Metamorphosis of Labour in Digital Societies: Platform Workers (Deliveries) and the Pandemic

Abstract

In a global context of social metamorphosis, it is important to understand how and why the reconfiguration of work experiences comes about in relation to the modifications produced by the digitalisation of society. All areas of people´s lives are colonised by the logic of the digital, and the different work experiences are affected. This chapter aims to explore the connections between these two critical dimensions of the social structuration process in Latin America, which have reached a superlative role in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to do that, it considers ?digital labor? and particularly the work of deliveries by platforms as a paradigmatic experience that condenses the tendencies mentioned. The selected argumentative strategy proposes to contextualize the expansion of ?digital labor? in the region by drawing from the analysis of secondary data, and from primary data generated through virtual ethnography oriented to capture the experiences of workers (deliveries by platforms).