Delivery depletion: rider viapolitics and the effects of im/mobilities upon platform food delivery couriers

Research on platform delivery has paid little attention to riders’ health conditions. However, what are the consequences of pedaling for hours or waiting for an order that does not arrive, carrying heavy loads, moving around the city in adverse weather conditions, the fear of police stops, or the anxiety when failing the facial recognition system of delivery apps? Based on ethnographic research in the city of Zaragoza, Spain, our article traces how the constant and fragmented im/mobilities of digital food delivery impact riders’ bodies. Drawing from Migration and Mobility Studies on the one hand, and from the field of Dis/Ability Studies on the other, this original perspective enables to unveil how platform delivery labor entails deep and differentiated levels of wear-and-tear. Our notion of “delivery depletion” points to the embodied result of im/mobilities induced by capitalist forms of platform delivery upon a series of populations formally excluded from standard employment.