Digital Arbitrage: The Extractive Geographies of Cloud Production
Topics: Digital Geographies
, Economic Geography
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Keywords: economic geography, gig economy, platform economy, global production networks, digital labor
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 20
Authors:
Kelle Howson, University of Oxford
Fabian Ferrari, University of Oxford
Mark Graham, University of Oxford
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Abstract
Cloud production in digital industries is powered by work that can, in theory, be done in any city of the world. In this paper, we argue that unpaid labour and wage theft on cloudwork platforms is not an aberration but rather a key mechanism of value appropriation under the platform model. We demonstrate the ways in which its prevalence is tied directly to the business model of platforms and facilitated by key elements of platform governance including worker classification, regulatory evasion, digital enclosure, algorithmic management and information asymmetries. We draw on data from an extensive international survey of 699 workers on 14 cloudwork platforms in 74 countries and deploy an economic geographical analytical lens to argue that unpaid work is distributed throughout the global platform economy on an uneven basis, and is experienced disproportionately by workers from marginalised geographies and social groups. To theorize these dynamics, we introduce the notion of “digital arbitrage”. By using this term, we suggest that platforms institute uneven power relations as lead firms in complex spatially embedded networks. We discuss how digital arbitrage facilitates value extraction through increased rates of unpaid labour, which maps onto existing uneven urban-rural geographies despite taking place in an apparently spatially disembedded planetary labour market. This has important ramifications for the growing segment of the world's workforce, and for our understanding of the international division of labour and shifting capital-labour relations.
Digital Arbitrage: The Extractive Geographies of Cloud Production
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Virtual Paper Abstract
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