Abstract
The study aims to investigate how platform workers experience and deal with their time and space. It has been generally considered that the digital virtual world expands the time and space in which people live and work. While an analogue industrial worker works at a specific space (workplace) during certain working hours (9-to-6), digital platform economy blurs such time-space boundary. Therefore, in order to grasp the characteristics of platform labor, it is necessary to consider the structural change of time and space that the digital technology creates. Based on the classical theories of time-space and empirical interview cases of 30 platform workers, this paper examines the time-space reorganization through platform labor. The research findings show that platform workers experience the expansion and the reduction of space at the same time. Labor in the virtual world enlarges the working space beyond specific offline workplaces, while the radius of daily life tends to be reduced or isolated. In terms of time, platform labor causes the compression and the relaxation of time at the same time. In the timeless virtual world, workers are pressured to work at ultrahigh speed, but on the contrary, they tend to instinctively loosen the time rhythm at break as a reaction to relieve mental tension caused by working pressure. This study also reveals how platform workers try to readjust their time and space for the restoration of human bio-rhythms. Considering the temporal and spatial characteristics of platform labor, this article finally discusses what kinds of social policies need to be introduced.
About the author
Dr. Suyoung Kim was visiting researcher at the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities between September 2023 and June 2024. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Welfare of Seoul National University.