Articles | Volume 81, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-81-535-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-81-535-2026
Standard article
 | 
30 Sep 2026
Standard article |  | 30 Sep 2026

Landscapes of precarious labour: on the long prehistory and contingent future of digital platforms

Moritz Altenried and Mira Wallis
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Short summary
Digital platforms are often seen as innovative, but our research argues that they build on long-standing forms of precarious work. By tracing historical examples of home-based labour, task-based pay, short-term hiring, and labour middlemen, we show that today’s gig economy builds on older practices of precarious labour while reconfiguring them through digital technologies. This perspective reveals that platform work is part of a wider landscape of precarious labour.
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