Donatella della Porta et al. — Mobilizing Against the Odds: Solidarity in Action in the Platform Economy

36 published claims from this book.

• A processual perspective links specific conditions to workers’ political recognition capacities.
• Algorithms have absorbed managers’ organizational functions in platform work
• Amazon driver mobilization is deliberately depoliticized
• Amazon drivers built workplace-only solidarity while couriers developed broader political identity frames.
• Amazon drivers mobilized a narrow identity frame demanding recognition as skilled logistics workers.
• Amazon drivers organize around narrow pragmatic goals, not political identity
• Amazon drivers’ specific skills both enabled union revival and pushed unions toward militant tactics.
• Amazon drivers’ unionization won recognition as logistics workers but stayed workplace-bound without broader politicization.
• Anchoring union ties shape whether platform worker mobilization develops narrow or universalizing identity frames.
• Couriers’ visible urban presence turns strikes into recognized, sympathy-winning events.
• Delivery algorithms capture workers’ tacit route knowledge and render them replaceable.
• Food couriers’ visibility makes them symbols for all precarious workers.
• Identity framing is a meso-level process of attributing meaning that organizational leaders shape
• Identity is constructed through boundary-making against the groups most similar to one’s own.
• Improvements among Amazon drivers stayed confined to subcontracted workers and did not scale.
• Italian food couriers build solidarity through informal collectives and a politicized class identity
• Italian food couriers organized through self-made informal unions, not established ones.
• Labor-organization specifics shape whether platform workers form narrow or broad solidarities.
• Mobilization strategies in platform struggles depend on sectoral labor-process differences
• Physical co-presence in shared urban spaces enables worker solidarity among food couriers.
• Platform couriers substitute brand shaming for workplace bargaining power.
• Platform labor fragmentation does not inherently preclude collective worker action.
• Platform labor fragmentation is a deliberate politics of isolating workers across five dimensions
• Platform narratives reframe wage work as hobbyist gigs while shifting all costs to workers.
• Platform work’s effect on solidarity depends on labour-organization specifics, not platform work itself
• Platform workers must struggle to be recognized as workers at all
• Platform workforce composition depends on local labor sector traditions, not platform design
• Platforms fragment workers through individualized scoring to discipline labor and lift productivity
• Protest frames broaden from local grievances toward systemic targets as movements grow.
• Sector differences shape whether platform workers adopt narrow or broad solidarity identities
• Sectoral union embeddedness, not platform work per se, shapes worker identity and mobilization
• Social movement frames are leadership-produced worldviews that give activists ideological context.
• Solidarity among workers is constructed through shared struggle rather than pre-existing.
• Solidarity arises in action as protests define distinct symbolic boundaries
• Workers can overcome fragmentation, but sector structure determines mobilization paths and identity frames.
• Workers resist algorithmic control by asserting mastery over their trade.