The precarity of migrant workers in new forms of labor

Research shows that in comparison to non-migrants, migrant workers are exposed to more psychosocially stressful and negative working conditions such as adverse employment arrangement, more shift works, less freedom at work, and higher working speed. The working condition is worse in gig economic, with the on-demand platform-based labor, offering a hyper-flexible form of employment which is predominantly undertaken by migrant workers and refugees. Such new forms of labor in gig economy create a different kind of working experience, the psychological effect of which has remained unexplored.

Through empirical research, and using phenomenological interview method so far, we investigate the subjective experience of work among warehouse workers with a specific focus on the consequences of extremely precarious working condition and heavily surveilled environment on the (mostly migrant and refugee) workers’ identity and wellbeing as well as the effect of systematic quantification of work through surveillance on workers experience of working day.