Antinomies of the gig economy: The annihilation of space by time or the annihilation of time by space?

Abstract

This paper concerns migrants in Sweden working in various types of on and offline gig work. It explores how the temporal and spatial flexibility afforded to gig customers is predicated on temporal and spatial inflexibility for workers. The argument moves discussions beyond relational space by promoting a more fully dialectical view of space that understands it as simultaneously relational, relative, and absolute. Without such a view of space—which understands that space is not always open and fluid but just as often closed and fixed—it is impossible to understand the specific relations of labour that structure gig work, particularly offline gig work in such ways as to provide maximal flexibility for customers. This paper shows that the Marxian adage concerning how, in capitalism, space is annihilated by time, does not always hold. For workers doing cleaning and delivery gig work, the converse is oftentimes truer: time is annihilated by space. Gig workers—and even more so migrant gig workers crowded in the above-mentioned industries—experience the annihilation of time by space through the dual mandate that they must be available “just-in-time” and “just-in-place” to produce the spatiotemporal flexibility upon which the gig companies base their model and their success.