A step up? Why taxi platform drivers in Oslo,Norway started to drive

Abstract

Working conditions on digital platforms are generally found to be precarious. This article explores why drivers working for taxi platforms in Oslo, Norway nonetheless take the “gig.” It draws on an extensive fieldwork in the industry and shows that the drivers see driving as not only one of very few available opportunities in the Norwegian labor market, but also as a step up. The drivers highlight the comfortable work environment, absence of direct supervision, formal flexibility, and potentially high earnings as factors making driving appear as a better job. Still, they are frustrated by the long hours they have to work to make a living, giving rise to an ambivalence toward the platforms. Contextualizing the drivers’ perception of the platforms in terms of their previous labor market experiences, the article argues that taking the “gig” can be seen as a response to and a strategy for navigating the Norwegian labor market aimed at changing their situation for the better, expressing their agency through—not against—the taxi platforms.

Introduction

“Why I drive? Because I like it,” the driver said. We were approaching the end of the interview, sitting in his Tesla at a charging station at the outskirts of Oslo city center. He had come to Norway from Eastern Europe almost 10 years ago, first working as cleaner, making more money than a manager did in his home country. Initially, he drove Uber Pop, but started to work for a limousine company finding customers through Uber Black after Uber Pop was found to be illegal in Norway and discontinued in 2017. When the Norwegian taxi market was deregulated in 2020, he bought a car, obtained a taxi license, and started to drive for the platforms. As this research demonstrates, this story is emblematic of a prevalent narrative among the taxi platform drivers in Oslo. Struggling to find stable employment and decent wages in the Norwegian labor market, they turn to the taxi market and taxi platforms and, as I found, generally consider this a “better” job than what they previously have experienced.

Given the focus on precarious working conditions in the research literature on gig and platform work, this finding appears puzzling. Platform-mediated gig work—such as driving for Uber, delivering food through Foodora or Wolt, or tagging images on Amazon Mechanical Turk—has been highlighted as a new form of precarious work (Woodcock and Graham, 2019), and recent analyses show that platform workers often have to work long hours to make a living wage (Piasna et al., 2022). Platform companies tend to classify workers as self-employed contractors and pay them on a piece-rate model, shifting risks and operational costs onto the workers, and use automated digital control mechanisms to guide the workers through the labor process (Altenried, 2022). The combination of the “gigified” employment model and “algorithmic management” has facilitated the platforms’ access to cheap and easily replaceable labor power, generally depending on marginalized and racialized segments of the labor force (Gebrial, 2024). According to van Doorn et al. (2023: 1102), however, the focus on precarious working conditions “risks sacrificing important questions about why particular groups of workers sign up with gig platforms in the first place.”

In this article, based on interviews with drivers and an autoethnographic fieldwork, I take this intervention as my starting point for an analysis exploring the following research question: What are the reasons the taxi platform drivers in Oslo give for why they drive for the platforms and how do they perceive the job? The article studies what emerged as a central narrative across the interviews: The drivers, most of whom having migrant backgrounds, see working for the taxi platforms as one of few opportunities in the Norwegian labor market, but also as an upgrade compared to previous labor market experiences. Drawing on concepts from the literature on platform-mediated gig work, the analysis investigates the conditions under which this perception has emerged and discusses what the drivers’ view of the “gig” as a step up can tell us about these forms of work.

The article contributes to the literature on platform-mediated gig work with an empirical exploration of why the taxi platform drivers in Oslo—despite long working hours and low and unpredictable earnings—see this as a “better” job. I find that the drivers highlight four key reasons for why they perceive driving as a step up: A more comfortable working environment, a lack of direct bosses, formal flexibility, and an idea that they potentially can make a lot of money driving for the platforms. This underlines the importance of understanding platform workers’ perception of the “gig” in terms of their previous labor market experiences. However, the drivers remain ambivalent and are simultaneously frustrated by long hours and low earnings. Nonetheless, they often adopt an “entrepreneurial” discourse and exhibit a savviness in their orientation toward the taxi platforms in which they take advantage of the opportunities the platforms provide trying to maximize earnings and highlight their independence and flexibility as a strategy for navigating the Norwegian labor market. In this sense, taking the “gig” can be seen a response to limited opportunities in the Norwegian labor market through which the drivers endure the insecurities associated with platform-mediated gig work, while obtaining a much-need source of income and a certain flexibility and autonomy.

The article proceeds as follows: I first describe the development and organization of taxi platforms in the Norwegian taxi industry. I then present the conceptual framework and specified research questions that have guided the analysis, drawn from recent contributions to the literature on platform-mediated gig work. The following section describes my methodology. The analysis section is divided into three parts. I first analyze the drivers’ previous labor market experiences, then detail the four key reasons why they perceive driving as a step up, and finally highlight the drivers’ frustrations with the platforms. The concluding discussion summarizes the findings and discusses the article's contribution to the literature on platform-mediated gig work.

