributors to society by doing social services. Sharing content becomes a way to humanize themselves against the anti-immigrant discourse and racism that they face. Therefore, using social media has been key for political action and solidarity amid an unequal society that is increasingly excluding them from citizenship.