This talk draws on two research projects with gig workers in Hamburg and Berlin conducted between 2021 and 2024. While based on in-depth interviews with migrant workers, the aim is not academic debate, but to share insights useful for activists, unions, and social movements working to organise platform workers and build power.

Much discussion of platform labour focuses on apps, algorithms, and digital control. Our research shows that this only captures part of the picture. For many workers, especially migrants, platform work is an answer not merely to the need to generate an income but also, we argue, to biographical breaches, downward social mobility, and experiences of (gendered) violence. By looking at workers’ life trajectories rather than only their immediate labour position, we show how platforms draw on a workforce already made precarious by migration regimes and blocked career paths. Gig work can provide fast income in moments of crisis, enable “sideways moves” when promised futures fail, and offer narratives of independence that temporarily mask insecurity and deskilling.

For organisers, this matters. Improving conditions on platforms requires strategies that take workers’ broader lives seriously: multilingual organising, alliances with migrant and housing movements, demands for secure residence status, and labour rights enforcement that does not depend on stable contracts. Understanding why people end up in platform work is key to organising.