'Uberisation' of work: contemporary subsumption of the very modern and precarious independent worker

Dr Ludmila Abilio (University of São Paulo) will examine ‘uberisation’ as a recent trend in Brazil and beyond it. These labour market trends have in fact been developing for decades, but are now visible and recognizable in a new pattern of precarisation, which will be referred to in this presentation as the uberisation of work. The analysis is based on the results of two empirical researches, one on motorcycle couriers - currently more than 300 thousand workers in Sao Paulo city — and the other on cosmetic resellers in the city of São Paulo - more than 1,4 million in Brazil.

The talk will discuss the new forms of organization, management and control of work related to technological innovations, elimination of rights, as well as the subjective motivations of the workers are highlighted. The main argument of the analysis is that, based on integral elements of precarious occupations, typical of a developing country like Brazil, it is possible to map some of the continuities and transformations of the world of work in a global context, which are more easily recognisable within the field of digital economy and more specifically with the uberisation of work.

Dr Ludmila Costhek Abilio holds a Phd in Social Sciences from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and has done research on the sociology of labour, exploitation, capital accumulation and the middle classes in Brazil. She is the author of Sem Maquiajem (Boitempo, São Paulo, 2014) and has published several articles in different academic journals.