Digital platforms and digital labour : the Uber laboratory prism

Based on interviews with both employees working for the company Uber and drivers using the Uber app, this chapter revisits the notion of work platforms by focusing on the virtualisation concept (borrowed from P. Lévy, 1998). Defined in a simplified way as a process combining programming and notification, virtualisation is mobilised in two ways. First, to propose an approach to work platforms as ‘work ecosystems' and to reassess the notion of digital labour; as the latter is too often reduced to a click, we present it as a continuous activity anchored in the digital and professional spaces in which drivers transmit and receive information. Second, from this perspective, we argue that the virtualisation process refers to a productive world based on the idea of work prefiguration or representation (being virtual work). Furthermore, we build a typology of externalities (or socio-spatial effects) based on the interplay between the digital labour activity of drivers and the Uber platform. The chapter concludes by discussing the scope of this framework for understanding the clashes in terms of temporality and the inevitable social conflicts in which the Uber platform is both the scene and the object.