Resilience, Reworking, and Resistance

This chapter examines how African workers exercise agency in the remote gig economy. In addition to the monetary and non-monetary rewards reaped by gig workers, they face significant risks. Gig work platforms and clients/employers exert control over labour power and labour process through the mechanisms of ratings, feedback, user profile registrations, and algorithmic surveillance, thus constraining workers’ autonomy and bargaining power. In fact, opportunities for worker action in the gig economy are apparently fewer than in so-called ‘Fordist’ workplaces. Remote gig workers are expected to have fewer opportunities to exert their agency. Further, in comparison to European workers, African workers have less state welfare support to fall back on, which can also limit their agency. Drawing from a rich labour geography tradition, this chapter reformulates the notions of ‘resistance’, ‘resilience’, and ‘reworking’ as everyday practices of agency, best understood as ‘hidden transcripts’ of the gig economy.