Dual Exploitation: Platform Delivery Labor and Housing As Infrastructures of Social Reproduction for Migrant Workers in Berlin and Barcelona

The everyday life of migrant workers is shaped not only by their labor status but also by their migratory journeys, challenges, and search for stability. Platforms have increasingly acted as "arrival infrastructures" (Van Doorn and Vijay, 2021), offering lower-access barriers into gig work for migrants. However, their lived realities extend far beyond labor. Housing, as a vital infrastructure of social reproduction, plays a critical role in maintaining labor power but is often precarious, commodified, or inaccessible.

This study, drawing on Van Doorn and Shapiro’s (2023) “platform-adjacent” framework, explores the broader implications of platform labor within precarious housing markets. Based on fieldwork conducted from September 2023 to March 2024, including 45 in-depth interviews with migrant delivery riders (25 in Berlin and 20 in Barcelona), this research highlights how housing insecurity and precarious gig work intersect to exacerbate workers' vulnerabilities, creating what can be termed “dual exploitation.”

Using Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) as an analytical lens, this paper explores how housing commodification—treating it as a speculative asset—fails to meet the social reproductive needs of workers. The pressures of both labor precarity and housing instability reinforce structural inequalities, making migrant workers particularly vulnerable. By linking labor and housing as interdependent infrastructures, this study sheds light on the compounded nature of exploitation faced by migrant delivery workers in the platform economy of Berlin and Barcelona.