Platform work in the Norwegian taxi industry

In the last decade, digital platforms mediating passenger transportation services have “disrupted” numerous taxi markets. These companies are often referred to as “ride-hailing” platforms and use the platform infrastructure to allocate requests from customers to affiliated drivers, usually classified as self-employed contractors, and paid per ride they complete. In this article, I use the term “taxi platforms” to describe these companies, to emphasize that their service, although organized through digital technologies, is essentially the same as traditional taxi companies and operators provide. Taxi platforms first entered the Norwegian market in November 2014, when Uber launched Uber Pop and Uber Black in Oslo. At that time, the industry was regulated with numerical restrictions on taxi licenses, and the taxi owners (the license holders) were obliged to be affiliated with a dispatching center. The taxi owners have traditionally been self-employed small business owners, and many owners employ additional drivers to drive certain shifts. These employed drivers are paid on commission and usually receive around 45% of the price customers pay. In 2022, they had a median monthly wage, before taxes, of NOK 35 740 (EUR 3148), for which they generally worked 60 to 70 h per week. While many taxi owners are organized in the Norwegian Taxi Owner Association, an employer's organization for taxi owners, very few employed drivers are unionized (Oppegaard et al., 2023).

Uber Pop allowed drivers to use their own personal cars to find customers through Uber's platform. Since these drivers did not have the required taxi licenses, many were convicted for providing illegal taxi services. In October 2017, Uber discontinued Uber Pop in Norway, but continued to operate Uber Black, a service organized through limousine companies who owned the cars and obtained licenses (Oppegaard, 2020). The discontinuation of Uber Pop, however, was the starting point of a process toward a deregulation of the Norwegian taxi market, aimed at facilitating platform-based business models and increasing competition (Oppegaard et al., 2023). In November 2020, numerical restrictions on licenses were removed and taxi owners no longer had to be affiliated with dispatching centers. Uber immediately launched new services in Oslo, followed by Bolt in January 2021 and Yango in July 2021. The platforms have since expanded to most major Norwegian cities (Valestrand and Oppegaard, 2022).

The three platforms operate an identical model in Norway. They allow taxi owners and drivers to register and find passengers through their mobile applications, using licensed cars equipped with taximeters and usually roof lights. This points toward a professionalization of platform-based passenger transport compared to other countries (see Maffie, 2023), as the drivers are licensed as regular taxi drivers. The platforms take a cut of the fare—a “service fee” ¹ —and the remaining sum is transferred to the license holders. ² Thus, the platforms have emerged within the existing work arrangements in the Norwegian taxi industry and created a new market segment for booked rides (Oppegaard, 2024). The platforms have recruited two kinds of taxi owners. First, so-called fleet owners, companies owning many cars and employing many drivers. Some fleet owners previously operated in the limousine market and scaled up when the licensing restrictions were repealed. Second, the platforms have also recruited individual taxi owners, some of whom remain affiliated with dispatching centers, while many now choose to operate as independent owners (“friåkare”), with or without employed drivers. Most owners and drivers working through the platforms are registered on multiple apps, but are also able find customers through traditional market segments, such as street hailing and at taxi ranks.

Theorizing platform-mediated gig work

This section develops the article's conceptual framework and specifies the questions that have guided the analysis, drawing on previous research on platform-mediated gig work. A key finding in this literature is that platform-mediated gig work is precarious work. Workers work long and unsocial hours, earn low and unpredictable incomes, lack social protections and benefits, are subject to algorithmic control, and endure isolated and often hazardous working conditions (Woodcock and Graham, 2019). Despite these characteristics, gig platforms have succeeded in attracting workers, raising the important question of why workers take the “gig” (van Doorn et al., 2023).

In exploring this question, recent contributions have promoted an expanded analytical scope. Early research on platform-mediated gig work, aimed at conceptualizing the specificities of these emerging forms of work, focused primarily on the gig platforms’ technological and organizational forms, and their transformations of labor processes (Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020; Woodcock and Graham, 2019). As gig platforms have gained prominence, the research literature has increasingly emphasized how platform-mediated gig work is enabled and shaped by broader institutional, social, and economic dynamics (Katta et al., 2024; van Doorn and Shapiro, 2023). A key theme in these contributions that is migration, and previous research has established that platform workers tend to be migrants who see working for platforms as one of few labor market opportunities (Gebrial, 2024; Lam and Triandafyllidou, 2024; van Doorn and Vijay, 2024). Some argue that the gig platforms are designed to exploit migrant workers’ vulnerabilities (Altenried, 2022), while others emphasize that platform work simultaneously offers these workers certain favorable conditions—beyond a much-needed income—such as convenient sign-up procedures and a formal flexibility these groups rarely are offered in other segments of the labor market (van Doorn et al., 2023). Platform-mediated gig work thereby illustrates a labor market dynamic predating the digital platforms, wherein workers with limited labor market opportunities are pushed into self-employment and “entrepreneurial” activities (Waldinger, 1986).

