The plat-formalisation fallacy

It is often assumed that despite contributing towards the ongoing casualisation of work across the global North, in Southern contexts of already-high labour informality the expansion of the global platform economy is conversely helping to formalise people’s work. A process, as it were, of ‘plat-formalisation’. Drawing on original case study material from Uganda’s motorcycle-taxi sector, this article responds to recent calls within the field of critical platform scholarship for more ‘theory from’ the South by carrying out a grounded investigation of the relationship between processes of platformisation and dynamics of in/formalisation. In contrast to prevailing ideas about the formalising properties of digital labour platforms in such settings, it clearly shows that inclusion within the ride-hail platform economy brings moto-taxi riders no closer to formal status in any meaningful way. Despite early collaborative engagement with state actors, Uganda’s ride-hail platforms operate in unilateral, platform-specific ways that undermine prospects for sectoral standardisation, accept zero legal responsibility for the welfare and safety of those labouring/transacting through their apps, and exhibit reluctance to enhance the political legibility of the rider workforce through data-sharing with government. But more than this: by manufacturing what this article terms an ‘aesthetics of formality’, the platformisation of Uganda’s moto-taxis also enables the conduct of commercial activity beneath the surface, culminating in a dynamic that sees the economic value created by (still-)informal workers captured by formal private enterprise. Seen through this particular Southern lens, the conventional logics of plat-formalisation quickly start to come unstuck.