The double-bind of freedom and economic security: Venezuelan “middle class” migrants in Argentina’s platform economy

Abstract

This paper discusses the link between (middle) class positionality and political beliefs toward social welfare regimes through the tension between economic security and freedom and with a case study of Venezuelan migrants in Argentina’s platform economy. Since 2014, over 6.5 million Venezuelans have migrated across South America. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, when this study took place, Venezuelans arriving in Argentina were predominantly university-educated professionals. Invited by a right-wing government that promised gainful employment, they were initially presented as ‘deserving’, ‘educated’, and ‘qualified’ migrants. Landing in recession-struck Argentina, however, the majority entered jobs in the platform and gig economy as taxi, delivery, and care workers: risk-intensive precarious jobs that gained visibility as ‘essential’ during the pandemic. Against this background, the paper explores how Venezuelan ‘high-skill’ migrants’ negotiate the opposition between freedom and economic security in the shift from ‘high- ‘ to ‘low-skilled’ labour. We ask, what do their experiences tell us about the nexus between geographic and social mobility, and how do these structure their political views and choices? To discuss these questions, the paper presents the findings from our fieldwork conducted among Venezuelan migrants in Buenos Aires (2020–2021). It traces if and how middle-class migrants’ self-perceptions have been challenged or reinforced by work in the platform economy undertaken as a last resort under the conditions of economic hardship, rather than out of free choice between multiple alternatives. We discuss how this situation affects the rationalisation of their situation via certain political attitudes toward socialist or free market regimes. Individual freedom of choice and market freedom are conflated, and social welfare is seen not as a universal right, but as a middle class entitlement obtained through class and/or geographic mobility.