However, why workers take the “gig” remain undertheorized (van Doorn and Shapiro, 2023). Platform-mediated gig work is a heterogenous phenomenon, and platforms differ in terms of industry, pay, work arrangement, labor process, and control mechanisms (Schor et al., 2023). Platform workers and their orientation toward the jobs are also found to vary. Some see gig work as temporary, others have longer-term horizons, and platform work has been seen as “voluntary” in some cases and “involuntary” in others (Barratt et al., 2020). Dunn (2020) distinguishes between five groups of platform workers: “Searchers” come to platform work from un- or underemployment and depend on the platforms to make a living, “lifers” espouse the opportunities and flexible lifestyle the platforms offer, “short-timers” use platforms earn a supplementary income, “long-rangers” depend on their supplementary income from gig work, and “dabblers” highlight their noneconomic reasons for taking the “gig.” Schor et al. (2023), moreover, argue that workers are “differentially embedded” in broader economic relations, giving rise to heterogeneous orientations towards the job. Some workers, they find, “embrace” the risks associated with platform-mediated gig work, emphasizing their “entrepreneurialism.” Others either “accept” the risks or comply with the platforms’ practices and see the “gig” in transactional terms (“instrumental compliance”). Some workers, however, exhibit what Schor et al. (2023) term a “resigned submission,” highlighting their frustrations with the platforms but seeing few other alternatives, while the final group, “opposers,” openly criticize and contest the platforms.

Research on platform-mediated gig work has also found that platform workers’ orientations toward the job result in different expressions of worker agency. In some cases, workers resist, mobilize, and organize collectively for better pay and working conditions (Tassinari and Maccarone, 2020). There are, however, important obstacles to collective mobilization, such as fragmented and automized work arrangements, and the limited collective rights ensuing their classification as self-employed contractors, leading to more informally organized responses from platform workers (Wells et al., 2023). Others find that platform workers adopt an “entrepreneurial” orientation, funneling their agency toward individualized responses to the platforms’ practices (Purcell and Brook, 2022). This has been termed “entrepreneurial” agency and denotes efforts and strategies whereby workers aim to improve their conditions within the structures and opportunities offered by the platforms (Barratt et al., 2020). Similar to the risk-embracing orientation Schor et al. (2023) find among certain platform workers, this form of agency does not challenge the platforms’ practices but aligns with their business models. While the workers’ “entrepreneurialism” in practice tends to be limited by the platforms’ algorithmic control (Wells et al., 2023), it nonetheless serves as an important discursive context of the workers’ self-understanding (Purcell and Brook, 2022).

This brief review shows that gig platforms offer precarious working conditions (Piasna et al., 2022; Woodcock and Graham, 2019) and primarily attract workers from marginalized segments of the labor force, usually migrants (van Doorn et al., 2023). Understanding why workers take the “gig,” however, requires an analytical scope expanding beyond the labor process (Katta et al., 2024; van Doorn and Shapiro, 2023). Workers are, furthermore, found to express heterogenous orientations toward their job (Dunn, 2020; Schor et al., 2023) and respond to the platforms’ practices in multiple ways (Barratt et al., 2020; Purcell and Brook, 2022; Tassinari and Maccarone, 2020; Wells et al., 2023). This summary enables a specification of three questions that require further exploration and that have guided the empirical analysis. First, how is the workers’ perception of the job shaped by broader social and economic dynamics? Second, what characterizes their orientations toward the job? Third, how do drivers express their agency and respond to the conditions the taxi platforms provide? Exploring these questions in the platformized taxi industry in Oslo, this article contributes to the literature on platform-mediated gig work with an empirical exploration of why the drivers argue that driving appears as a step up.

Methods

This analysis draws on data from a larger study of the emergence of digital platforms in the Norwegian taxi industry. The aim of the research design was to analyze how taxi platforms have gained a foothold in Norway, how the drivers’ labor processes are organized, and how the drivers perceive and experience the “gig.” Taxi platform drivers, as platform workers more generally, can be difficult to reach for researchers (Wells et al., 2023), due to factors such as the isolated nature of the labor process, with few physical social gathering places; workers’ limited knowledge of the local language; and their dependence on working long hours, which makes it problematic for researchers to ask them to take time off or use their free time to participate in interviews (Spilda et al., 2022; van Doorn et al., 2023). Thus, a central methodological concern was to find ways to access the workers’ voices and perspective, to develop an understanding of how they view these jobs.

To this end, the project is based on different types of interviews with taxi platform drivers in Oslo and an autoethnography where I worked as a driver myself. From May to late September 2021, I drove part-time for the taxi platforms, employed by taxi owner and working dayshifts with one of his cars. I recorded spoken fieldnotes while driving and transcribed these after each shift. Since I worked alone and met no other drivers, I gained little insights into why drivers choose to work the platforms. As a supplement to the interviews, the autoethnography was nonetheless valuable, providing data on how the platform technology functions in practice and how the labor process is organized. This helped me contextualize what the drivers told me during the interviews and enabled me to ask more pertinent questions. Registering as a driver, furthermore, gave me access to the contracts and the platforms’ communication with their drivers, such as newsletters, mobile notifications, and text messages.

