Scalar Devices of a Global Movement of Gig Worker Activists

Grounded in two years of in-person and virtual participant observation with gig worker activists in Ecuador and the transnational network of activists of which they are part, this paper undertakes an ''ethnography of scale'' to concretely account for how the activists represent and manage a global-scale movement. I highlight three scalar devices observed: the First International Gig Workers' Congress, coordinated protest actions, and a book of gig worker testimonies. I argue that although the activists construct their movement as global, it is not scalable in the sense of being able to uniformly expand without changing the nature of the project. Rather, scale is enacted through mutually transforming engagements. This paper contributes an empirical investigation of transnational gig worker resistance contextualized in the Global South, and a theoretical nuance of critiques of scalability from STS through dialogue with CSCW concepts and empirical observations.