Working papers

SCIS Working Paper | Number 73 | 2025 | Rethinking social security financing in the shadow of the digital age: A view from the global South
Authors: Ruth Castel-Branco,  Sarah Cook, Arabo Ewinyu,  Thokozile Madonko

Over the past several decades, there has been a significant expansion in social security coverage across the global South. Yet, access to social security remains highly uneven. In low- and lower-middle-income countries, fewer than one third of the population has effective access to social security benefits – and this proportion is even smaller when considering able-bodied adults of working age. Recent debates have largely centred on expanding tax-financed social assistance. Advocates of this approach argue that contributory schemes tied to employment are inherently exclusionary and increasingly obsolete in a digital age where labour is being displaced by machines.

SCIS Working Paper | 2025 | Number 76 | Who counts as a worker? The politics of claimmaking in Africa’s gig economy
Author: Ruth Castel-Branco

As member states of the International Labour Organization begin negotiations on minimum labour standards for the platform economy, the question of who qualifies as a “worker” has emerged as a central issue. Until now, platform companies have largely operated outside of national regulatory frameworks, circumventing labour and social protections. While there is a broad consensus that regulation is necessary, disagreement persists over how platform workers should be classified and what rights they should be entitled to. Employers’ representatives argue that workers are independent contractors and should be excluded from fundamental rights at work, while workers’ organisations contend that they are disguised employees and should be covered by standard labour protections (ILO, 2025).

SCIS Working Paper | Number 63 |  2023 | Platform work in developing economies: Can digitalisation drive structural transformation?
Authors: Cook, S and Rani, U.

This paper explores how digital economic activity, specifically platform work, affects structural transformations in developing economies. It questions whether digital transformation can drive human, inclusive, and sustainable development by moving labour to higher-productivity sectors. The analysis highlights obstacles such as the disconnection between skills, productivity, and wages, and the concentration of capital. The paper concludes with policy recommendations to guide digital economic transformation towards equitable development.

SCIS Working Papers | Numbers 31 - 38

The Future of Work(ers) Research Project launches eight new interdisciplinary working papers on the intersection of digital technologies, the changing world of work(ers) and inequality in the global South. This impressive collection of papers by scholars from the global South is the product of a three-year research project, led by the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Much of the scholarship on the impact of digital technologies on the world of work has focused on the global North. These papers showcase cutting-edge research on the implications of digitisation for work and workers across a diversity of sectors in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, India and South Africa. The papers span Brazil’s manufacturing sector, agritechs in Ghana, click farm workers in Brazil, warehouse workers in Argentina, and various forms of location based platform work (incusing food couriers and beauty workers) in Brazil, Columbia and India.  

The working papers can all be downloaded here:

SCIS Working Paper | Number 47 | Castel-Branco, R. 2022. The Machamba is for life: navigating a precarious labour market in rural Mozambique 

This paper examines the peasantry's evolving role in contemporary capitalism in Mozambique, critiquing Meillassoux's ideas on the domestic community. It highlights how camponeses—ranging from landless laborers to capitalist farmers—navigate labor insecurity through their cultivation of the machamba (field), which offers both autonomy and livelihood but also perpetuates precarity and neoliberalism. The paper concludes that while peasant practices resist land dispossession, they also reinforce existing power structures. Nevertheless, land struggles continue to be the primary driver of contentious politics in Mozambique.

SCIS Working Paper | Number  37 | Souza Santos, L. 2022. The impact of digital labour platforms on the conditions of food couriers in Rio de Janeiro. 

The article examines the impact of digitalisation and platformisation on food couriers in Rio de Janeiro, focusing on their work conditions and professional trajectories. Based on 500 surveys and 100 interviews, it identifies three distinct groups of couriers: those resisting platformisation, those using it as a temporary job, and younger workers who see precarious work as normal but hope to change professions. The study highlights the structural precariousness of their work, worsened by low incomes and long hours, and explores the continuities and changes brought by digital platforms.

SCIS Working Paper | Number 36 | Sanchez Vargas, D. and O. Maldonado. 2022.  My boss, the app: Algorithmic management and labour process in delivery platforms in Colombia.

