Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy and her student Tanmay Goyal, a dual degree CSE student  presented a paper on Adapting to uncertainty: a deep dive into job insecurity and Indian food delivery workers at the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) conference held at Barcelona on 26 July. Here is the summary of the research work as explained by the authors:

From a study of food delivery workers and the informalisation of labour ( Shaikh et al 2023) we attempt to reconceptualize worker well-being in the context of Urban India. We point to the contradictions in conceptualising platform work in India as marginalisation and consolidating employability. In the absence of a formal employment sector, platform work, however precarious, offers a sense of regularity and persistence of work. The study is an ethnography of everyday work practices, contexts, and conditions of food delivery workers in three metropolitan cities in India. Through characterising delivery work, we bring to fore uncertainty amidst the employability of delivery persons and narratives of food delivery journeys.

Paper Details: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easa2024/paper/79676

EASA is a professional association open to all social anthropologists either qualified in, or else working in Europe. It is a society of scholarship and  seeks to advance anthropology in Europe by organising biennial conferences.

July 2024