streetlab-uoft.bsky.social
STREET Lab is focused on understanding and supporting the sociotechnical practices of marginalized communities around the world, with an emphasis in resistance, informality, and social justice.
16 posts
32 followers
3 following
Getting Started
Conversation Starter
comment in response to
post
Register here:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
comment in response to
post
Traditional trade unions aren’t obsolete—they’ve evolved and continue to play vital roles. Tech partially helps in this process. Their resources and strategies remain crucial in supporting workers and adapting to new challenges.
comment in response to
post
Worker precarity within DLPs is more than a data/information asymmetry problem. Logic of coloniality & extraction inherent in political economy of labor regime is taking advantage of issues such as massive unemployment & vulnerabilities of migrant & other oppressed communities.
comment in response to
post
To understand relationships between labour & tech, we need to consider affordances of space as well. This is not merely an outcome of design, but a complex assemblage of 'historical', 'social' & 'political'.
comment in response to
post
Workers tech usage in our study also indicates that appropriate tech can strengthen the associational power of trade union & bolster resistance in cities. Crucially, low tech is imp for under-resourced communities' survival struggles.
comment in response to
post
We also find that worker resistance is not always only against DLPs such as Uber, but also against the extraction of local bureaucracy & state. Here, traditional trade unions are critical because they expand workers frames of resistance.
comment in response to
post
This shift emerged as OR-DLPs disrupted the spatial fixity of the taxi business previously anchored around taxi stands. Therefore, mobile apps such as WhatsApp & Walkie Talkie became crucial to organising effort.
comment in response to
post
We find that technology fostered worker organizers (rather than external ones) as key actors, with tech affordances enabling hybrid & networked unionism—reimagining spatiality through networked dimensions.
comment in response to
post
We examines how entry of on-demand ridesourcing DLPs like Uber have reshaped labor geography & worker resistance dynamics. We explore how a traditional trade union in Kolkata, India, navigated this shift.
comment in response to
post
The paper further delves into how group identities online - such as being Latino and women - foster collective action and solidarity.
The paper provides insights on how we can support the challenges and needs of immigrant domestic workers in technology-mediated labour markets.
comment in response to
post
We find that Latino house-cleaners prefer to use asynchronous digital marketplaces, such as social media commerce groups and online classified advertisement websites, as the platforms provide flexibility and control over their labour outcomes.