Can the welfare state protect workers in the age of platform work? The new policy and politics of welfare in the digital economy

The article provides new conceptual and analytical tools to explore the relationship between platform work and the welfare state at the global level. Firstly, the article discusses how the welfare state can profoundly shape the presence and availability of platform work, as well as moderate the effects of the ‘de-responsibilisation’ of platforms/employers and the ‘responsibilisation’ of workers, thereby exacerbating or reducing workers’ insecurities. The article discusses how platform work relates to global welfare security regimes, proposing a nuanced application of the dualisation theory which considers the relative position of platform workers vis-à-vis other vulnerable workers within the country. Secondly, the article indicates that the micro-level barriers faced by platform workers in accessing the welfare state depend on social policy mechanisms but also on the level of informality of platform work within a certain labour market. We illustrate the three possible strategies to develop social policy instruments for platform workers: absorption into employment status, absorption into self-employment social protection mechanisms and the development of ad hoc social policy instruments. Finally, the article discusses how the emergence of platform work unionism is generating new social policy demands, as well as a third wave of collecting bargaining that differs from traditional bargaining strategies in countries of the Global South.