In this this article, I draw primarily on the data from the interviews with the drivers. I have conducted 69 interviews—21 interviews in 2018 (see Oppegaard, 2020) and 48 from November 2020 to November 2022. Sixty-five of the interviews were conducted in the cars with the drivers, during a ride I ordered as a passenger. These interviews can be termed “drive-along” interviews. I always emphasized the voluntary nature of participation and anonymity, paid for each ride, and gave the drivers the largest possible tip—NOK 50 (EUR 4,25)—and five-star ratings. The rides, and consequently the interviews, lasted between 15 and 25 min. I asked all the drivers how they came to drive for the platforms, but otherwise focused on specific themes during each interview, such as how they experience the rating system, what they think of the bonus systems and so on. The limited length of the drive-along interviews made it difficult to capture the drivers’ full biographies, inhibiting further analysis of individual-level features that might highlight and explain nuances in their perception of the “gig.” Doing the interviews from the backseat of the drivers’ cars, however, added an element of observation to this data collection strategy, enabling me to see, for example, how the drivers customized their cars, interacted with the mobile application, and ask questions based on events we experienced during our ride (see Dahl and Tjora, 2021). Most of these interviews were not recorded but documented through extensive fieldnotes written directly after each ride. I tried to memorize phrases the drivers used and present the material from these interviews as direct quotes, although what the drivers told me has been filtered through my recollection. The interviews were conducted in Norwegian and English, according to the drivers’ preferences.

The drive-along interviews made it possible to interview the drivers and gain their perspective on their job and working conditions, without requiring that they take time off work and lose potential income. Using the platform for recruiting interviewees, however, can be ethically problematic (Spilda et al., 2022). During these interviews, I formally occupied the role of a paying passenger, “rating” the drivers after the trip. While I always emphasized that participation was voluntary, the interaction was not initially fully transparent. The drivers are economically dependent on accepting requests and positive ratings from the customers, which might limit their genuine opportunities to decline to participate in my project. I carefully explained my research project to the drivers, but there is nonetheless a risk of drivers potentially agreeing to interviews they otherwise would not have attended because they did not want to cancel the ride and thereby forgo income and potentially be sanctioned by the platforms. Given the power asymmetries between me as a passenger-researcher and the drivers as well as the ethical challenges of this methodology, I was particularly attentive to the drivers’ initial reactions and responses to my questions and did not collect data from rides where I feared that the drivers might not fully understand the implications of participation. I also generally allowed the drivers to steer the interviews onto the topics they wanted to talk about and did not push them on themes they appeared reluctant to expand on. This potentially reduced the quality of the data I collected. For the drivers I interviewed during and after the period where I conducted my autoethnographic fieldwork, letting them know that I myself had done fieldwork working as a driver and sharing my own experiences with them, probably made it easier to build trust during the short interviews, and the fact that I myself had experienced the labor process potentially made them more willing to talk openly about potentially sensitive topics such as wages and working conditions. To protect their anonymity and ensure that my research does not cause the participants harm, I provide only the analytically necessary information about the drivers.

My dual role as a paying and rating passenger-researcher might also have affected what the drivers told me. There is a risk that, despite revealing myself as a researcher upon entering the car and emphasizing their anonymity, the drivers’ responses were skewed to paint a positive picture of driving for me as a client. During the interviews, however, the drivers were open to sharing their negative as well as the positive experiences with me. As we will see below, the generally prevalent narrative of driving as a “better” job was combined with stories of long hours, low earnings, and frustrations with the platforms. While the drive-along interviews gave me access to a restricted field, the approach allowed only for relatively short and focused interviews. I therefore conducted in-depth interviews with eight additional drivers in November 2022, recruited through Facebook groups for drivers in Oslo. Three were interviewed individually (two in their cars and one through a video-call), and five were interviewed together as a focus group. All received NOK 400 (EUR 35) as compensation. These interviews were recorded and transcribed, allowing for verbatim quotations, and covered the same themes as the short drive-along interviews. These in-depth interviews confirmed the findings from the short drive-along interviews, and the narrative of driving as a step up was as present in the in-depth interviews as in the drive-along interviews, indicating that recruitment methods did not have a significant effect on what the drivers told me. Nonetheless, the number of in-depth interviews is limited, and it is possible that content drivers self-selected for these interviews. As I met the same drivers three times during my fieldworks and interviewed five drivers together in the focus group, I have, in total, interviewed 70 individual drivers.

