The platform’s cash administrators: Delegation, local adaptation, and labor control in Mexico City

Abstract

This article delves into the process of technological adaptation to local environments by presenting the case of food delivery platforms in Mexico City. Primarily, it focuses on the tension between design and local economic practices. Given the primacy of cash as an object of economic exchange, platforms facilitate cash payments. Platforms then delegate the task of cash administration to couriers. Labor control around this task is then institutionalized in the form of platform features. Furthermore, platform dependency to cover basic necessities shapes divergent experiences of the delegated task of cash administration. Conceptually, this article employs the Latourian concept of delegation to explore the human and nonhuman enrollments mobilized to adapt digital technologies to local environments.