cabalquinto-performingdigital-2021.pdf (294.68 kB)
Performing “digital labor bayanihan”: strategies of influence and survival in the platform economy
journal contribution
posted on 2021-05-01, 00:00 authored by Cheryll Ruth Soriano, Earvin Cabalquinto, Joy Hannah PanaliganAbstract Drawing from experience of platform labor in one of the largest labor supplying countries, the Philippines, the paper demonstrates the role of an emerging labor category – that of digital labor influencers – who promote the viability of platform labor locally amid its precarious and ambiguous conditions. Through participant observation in Facebook groups, analysis of YouTube channels and videos, and interviews with digital labor influencers and workers, we present insights into the interventions that these influencers use, anchoring their strategies on what we call performing “digital labor bayanihan”: (a)coachingworkers on the “possibilities” of the platform economy and on how to navigate its structural ambiguities, (b) by acting as “agencies”, they aid workers tospan boundariesand fluidly move across platforms and job types to mitigate labor arbitrage and labor seasonality; and (c)bridging geographically dispersed workers, which allow them to form a supportive space where opportunities for labor are exchanged and debated. We argue that these affective strategies attend to Filipino workers’ labor aspirations through a community-oriented strategy encapsulated in a distinct Filipino cultural value bayanihan, which then shapes the collective “anchoring” of platform workers to navigate a precarious market. We explore the transactional nature underlying this “producer-audience” relationship, the activation of trust and influence through personalized practices and mediated encounters, and the power dynamic underlying these engagements. The paper shows that these strategies also set norms and standards in this largely unregulated sector, playing a role in how labor mobility or precarity are organized locally amid “planetary labor markets”
History
Journal
SociologiasVolume
23Issue
57Season
May-AugPagination
84 - 111Publisher
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do SulLocation
Porto Alegre, BrazilPublisher DOI
ISSN
1517-4522eISSN
1807-0337Language
porPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalUsage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC