From entrepreneur to survivor. Labor subjectivities on delivery platforms

Abstract

In this contribution we discuss Foucauldian approaches of the processes of subjectivation of platform workers, and focus the analysis on the subjects themselves. Based on data collected in focus groups, we developed four “interpretive keys” to capture underlying rationalities, logics and prenotions in the meanings constructed by the workers. We conclude that, in a context marked by an economy historically in crisis, the predominant rationality among the delivery workers is closer to a logic of “survival” than to the dynamics of the figure of the “self-entrepreneur”.