ANYTIME ANYWHERE: A STUDY OF DELIVERY RIDERS IN THAILAND’S GIG ECONOMY

Abstract

In recent decades, technological advancements have helped to facilitate the rapid growth of the gig economy. This growth has been sustained by the increasing number of workers across the world employed to perform gig work, many drawn in by the low barriers to entry and promises of greater worker autonomy. As part of this global expansion, workers in the global South now have the option of becoming gig workers as well. There has been extensive research detailing the challenges and vulnerabilities faced by gig workers in developed economies such as the United States. However, few studies have focused on the impact of the gig economy on workers in the global South owing to the lack of available data and research. Another factor which further complicates how workers navigate the local labour market in the global South is the availability of informal work relative to more developed economies. As such, this thesis aims to expand on previous work by providing an ethnographic study of food delivery riders in Thailand to identify the impacts the gig economy has on Thai workers. By complementing my research with previous case studies from Indonesia and Vietnam (Ford and Honan, 2019, Buckley, 2020), this thesis aims to identify the wider implications of these changes in labour relations on Southeast Asia’s transition towards a more digitalised regional economy.