In coding the data from the interviews, I paid particular attention to themes such as the drivers’ labor market experiences and perception of the platforms. In the analysis, I found four core reasons why the drivers see working for the platforms as an “upgrade.” Since the drivers in Oslo are relatively homogenous, both in their demographic characteristics and perception of the “gig,” comparative research is required to understand both how prevalent the narrative of driving for the platforms as an “upgrade” is and how factors such as age, gender, education, tenure on the platform, migration status, and so on affect their orientations. This would also enable an identification of the specificities of the Norwegian case and of driving for taxi platforms compared to other types of platform-mediated gig work.

Why take the gig?

This section presents the analysis of why the taxi platform drivers I have interviewed started to drive. While some analyses emphasize the heterogeneity of platform workers’ motivations, and orientations (Dunn, 2020; Schor et al., 2023), I find a striking homogeneity among the taxi platform drivers in Oslo. Among them, there was a widely shared narrative of working for the taxi platforms as one of few labor market opportunities, but simultaneously a step up. The analysis is structured after the three questions specified in the theory section. It first contextualizes driving for the taxi platforms within the drivers’ previous labor market experiences. I then examine their perception of driving and present the four features of the “gig” the drivers highlight as reasons why they started to drive. Finally, I explore the drivers’ frustrations with the platforms and the ambivalence in their perception of the job.

Few other opportunities

The drivers in Oslo often told stories of having struggled to obtain well-paid and stable employment in the Norwegian labor market. Some highlighted their status as immigrants as an important factor: “For us foreigners, it is not easy to find a job,” one driver said. An immigrant from Southeast Asia, now in his 50 s, he had been working in the taxi industry for many years. He started to drive for a taxi owner after a period without work and obtained his own license a few years back. His trajectory is common among taxi drivers, in Norway as well as in other countries, and the industry has long “absorbed” migrants who struggle to find work (Mitra, 2003; Staalhane and Vassenden, 2022). Some of the drivers I met came from unemployment, others had previously worked in the service sector (food services and retail) or manufacturing and construction, while the majority came from jobs in logistics and transportation.

A young driver who came as a refugee from a Middle Eastern country a few years ago, told me he previously worked as a kindergarten teacher, a job he loved. However, going from one temporary contract to the next, he soon had to look elsewhere and became a security officer. During the pandemic, he lost this job and started to drive for a fleet owner. Another driver, a well-educated refugee in his 50 s, said he had struggled to obtain a permanent job in Norway and was only offered an unpaid internship. Having a family to provide for, he declined the offer, instead taking a position at a logistics company, later buying a car, and obtaining a taxi license, to combine the logistics job with taxi driving. These stories are representative of the general tendency among the drivers I have interviewed. The majority have immigrated to Norway, and except for two Uber Black drivers interviewed in 2018 and one part-time driver in 2022, all the drivers I met have ethnic minority background. I do not have exact information on country of origin for all, but based on what they told me, their names and appearance, I estimate that most drivers are of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian descent, while a handful had Eastern European or Southeast Asian origins. The drivers’ age ranged from early 20 s to 60 s, and all but one of the drivers were male. Although I do not have data on all drivers’ educational background, my sample mirrors the traditional Norwegian taxi industry in terms of gender and ethnic background (Staalhane and Vassenden, 2022).

In contrast to certain other segments of the platform workforce (see Dunn, 2020), the drivers I have interviewed generally work fulltime and are dependent on driving to make a living. The exceptions were a small minority who combined driving for an owner with other, usually low-paid jobs or studies; one part-time taxi owner; and four fleet owners who primarily operate their company, employing other drivers and driving only a few shifts themselves. Approximately one-third of the drivers I interviewed after the new regulations were implemented in late 2020 had already worked as ordinary taxi drivers for a long time. When the platforms entered the Oslo market, they could register on and find customers through the apps as well as in the traditional market segments. The majority, however, started to drive after numerical restrictions on taxi licenses were removed in November 2020. Some work for individual taxi owners, others work for fleet owners, while many have obtained their own license and become taxi owners, usually operating as “friåkare”—independent taxi owners. These drivers have invested a significant sum to be able to operate, such as buying cars, insurance, taximeter, and so on. Although usually prioritizing the platform segment of the market, they are also able to find customers at taxi ranks and through street hailing (Oppegaard, 2024).

A handful of the drivers had started to drive for Uber Pop when it launched in Oslo in 2014. “It was, you know, jackpot. I found my place in the society, in the labor market,” an Eastern European driver recalled. He described moving to Norway and entering the Norwegian labor market a decade ago as “more difficult than I had expected,” struggling to find work. “I spoke good English, some Norwegian, I was motivated to work, [… but] no. ‘Just give me whatever job, […] I will do anything.’ Nothing.” When he learned about Uber, he thought: “‘Oh fuck, perfect. This is what I need.’” Another driver, who said he did not know Uber Pop was illegal, told me he “fell in love with it.”