This paper examines the impact of algorithms on working conditions for platform workers in Colombia, focusing on couriers, drivers, and domestic workers. It analyzes how digital tools and algorithmic management allocate, monitor, and evaluate work, influencing worker behavior and emerging practices of resistance or compliance. The study draws on Science and Technology Studies and Organisation Studies to explore the human-machine interactions and the new inequalities created by algorithmic management in the gig economy.

SCIS Working Paper | Number 35 | Nair, G. and J. Divyadarshi. 2022. Unexceptional neoliberalism: enterprise and informality in the gig economy of India. 

This paper explores the conditions of gig work in India, highlighting its expansion and the precarity faced by workers. It examines whether gig work, with its lack of regulation and social security, extends informal labour practices to new sectors. Through interviews with gig workers, the paper analyses how neoliberal policies and algorithmic controls, combined with traditional constraints of caste, class, and gender, affect workers who are viewed as autonomous entrepreneurs by the State and digital platforms.

SCIS Working Paper | Number 34 | Grohman, R. Govari, C., Amaral, A., and M. Aquino. 2022. Click farm platforms and informal work in Brazil. 

This paper examines click farm work in Brazil, revealing how it updates and reproduces traditional informal labor practices. Through digital ethnography and worker interviews, it explores the connections between informal work and click farms, focusing on cultural extensions via WhatsApp, the role of YouTubers in promoting neoliberalism, and boundaries around piracy. The study highlights how click farms intensify micro-work and "fauxtomation," reflecting broader neoliberal and informal work dynamics in the global South.

SCIS Working Paper | Number 33 | Akorsu, A. and A. Britwum. 2022. The architecture of players in Ghana's digitalising agriculture. 

This paper investigates the impact of digital technologies on agriculture in Ghana, focusing on how these technologies are shifting from being viewed as public goods to commodities that farmers must fully finance. Using the food regimes approach, it examines the proliferation of agritech platforms and their role in the international digital ecosystem, highlighting concerns about the exploitation of farmers. The study calls for better conceptual tools to evaluate development alternatives and ensure that digital technologies benefit poor farmers in Ghana.

SCIS Working Paper  | Number 32 | Tessarin, M. and P. Morceiro. 2022. Labour market transformations in the era of new technologies: an analysis by regions, gender and industries in Brazil. 

This paper analyses the impact of new technologies on the Brazilian formal labour market, focusing on regional, sectoral, and gender disparities. It assesses the risk of digitalization across different occupations and industries, revealing that jobs in high-risk sectors are concentrated regionally and by gender. The study found a significant decline in employment from 2011 to 2019, particularly affecting women in vulnerable sectors. It calls for tailored public policies to address these disparities and integrate educational, regional, and technological strategies to mitigate the impact of digitalization on formal jobs.

SCIS Working Paper | Number 31 | Atzeni, M. and B. Kenny. 2022. The labour process and workers' rights at Mercado Libre: hiding exploitation through regulation in the digital economy. 

This paper examines Mercado Libre in Argentina, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, focusing on the impact of digitalized labour processes in warehousing. It finds that workers face fragmented, temporary jobs with stressful conditions due to algorithmic and human management. The study highlights the mixed role of trade unions in protecting workers and suggests that the Argentinian experience offers lessons for labour organizing in South Africa and the broader global South. It also sets the stage for future comparative research on labour relations in these regions.

Webster, E., and F. Masikane. 2022. I just want to survive: A comparative study of food courier riders in three African cities. FES | SCIS | Wits University: Johannesburg.

A new form of precarious work has emerged in the digital economy, characterized by algorithmic management that promises flexibility but results in long hours, no paid leave, and lack of social security for food courier riders in Accra, Johannesburg, and Nairobi. Riders face high risks without basic safety protections, while algorithmic management extends authoritarian control and deepens global inequality. However, this same technology also enhances workers' collective bargaining power, enabling the formation of union-like collectives that offer mutual aid and the potential for strikes.

SCIS Working Paper | Number 28 | Mehta B.S, Laha, S and Sharma A.N. 2022. Indian Labour Market: Post-Liberalisation Trajectory and the Arrival of Digital Technology