Racism and food delivery platforms: shaping migrants’ work experiences and future expectations in the United Kingdom and Chile

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated that platform work is predominately undertaken by migrant workers. Drawing on a qualitative study of platform-based food delivery work in Chile and the United Kingdom, we examine how migrant workers’ experiences of race and ethnicity shape their working conditions and future job prospects in the platform economy. In both countries, migrants perceived platform work to be a way of avoiding forms of racism in the formal economy. However, while in the United Kingdom this type of work lived up to migrants’ expectations of providing an environment with fewer overt forms of racism, in Chile, workers experienced high levels of everyday racism when performing platform work. We argue that processes of racialisation have a direct impact on the labour conditions of workers in the gig economy, and that race and migration background play a key role in migrants’ labour trajectories. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.