More than a glitch in the platforms: Precarious migratory status and other structural anomalies in app-based food delivery

Casas-Cortés, Maribel (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Practices of subleasing and borrowing delivery app accounts are spreading among platform-based food couriers in Spain. This article engages the significance of these seemingly neglectable practices among couriers in deportable situations. Both celebratory and critical portraits of the platform revolution have tended to ignore the question of migration in the digital gig economy. Based on interviews to unregistered couriers, accompanied by media analysis on Glovo, the main delivery company in Spain, this article calls for engaging migration beyond the exception in platform research agendas. The overall argument points to the primacy of migration in the reconfiguration of delivery platform logics of labor recruitment.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.3167/fcl.2025.0123OF1

Año: 2025

Publicado en: Focaal (2025), [16 pp.]
ISSN: 0920-1297

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN-AEI/PID2020-115170RB-100

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Antropología Social (Dpto. Psicología y Sociología)