From the South to the North: Uses and meanings of micro-task work in Argentina

PAOLA TUBARO; JUANA TORRES CIERPE; MARIANA FERNÁNDEZ MASSI; JULIETA LONGO

Berlín

Conferencia; 6th Conference of the International Network on Digital Labor (INDL); 2023

International Network on Digital Labor (INDL)

The platformisation of remote work has boosted outsourcing at global level and has opened an intense debate on the effects it has on the quality of work. Although many studies warn about precarization of employment, there are important differences between remote work platforms. From those that select highly qualified workers, which would offer high-quality jobs, to micro-tasking platforms that claim to have masses of workers from different parts of the world to carry out low-skilled, monotonous, and poorly paid ‘micro-tasks’. But there are also geographical differences that affect perception of the quality of work and the impacts of platformisation on local markets. In Global North countries, it is discussed how this new form of work escapes from current regulations, makes work more precarious, and threatens to erode the quality of offline jobs. Instead, in the global South, it is pointed out that this type of arrangement can be an opportunity for workers who carry out activities in unregulated markets, and that it can even increase the price of some activities carried out locally.In this paper, we investigate the particularities of micro-tasking work in Argentina. Unlike other countries in the Global South, formal wage employment in Argentina reached exceptional levels for the region until the 1970s. At the same time, trade union organisations, with high levels of membership and representativeness, played a central role in the political and economic scene. For these reasons, Argentina has protective labour legislation that covers a significant portion of workers even today. However, the macroeconomic instability of recent years and, in particular, the existence of considerable exchange rate volatility make remote work paid in dollars an attractive opportunity, even when tasks are tedious and monotonous.Based on a survey of 2118 Spanish-speaking workers using two different micro-tasking platforms - Microworkers (between December 2020 and February 2021) and Clickworker (between March and June 2022)- this paper analyses the results obtained for 225 workers based in Argentina. This survey is part of the scientific project TRIA (the Labour of Artificial Intelligence, from the Spanish initials) and it collected data related to the socio-demographic characteristics and the professional and educational backgrounds of respondents, the type of work activities carried out through the internet, and the strategies of use of microtasking platforms. The survey results are complemented by semi-structured interviews with a selected group of participants. In this first approach to the analysis of microtask workers in Argentina, we seek to answer three questions: Who are these workers? What use do they make of these platforms? Why do they work there?