Gigs North and South

This commentary investigates platformization in global south and global north labor markets, arguing they are linked via a process of uneven and combined development. Focusing on platformization in India and the United States, we briefly describe long-standing patterns of formal and informal labor in the United States and India, which prepare the ground for the 21st-century explosion of gig platforms. We conclude by returning to the global scale of uneven and combined development, drawing on contemporary Indian Marxists to explain the global spread of gig platforms post-2008 as a global financial response to the political problem of surplus workers within premature deindustrialization.