5 Star Service: A curated reading list
This reading list by Data & Society Postdoctoral Scholar Julia Ticona, Researcher Alexandra Mateescu, and Researcher Alex Rosenblat accompanies the new Data & Society report Beyond Disruption: How Tech Shapes Labor Across Domestic Work & Ridehailing.
As labor platforms begin to mediate work in industries with workforces marked by centuries of economic exclusion based in gender, race, and ethnicity, this report examines the ways labor platforms are shifting the rules of the game for different populations of workers.
While ridehail driving, and other male-dominated sectors have been at the forefront in conversations about the future of work, the working lives of domestic workers like housecleaners and nannies usually aren’t included. By bringing these three types of platforms and workers together, this report complicates simple narratives about technology’s impact on labor markets and highlights the convergent and divergent challenges workers face when using labor platforms to find and carry out their work.
The report weaves together often disparate communities and kinds of knowledge, and this reading list reflects this eclectic approach. Below you’ll find opinion, research, reports, and critique about gendered service work and inequality; labor platforms and contingent work; algorithmic visibility and vulnerability; and risk and safety in the gig economy.
This list is meant for readers of Beyond Disruption who want to dig more deeply into some of the key areas explored in its pages. It isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but rather give readers a jumping off point for their own investigations. Suggestions or comments? E-mail julia at datasociety dot net.
I. Gendered Service Work & Inequality:
Essentials:
- Out from the Shadows: Domestic Workers Speak in the United States, Ai-Jen Poo, 2017.
- Gender and the Sharing Economy, Naomi Schoenbaum, 2016.
- Capitalism’s Crisis of Care, Nancy Fraser interviewed by Sarah Leonard, 2016.
- Platform Inequality: Gender in the Gig-Economy, Arianne Renan Barzilay & Anat Ben-David, 2017.
Reports:
- Home Economics: The Invisible & Unregulated World of Domestic Work (1st National Domestic Workers’ Survey), Linda Burnham & Nik Theodore, 2012.
- The New America Care Report, Brigid Schulte & Alieza Durana, 2017.
- A good gig? The rise of on-demand domestic work, Abigail Hunt & Fortunate Machingura, 2016.
More to explore:
- How to Nanny Up, Cristen Conger & Caroline Ervin, Unladylike (Podcast), 2018.
- Why Men Don’t Want the Jobs Done Mostly by Women, Claire Cain Miller, 2017.
- Are Women Really the Victors of the New Economy?, Bryce Covert, 2012.
- Is the Gig Economy a Thing? Ask Women, Anna Louie Sussman, 2015.
II. Labor Platforms & Contingent Work
Essentials:
- Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers, Alex Rosenblat & Luke Stark, 2016.
- The “sharing” economy: labor, inequality, and social connection on for‐profit platforms, Juliet Schor & William Atwood-Charles, 2017.
Reports:
- Gig Work, Online Selling and Home Sharing, Pew Research Center, 2016.
- The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015, Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2017.
- Overview of insights from Census 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement: Is gig work the new normal?, Amanda Lenhart, 2018.
- A deeper dive into the numbers: Making Sense of the New Government Data on Contingent Work, Annette Bernhardt, 2018.
- Uber & the Labor Market: Uber drivers’ compensation, wages, and the scale of Uber and the gig economy, Larry Mishel, 2018.
More to explore:
- Uber, Flexibility and Employee Status, Benjamin Sachs, 2018.
- Working with Machines: The Impact of Algorithmic and Data-Driven Management on Human Workers, Min Kyung Lee, Daniel Kusbit, Evan Metsky, & Laura Dabbish, 2015.
- Discriminating Tastes: Uber’s Customer Ratings as Vehicles for Workplace Discrimination, Alex Rosenblat, Karen EC Levy, Solon Barocas, & Tim Hwang, 2017.
III. Algorithmic Visibility & Vulnerability
Essentials:
- Want to Be on the Top? Algorithmic Power and the Threat of Invisibility on Facebook, Taina Bucher, 2012.
- The Cultural Work of Microwork, Lilly Irani, 2018.
- Virtual Work and Invisible Labor, Miriam Cherry (Pgs. 71–86 in Invisible Labor: Hidden Work in the Contemporary World), 2016.
- Trusted Strangers: Carework Platforms’ Cultural Entrepreneurship in the on-Demand Economy, Julia Ticona & Alexandra Mateescu, 2018.
- Platform Labor: On the Gendered and Racialized Exploitation of Low-Income Service Work in the ‘On-Demand’ Economy, Niels Van Doorn, 2017.
More to explore:
- Phones but no Papers, Julia Ticona, 2016.
- The Ladies Vanish, Shawn Wen, 2014.
- Mechanisms of invisibility: rethinking the concept of invisible work, Erin Hatton, 2017.
IV. Risk & Safety
Essentials:
- The Great Risk Shift (reviewed by David Leonhardt), Jacob Hacker, 2006.
- How Domestic Workers Wager Safety in the Platform Economy, Julia Ticona & Alexandra Mateescu, 2018.
- Uber May Have Imposed 12-Hour Driving Limits, but It’s still Pushing Drivers in Other Troubling Ways, Alex Rosenblat, 2018.
- The Gig Economy is Especially Susceptible to Sexual Harassment, Nathan Heller, 2018.
- Venture Labor: Work & the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries, Gina Neff, 2012.
More to explore:
- She was pregnant and broke. She signed up for Uber — and fell into debt, Danielle Paquette, 2017.
- How incentives in the gig economy put workers at risk, Juliana Feliciano Reyes & Jason Laughlin, 2018.
“Beyond Disruption” is the first research release from Data & Society’s newly-formalized Future of Labor research initiative.