A “better” job

As the quotes above illustrate, the drivers in Oslo tend to not merely consider driving for the taxi platforms one of their very few labor market opportunities—they also see it as a “better” job. “I like to drive,” one driver told me. He had previously worked at a grocery store but was unable to get a pay rise and wanted to try something else. Now, he was employed by a fleet owner, spending his days in an exclusive and elegant car, driving passengers, and watching YouTube videos while waiting for requests. In the following, I explore four key reasons the drivers highlight for why they perceive driving as an upgrade.

“I earned a little less, but you wear a white shirt”

First, working for the taxi platforms entails a more comfortable working environment for many drivers. As we saw above, most came to the taxi platforms from other relatively precarious, low-paid, and often physically demanding jobs, and the drivers I interviewed tended to argue that driving for the taxi platforms provide a better working environment than other jobs available to them. One driver said: “It is an OK job, clean, warm—if you drive during winter, it is warm. Guys who have been working in construction are particularly happy—the nice and soft hands they had before come back [laughs].” Another driver, who worked in logistics and as food courier before he was employed by a fleet owner, recalled his experience of starting to drive for the taxi platforms: “And suddenly, from driving a van and wearing those yellow clothes that always are dirty, biking around in the afternoon, I entered the S-Class, Mercedes. Yes, I earned a little less, but you wear a white shirt.” This quote indicates that, despite earning a lower wage, he appreciated not only the increased comfort of driving for the taxi platforms, but also the status upgrade he perceived this job entailed.

Lack of bosses

Second, the drivers highlighted the lack of direct bosses as a factor making them prefer driving for the platforms to previous labor market experiences. Altenried (2022) remarks that one of the features making platform work attractive for migrant workers, is the solitary nature of the labor process, where the risk of having to handle unfriendly managers is lower than in the other jobs available to them. The drivers in Oslo, too, emphasized that they were attracted by the autonomy in the labor process taxi platforms provide. While at work, they argued, they can take breaks whenever they want, listen to the music they prefer, or talk to friends and family on the phone when they do not have passengers. “I like not having a boss or colleagues that complain about every little thing,” a driver told me. This perspective provides nuance to the narrative of “algorithmic management” as exerting a detailed control over the drivers’ labor processes (Woodcock and Graham, 2019). While the platforms determine the price of each ride and penalize drivers if they decline too many requests or receive poor ratings from customers, they do not appear as a “boss,” and the drivers I interviewed tended to argue that metrics such as average ratings do not have substantial consequences. “It doesn’t matter, it affects nothing, so I don’t care about it,” one driver said. Still, this attitude has to be seen in context of the drivers’ employment history, as many of them previously held jobs with limited autonomy.

The promise of flexibility

Third, the drivers argued that the formal flexibility of their work arrangements was a core reason why they chose these jobs. “It is freedom,” one driver said to describe his workday, echoing the platforms’ rhetoric. On the website where drivers can sign up, Uber writes: “You have the freedom to choose when to drive. […] That means that you always start and finish whenever you want—with Uber, you decide” (Uber, 2022, my translation). In my interviews, most drivers argued that the flexibility offered by the taxi platforms makes this job more attractive than the other jobs available for them. This finding is in line with research on taxi platform drivers in other contexts (Holtum et al., 2022). Some drivers have “complete” flexibility—they either own their own car or are the sole user of an owner's car, allowing them to freely determine their own working hours. Other drivers—such as myself when I did my autoethnographic fieldwork—have access to a car for certain hours certain days every week, within which they generally can work as much or as little as they want.

The drivers’ formal flexibility, however, is limited by the piece-rate model and the platforms’ “algorithmic management” (Oppegaard, 2024). Paid on a piece-rate model, they often have to work long days and unsocial hours to make a living, generally 10–12 hours, 6 to 7 days per week. ³ During a dayshift, drivers usually “drive in”—earnings before expenses—NOK 2000 to 3000 (EUR 170–255). The drivers who work for an owner usually receive around 45% of what they “drive in” before taxes. They often prefer to work night and weekend shifts when they tend to earn between two and five times as much. According to one of the fleet owners I interviewed, his company makes 70% of its income in the weekends. During these shifts, drivers often work 12 h. “You have to work,” a driver working for a fleet owner said. “It's a tough job,” another driver, a taxi owner of Middle Eastern descent, told me: “The days are long—you have to work 12 h, 13 h to earn money.” Thus, while they on paper can determine their own hours, the flexibility remains formal, as they in practice are dependent on working very long hours to make a living. This illustrates, as Occhiuto (2017) shows, how formally flexible work arrangements more generally can create economically precarious conditions while simultaneously generating investment in the structures that provide them with these opportunities, which in turn legitimizes them.

