Autore
De Stavola, Federico

Titolo
Algorithmic management and the labour of synchronisation. An ethnography of crowd-based digital platforms in Mexico City’s last-mile logistics
Periodico
Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa
Anno: 2025 - Fascicolo: 3 - Pagina iniziale: 563 - Pagina finale: 585

This article explores the organisation of food delivery work in Mexico City. It focuses on how digital platforms govern labour through what we term the compulsion to synchronise – the enforced alignment of workers’ actions, rhythms, and decisions with the temporal and procedural demands of algorithmic systems and customer expectations. This effectively couples real logistical flows with algorithmically planned operations. Drawing on labour process theory and ergonomics, the study examines how crowd-based models employing algorithmic management depend on workers activating themselves to align real-world activity with virtual prescriptions. While synchronisation is a structural feature of platform work globally, it is particularly evident in precarious economies in the Global South, where such work serves as a means of survival. Riders must synchronise their physical and emotional labour with platform and customer demands while navigating the tensions that arise between prescribed and actual workflows. The article analyses how synchronisation operates across logistics, datafication, and managerial control, offering insights into the study of digital labour.



SICI: 1973-3194(2025)3<563:AMATLO>2.0.ZU;2-M
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.3240/118732
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.3240/118732

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