Abstract:
Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest in the “sharing,” “gig,” or “on-demand”
economy, which has been changing the relationships between customers, workers, and
companies. While literature on the gig economy in the Western context abounds, few
studies have focused on “digitalized” labor relations in the Central Asian context.
Drawing on qualitative field research in Kazakhstan in 2016 and 2021, supplemented by
quantitative data, this article contributes to debates about labor relations and the digitalized
“gig” economy in a non-Western context. It provides a novel, in-depth, multisource account
of the structure of platform-based business and work experiences in the digitally enabled
Kazakh gig economy. Using ethnographic evidence, we offer a detailed analysis of labor
conditions from the perspective of platform-based companies and gig workers, identifying
resistance and “survival” strategies used to navigate and even challenge the existing system characterized by “algorithmic management” or “algorithm-based” labor relations.