The drivers I interviewed were willing to work long hours, and their flexibility enables them to work more—thus earning more money—than if they had regular shifts of 8 hr, 5 days per week. The drivers can work as much as they want within the hours they have access to a car, and often sacrifice leisure to make more money by working longer. As one of the fleet owners said: “Compared to working at a grocery store or something like that, the hourly wage is very low. But you can work more hours, you have to work more hours.” While the hours behind the wheel are long and driving can be stressful, the drivers generally claimed that it did not bother them—“I’m a refugee, I have to work hard,” one driver argued.

The formal flexibility also allows the drivers to adjust their working time to care responsibilities (Wells et al., 2023). One driver told me he recently became a single parent and had to quit his previous job, which required him to work early mornings. As a driver, he argued, the flexibility enabled him to fulfil his parental duties. A second driver said: “If I have something to do at home, I stop earlier. If not, if the wife has cooked for the kids and everything is in order, I can work more. If I have to cook for them, I go home and cook.” In one of the in-depth interviews, a third drivers argued that he preferred driving to his previous job: “Yes, of course. The freedom, you know. When you want to work, you work; when you don’t want to, you don’t. When you want to earn extra money, you sit longer, you know. […] That is the beauty of this job, I decide when I work.” Beneath the narrative of flexibility, however, lies the necessity to earn enough. The same driver quoted above continued:

I like the freedom, even though it is not very free if you want to earn money. […] If you want money, you work hard, you work long, you sit in the car, get annoyed by the people, you get annoyed by not getting trips, you get annoyed because the trip is shit, like cheap or whatever. But if you are positive, you can always earn money […]. That's the beauty.

Thus, while the drivers valued the flexibility, they still acknowledged its limits: “It is flexible, that's why I like it. […] But if you are going to earn real money, you cannot be too flexible. […] You cannot take too much advantage of the flexibility,” another driver argued.

“There is money in taxis”

Fourth, there was a prevalent idea among the drivers that it is possible to earn a lot of money in the platformized taxi industry—“there is money in taxis,” as one said. The idea of potentially massive earnings has multiple sources. Some drivers highlighted particularly lucrative shifts, such as national holidays and very busy weekends: “If you don’t drive these shifts, it's over for you,” one driver argued. Another told me he worked a 24-h shift during the Constitution Day, earning NOK 23 000 (EUR 1960). “That was a good day,” he said, while a third driver recalled how he made almost NOK 30 000 (EUR 2557) the night Covid-19 restrictions were first lifted, and nightlife returned. According to one of the fleet owners, however, some of his drivers sometimes earn over NOK 40 000 (EUR 3400), but most usually earn less than NOK 25 000 (EUR 2130) per month. This confirms, as previous analyses have found, that taxi driving in Norway is among the lowest-paid occupations in the labor market. In 2022, as already noted, taxi drivers in Norway, including those working for taxi platforms, had a median monthly wage of NOK 35 740 (EUR 3148), while workers in comparable industries such as logistics, bus, tram, and truck drivers on average all earned over NOK 40 000 (EUR 3443) (Oppegaard et al., 2023: 48). It also shows, as we saw above, that some drivers might have experienced lower earnings when becoming drivers compared to their previous jobs.

Nonetheless, the taxi platforms emphasize the potential of massive earnings in their communication with drivers. Bolt, for example, sends out newsletters to the drivers, with updates, new features in the application, tips and tricks, and sometimes a list on how much the highest-earning drivers earned last month. The platforms also inform drivers on upcoming periods when demand is estimated to by high. Approaching Halloween 2021, Bolt wrote:

This weekend, it is going to be a scarily high number of people out who recently have received their pay checks, and it is smart to be out in the dark streets of Oslo to drive people who are going to Halloween parties. It is looking good for profits! Make sure to be online to fill up the wallet! (my translation)

This newsletter also contained emojis of money bills and bags full of cash. In addition, Bolt and Yango uses text messages and push notifications to incentivize drivers to log on. Since I was registered as a driver, I too received these messages. After not having been logged into the Bolt driver application for a while, Bolt messaged me: “Don’t wait any longer! Earn more! Go online now!” (my translation). Similarly, Yango often sent the following messages: “There are many who are looking for a Yango car! Log in to get an order NOW!” (my translation).

The idea of possibly making a lot of money is buttressed by the platforms’ bonus campaigns. The bonuses vary in structure, objective, and reward. Uber primarily provides a bonus to drivers who complete three rides without logging off during peak hours. Bolt uses bonuses more sporadically, but often with higher stakes. The platforms also lower the “service fee” when drivers complete a certain number of rides within a specific period. Yango made the bonus system key to its strategy when launching in Oslo: The platform has the lowest prices but attracts drivers with bonuses. According to the drivers, they primarily earn money through the bonus system when taking Yango customers. Initially, drivers were guaranteed a certain income based on how many trips they complete within 24 h, independently of how long each individual ride were—NOK 300 (EUR 25,5) for one ride, 650 for two, 1000 for three, 1500 for four, and so forth, up to NOK 12,000 (EUR 1022) for 20 rides, increasing the marginal value of each ride. Receiving 20 rides can be difficult, making some drivers frustrated: “They are tricking us. It is bait,” a driver said. Other argued, however, that they could make a lot of money exploiting the bonus systems: “If you are smart, you only drive campaigns. You take the campaign, log out, take the next campaign, log out, take the next campaign, log out. Then, you have done the job, you have made money,” one driver told me. As the market matured, Yango restructured its campaigns, offering a set sum for completing a certain number of rides during peak hours.

