The changing composition of app-based food delivery couriers and the consequences for collectivism

Cosmin Popan and Kristin Jesnes

Chapter 5 in The Elgar Companion to Regulating Platform Work, 2025, pp 76-94 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The extraordinary proliferation of food delivery platforms across Europe in the last decade has been characterised by an equally dynamic shifting composition of labour. In many western European countries, increasingly deteriorating working conditions have led to a gradual transition from part-time temporary jobs done mostly by students to full-time careers among often undocumented male migrants. This transition has had ripple effects on what motivates couriers to take and stay in the job as well as on their attitudes and propensity towards collective action and organisation. This chapter draws on primary and secondary data from four European cities (Manchester, Cluj, Lyon and Oslo) to account for how this composition of labour is symptomatic of work in the food delivery sector and what repercussions it has for couriers’ capacity to improve their working conditions.

Keywords: Platform food deliveries; Irregular migration; Account renting; Uber Eats; Deliveroo; Glovo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035321131
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