"This paper examines platform workers' experience with unpaid labour by examining the constraints they face and the ways in which they intentionally use unpaid labour to navigate these constraints. Based on a qualitative study exploring online freelancing, food delivery and domestic work platforms in Belgium, we shed light on the intentional actions by workers, explaining how they use different resources to engage in unpaid labour and how this helps them to navigate constraints such as non-transparent work assignments and rating systems. We also show how workers face financial, private, physical, mental and career-related limits to their engagement in unpaid labour which can cause them to reduce their engagement or to exit the platform. Our aim is to contribute to an understanding of how the prevalence of unpaid labour on platforms fundamentally relates to workers' actions and the resources at their disposal."

Support: Digital