Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation's Call for Papers:
'The Algorithm and the City'

As well as having major implications for urban populations in general (Carta, 2018), and the working conditions and job security of the platform workforce in particular (see for example Wood et al, 2019; Leonardi et al. 2019; Van Doorn, 2017; Prassl, 2018; Munn, 2017), these developments are also transforming cities in other respects. For example the need to speed up ‘last mile’ delivery of goods (Altenried, 2019) is resulting in a substitution of smaller inner city redistribution points for large suburban warehouses (Barbier, Cuny & Raimbault, 2019), and the extension of food delivery networks, driven by the algorithms used by platforms such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats, is leading to the development of ‘dark kitchens’ situated at a distance from their parent restaurants but designed to be close to potential customers (Hayward, 2019), in the process reconfiguring urban space and changing the character of neighbourhoods.

Such developments do not just affect the skills and working conditions of the workers directly managed by online platforms; they also have major implications for workers in other sectors affected by these developments, including employees in the hospitality, tourism, retail and transport industries.

Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation welcomes contributions that address the impacts of digitalisation and algorithmic management on cities. To read the full call for papers, please see full specification on the WOLG website.
 

Articles should be relevant to the aims of our journal and submission guidelines can be found here. All articles for submission should be sent to the editor: ursulahuws@analyticapublications.co.uk

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation also welcomes articles on other topics for our unthemed issues.

Latest issue: 
Logistical Gazes: spaces, labour and struggles in global capitalism

This path-breaking special issue, edited by the Into the Black Box Collective, focuses on logistics not only as a defining feature of 21st century capitalism but also as a methodological lens through which to comprehend its dynamics.

It brings together perspectives from a range of national and disciplinary backgrounds to shed vital light on how logistics management is reshaping spatial geographies and labour and how workers are resisting.

You can subscribe to WOLG through your institution on JSTOR here.
Individual and print subscriptions are also available through Marston here.

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