Beyond Algorithmic Control: Ordering and Delivery Platforms Labor Process in the Chilean Retail Production Network

What is it about?

This article describes and analyzes the labor process of Rappi, one of the main ordering and delivery platforms (ODP) in Latin America. An exploratory qualitative case study was carried out and the results are based on the content analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews to platform workers as well as ethnographic work done in 2019-2020 in Santiago de Chile. This article contributes to, first, describe and analyze labor processes organized by an ODP whose property and operation is managed in the Global South; second, it enables to know the role played by Rappi within the Chilean retail production network; third, it connects diverse labor processes organized by ODPs further on the ‘pick-up and deliver’ orders task; finally, it analyzes different control mechanisms executed by Rappi beyond algorithmic control, together with individual and collective resistance practices adopted by shoppers and riders.

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