Digital work across the divide: Japan’s platform economy and labour market dualisation

Abstract

While the platform economy in Japan has expanded rapidly, we have limited understanding of digital platform work at the crossroads of labour market dualisation, and how this impacts workers’ experiences. Guided by political economy and critical sociological approaches to dualisms, the paper investigates how platform work intersects with the increasing employment divide in Japan. Drawing upon secondary evidence and a qualitative study, the analysis reveals that the platform economy reinforces labour divides through inter- and intra-dualisation—a pattern that refers to practices and discourses promoting higher levels of work segmentation within and beyond the platform ecosystem. The study finds that the platform economy in Japan is strongly associated with a divide in skills, working conditions, employability, and experience portability that characterise workers’ experiences according to their profile. The study contributes to the literature on the platform economy and labour market dualisation by problematising platformisation as a promoter of dualisation, which widens the disjuncture in working conditions and labour rights between Japan’s regular (core) and non-regular (peripheral) workers.