Discontent and Resistance in Platform Work. Crowd Workers’ Communities and Orientations in India, the USA and Germany
Discontent and Resistance in Platform Work. Crowd Workers’ Communities and Orientations in India, the USA and Germany
Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 11:00
Location: FSE010 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
The paper presents an empirical study of forms and antecedents of resistance by crowd workers on the digital labour platforms Amazon Mechnical Turk and Upwork. Digital labour platforms constitute transnational labour markets where requesters (often from companies located in the global North) outsource tasks to an often large number of workers (many of whom are located in the global South). Remote crowd work usually comes with deprivations for workers and precariousness, as market power is unequally distributed and used by platform companies and requesters at the expense of workers (e.g., Shor et al. 2020; Irani/Siberman 2014; Fieseler et al. 2018). However, due to the characteristics of remote crowd work, collective voice or representation of interests are difficult to achieve, despite the disadvantages and deprivations many crowd workers encounter (Lehdonvirta 2016; Al-Ani & Stumpp 2016).
The paper examines discontent among groups of crowd workers from different countries as well as the forms and conditions for collective action. It pursues the following research questions: (1) Which forms of (collective) resistance can be observed among crowd workers from different countries and on different platforms? (2) Which are the factors that may foster or hinder (collective) resistance? Informed by mobilization theory (Kelly 1998) and a concept of work orientations, empirical results of a 2024-quantitative web-survey (n=1,022) of crowd workers from India, the USA and Germany on the online labour platforms Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk are compared.
Findings show that some groups of crowd workers reveal work orientations which are favorable to collective action and appear to be open to mobilization efforts, while others appear rather reluctant. It is argued that communication and involvement in digital communities are important conditions that may foster mobilization. The research sheds some light on practical implications for organizing activities.
The paper examines discontent among groups of crowd workers from different countries as well as the forms and conditions for collective action. It pursues the following research questions: (1) Which forms of (collective) resistance can be observed among crowd workers from different countries and on different platforms? (2) Which are the factors that may foster or hinder (collective) resistance? Informed by mobilization theory (Kelly 1998) and a concept of work orientations, empirical results of a 2024-quantitative web-survey (n=1,022) of crowd workers from India, the USA and Germany on the online labour platforms Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk are compared.
Findings show that some groups of crowd workers reveal work orientations which are favorable to collective action and appear to be open to mobilization efforts, while others appear rather reluctant. It is argued that communication and involvement in digital communities are important conditions that may foster mobilization. The research sheds some light on practical implications for organizing activities.