Publications

Acknowledgements

The writing of this paper has been made possible with the financial support from PRECNIGHTS, a project that explores precarity in women migrant nightworkers in Ireland. Funded under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA). Grant №: 101063938.

Abstract

Food couriers working in the after dark hours are an under-researched category of contracted workers in ‘platform capitalism’. They remain relatively invisible in the digitised cityscapes because of the particular nature of their work in the evening and at night. Drawing upon multi-sited in-person and digital nightnography in London (UK) and Cork (Ireland) and employing impressionistic mini portraits, this chapter documents experiences of precarity and inequality. From the vantage point of this particular type, the chapter argues that the current literature tends to disembody platform work. On the contrary, today’s post-circadian capitalist era demands and extracts capital in the same old (bodily) ways, but through new denominations. The bodies of the food couriers, and more so of those working after dark, are under duress from navigating the traffic, waiting, sometimes without getting orders, and being up and alert at night. The chapter also renews calls to further research the gendered nature of platform work. On the whole, the chapter contributes to debates on the digitalisation of precarity and inequality.