Migrant workers within the platform assemblage: entwined temporalities of gig work and the border regime

The temporal structuring of migrant gig workers' work and lives has been insufficiently addressed in research. Drawing on multi-sited onlineoffline methodologies, including interviews with migrants working via location-based work platforms (cleaning, food delivery) in Finland, we propose the term platform assemblage to analyse the temporal entanglements of living labour, work platforms and the border regime. We argue that migrant gig workers' entanglement in the platform assemblage engenders experiences of constraint, not only via formally weak labour market positions but also through the specific temporalities arising in the complex entwinement of algorithms, the varying digital platforms used, ratings, urban interferences, migratory status and the personal resources required to navigate these constraints. Discerning the relationship between migrants' encounters with the temporal border regime, the temporal organisation of platform work, and migrants' contestations over the dynamics of work, the article contributes to the emerging literature on migrant gig workers.