Night of Ideas: The platform economy and young people, between flexible work and precariousness

Emergencies, economic needs, and job insecurity are driven by new parameters and adaptations in today's world of work. What's happening specifically with young people and applications in the current labor market? This was the focus of the debate entitled "New Voluntary Servitudes? Young People and Job Insecurity," which was part of the Night of Ideas 2025 program last night, organized by the Institut français d'Argentine in collaboration with the French Embassy in Argentina, the Alliances Françaises network in Argentina, the Medifé Foundation, and the Franco-Argentine Centers, and sponsored by Ñ magazine .

The talk took place in the Golden Hall of the Teatro Colón and featured three specialists in the field: Pablo Semán , PhD in social anthropology, an independent researcher at Conicet and a professor at undergraduate and graduate levels at Unsam; Paola Tubaro , a researcher in economic sociology and director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS); and Julieta Longo , a researcher at Conicet, professor at the National University of La Plata, a sociologist of labor, and a specialist in the platform economy and its impact on workers. Labor lawyer Juan Manuel Ottaviano served as moderator.

Semán opened the discussion with the following anecdote: “During the pandemic, I saw a young man on a motorcycle with a delivery backpack. He was hooking a crutch to the side. He also had a cast on due to some injury that—I assume—was a result of his work.”

“I rode motorcycles, I know how dangerous they are, and the first impression you get is that I was injured. You put a lot of effort into the motorcycle. I thought: what a harmless and degrading work regimen this is, one that doesn't allow you to recover from the last injury as you move on to the next ,” the anthropologist recounted.

“ One of the problems we have in the social sciences is the voluntary servitude of social scientists to the normative consensus of the disciplines in which there is a category that has been in place for 30-40 years,” Semán continued.

He also highlighted the employment situation in Argentina: “What has happened in the world of employment, in this job, in this situation, has made young people become politically aware , not as socialism and leftism would expect, a left-wing Peronist in general calls all these young people declassed as if they had been affiliated with the Communist Party at 5 years old or as if they believed that work brings class consciousness. Their work regime is associated with a form of political thinking.”

He also said that politics is immediately linked to this experience. “I think the idea of ​​experience invoked by English democratic Marxism is to understand the constraints, possibilities, and projects that emerge in these expressions we call precarity .”

“Why do we call them precarious? Because we contrast them with the employment model that was possible for some of my generation : a job with a contract, socially regulated, state-regulated. It guarantees vacation time, seniority, and conditions within work environments managed by companies, states, and unions. I think these situations are still valuable; we shouldn't give them up for dead ,” he argued.

Finally, she shared another anecdote about young people's political ideology and the precarious employment situation on the apps: "I was in the home of a family with a Peronist tradition. There were eight young people: six voted for Peronism and two for Milei, but they didn't want to say so until we found out later. These young people had the same description of the world based on their employment situation. Furthermore , they differed not only from their parents' generation but specifically from their siblings' generation : their siblings were six to eight years older and had other opportunities."

“They prefer this job because it's flexible. They regulate their work. They don't have a boss either. Plus, the pay is predictable, and the application is compliant. It's an employment model that, in the experience of these young people, is built on a unique opportunity compared to the previous generation with which they compare themselves. The plans they have are for the day after tomorrow ,” Semán concluded.

Meanwhile, economics researcher and sociologist Paola Tubaro discussed the situation in Venezuela regarding job insecurity through apps and highlighted its differences with the Argentine market.

"I studied voluntary easements on platforms with some colleagues in this room. In this case, we studied microtasking platforms ; their operation is quite similar to delivery platforms," ​​he remarked.

“The main difference is that the work is done remotely from home . The types of tasks could be things like labeling images or transcribing text. Basically, they serve to create or enrich databases that will be used to train AI algorithms or for the functioning of the digital economy,” he noted.

“The tasks on this platform are very small, and they pay very little . There's a lot of uncertainty in the sense that there are many today, but no one knows how many there will be tomorrow. This can change a lot, but the earnings are very low.”

