Uberization and platform work in Brazil: concepts, processes and forms

Abstract

The article seeks to analyze uberization and platform work in Brazil from the perspective of the periphery, aiming to face persistent obscurations around the informalization process. The thesis that guides us is that elements that structure the periphery seem to generalize and weave together the contemporary tendencies of capitalist labor exploitation. We understand uberization as a new type of management and control of the workforce with the consolidation of work on demand, and platformization as a dependence on digital platforms to perform work activities. The first part criticizes the import of analytical categories and analyzes the difficulty of conceptual stabilization when informality is the rule. The second analyzes peripheral ways of life to understand a new type of rationalized subordination, the subordinate self-management. Finally, the last part of the article aims to qualify how old forms of production organization are replaced and reconfigured, joining the constitution of new production practices that, together, radicalize the structural bases of exploitation and domination of the working classes by capitalist classes