" Why do this? It's a job that pays pennies, and it's unsafe on top of that. What's the point if working for Uber in delivery or Rappi pays a little more?" Tubaro asked.

"I studied several countries and wanted to compare the case of Argentina with that of Venezuela, with young people under 35. These are young people with undergraduate degrees in disciplines that are very useful in the digital world, such as engineering and computer science. In other words, they've studied."

“ In Venezuela's case, it's easier to explain if you consider the economic crisis it has faced over the past 10-15 years, especially between 2015 and 2020, with a very high level of poverty , massive immigration of the population, and very high inflation,” the French researcher explained.

And he continued: “The Venezuelan state and state-owned companies paid so little that it wasn't worth it. Many people left their jobs because they weren't worth anything. The currency was worthless: a month's salary wasn't enough to buy food the next day.”

"That gave many people the idea to work on microtasking platforms: they're international platforms where most clients are Americans and pay in dollars . With such an unstable local currency, even a small dollar payment can be attractive," he noted.

“But in Argentina, the situation is different,” Tubaro said. “Informal employment is under discussion, but the jobs that exist aren't that low. It's not comparable to Venezuela . In most cases, Argentina deals with supplementary jobs : people who have a primary job but need something extra for some reason. It could be inflation; being paid in dollars is also attractive, but they're still not paying that much.”

“ Platforms appear as strategies to improve their situation in very different contexts and with quite different objectives, but always with the idea of ​​improving, especially when my main job isn't giving me that,” Tubaro argued.

Finally, Julieta Longo agreed with Pablo Semán's view on the so-called "voluntary servitude" prevalent in job applications and highlighted several points in common.

"We've been looking at delivery platforms, but above all, we're looking at platforms that aren't widely used by the working class. There are different types of qualifications, but some elements emerge that challenge traditional work modalities, even though they're quite similar. What's interesting is finding this in such diverse jobs and in such different social sectors," said the Conicet researcher.

Regarding the title "New Voluntary Easements?" in this panel discussion, he said that "it is quite controversial and contains a great paradox."

“At the same time, there's the great paradox of platform work: it's obviously a job without rights because the employment relationship isn't recognized; you don't have to do much research to realize that. That's true; people highly value it ; they value flexibility and autonomy, but not only that: people want to continue working on the platform,” Longo asserted.

"In a context like the current one, both in Argentina and globally, where there isn't much hope or desire to continue , wanting to continue working in the same place seems quite significant to me," he added.

“We asked a very simple question in a survey: 'Do you want to work here in the next five years'? Only six out of every 100 said no. That's very few, and we surveyed domestic workers, transportation workers, designers, and IT service workers—they're too diverse to arrive at results where almost no one said they don't want to work on platforms anymore ,” Longo emphasized.

Finally, the researcher reflected on two responses to "the great paradox" that platforms bring. The first is the most widespread, not so much in academic studies, but in the sense of accepting or valuing these jobs because they don't recognize the reality in which they live.

“It seems to me that much of the discourse on entrepreneurship, neoliberal discourse, or being a self-entrepreneur is based on this idea that because they buy into a neoliberal discourse, that discourse obscures reality, and they don't realize what they're actually experiencing . They don't realize that they actually believe they are free, but they are being controlled by algorithms . We have to reveal to them that, in reality, they are not as free as they think they are,” Longo added.

But, he clarified: “Eating a barbecue, having a quick chat with someone, or taking a survey, it's easy to realize that people more readily understand the reality they live in. When they value flexibility, they're not thinking about doing what they want at work, but rather thinking about having more flexibility than before. And when they think they don't have rights, they know they don't. If you ask them if they want vacation time, of course they'll want it. The answers are much more reasonable and far removed from the discourse of entrepreneurs who think that all successes and failures are their own responsibility.”

However, Longo emphasized that "young people's discourse has been a great success: people are prioritizing certain classic working conditions in different ways. It's a great success of the neoliberal discourse. It's clear that people value flexibility first, while rights come in second . I don't have rights, but I have flexibility," he concluded.