The drivers often log on to multiple apps at the same time to increase the likelihood of getting rides and decide which requests to accept based on the current campaigns and prices. When demand is high, some drivers try to maximize earnings by exploiting the platforms’ “surge pricing” systems, through which the fare increases in specific zones when demand is particularly high. One driver said: “I hunt for ‘surges.’ […] For example, on Saturday night, you see ‘surge’ all over the city. So, you sit there and ‘decline’ [requests without ‘surge’], ‘decline,’ ‘decline,’ ‘oh, two times the price, accept.’ So, we play the game.” Through the bonus systems, the platforms give drivers incentives to stay on the road and reinforce the narrative of potentially high earnings. “Playing the game,” trying to maximize earnings, allows the drivers to enact their “entrepreneurialism” (see Purcell and Brook, 2022). This orientation toward the “gig” also entails a distinct savviness among the drivers, wherein they highlight their own skills and individual ability to navigate the platforms and the market. Talking about how he declines less lucrative trips, one of them argued: “We are motherfuckers, we are a little selfish sometimes, you know. We try to be as efficient as possible and earn as much as we can, but that is at the expense of the customers.”

“It's not my dream job”

As we have seen, there were ambivalences in the taxi platform drivers’ perception of driving. While the general tendency among them was to perceive driving as a “better” job compared to previous labor market experiences, many were nonetheless frustrated. One driver said: “It is not a good job—sitting all day, eight hours, 10 hours, it can’t be good.” Another driver had started to drive after a period of unemployment, said: “Well, what can I say? It's not my dream job.” Many drivers were particularly annoyed by the low fares. Some trips, one driver argued, “don’t even cover fuel costs.” According to one of the fleet owners, the “prices have to be increased, that is the only way we will be able to operate long-term.” Another owner was particularly critical of the “service fees” the platforms charge: “They do nothing, they just sit in their offices—we are the ones who are driving.” The drivers were also frustrated by the number of cars that had entered the market after the numerical restrictions on taxi licenses were lifted. “There are too many cars and too few customers,” a taxi owner said. He argued that it was difficult to make enough money and was angry at the government for lifting license restrictions.

The drivers, furthermore, recognized the insecurities associated with driving for the platforms. “Yes, it is flexible, there are some money, it is OK—but there is no security,” one driver said. Some of them have tried to contact the platforms to voice their concerns, without this resulting in any changes, and the drivers generally did not see collective organizing as a solution. Many of the new taxi owners relying on the platforms perceived the Norwegian Taxi Owner Association as representing the “old guard” of the taxi industry—the traditional owners in the large dispatching centers—and not them. The Norwegian Taxi Owner Association has been a vocal critic of the platforms as well as the taxi market deregulation, and, according to some drivers I interviewed, used the media to besmirch the drivers working for the platforms, arguing that they are unqualified and do not pay taxes properly. The lack of collective organization can also be seen as an illustration of the drivers’ orientation toward the job, appreciating the flexibility the taxi platforms offer and valuing their independence. As one of the drivers argued: “I want to decide. [… Driving for the platforms] gave me an opportunity to—without proper Norwegian language skills—have my own company, work for myself, be my own boss, manage my accounts, and everything.” This quote can be seen as an example of an “entrepreneurial” agency (Barratt et al., 2020). It also illustrates the savviness many drivers exhibit in response to their limited opportunities in the Norwegian labor market, endeavoring to better their conditions by individually taking advantage of the structures the platforms provide, rather than collectively confronting the platforms’ practices. “I have some complaints to [the platforms], but you always have that in a lively relationship,” one driver said. He continued: “I complain to my kids and my wife, but overall, I love them. And I am grateful to, and I like these platforms. […] They could improve, but overall, I like them.”

Concluding discussion

This article has explored why taxi platform drivers in Oslo perceive working for the platforms as a step up. The literature on platform-mediated gig work emphasizes these as precarious jobs (Piasna et al., 2022; Woodcock and Graham, 2019), and following the intervention of van Doorn et al. (2023), this article has analyzed the reasons the taxi platform drivers in Oslo, Norway give for why they nonetheless started to drive and how they perceive the job. Drawing on a conceptual framework and questions highlighted by previous research on platform-mediated gig work, the analysis has investigated how factors beyond the labor process shape the drivers’ perception of driving, the characteristics of their orientation toward the “gig,” and the ways in which they respond to the conditions the platforms offer and express their agency. I show that while the drivers across the interviews described driving as an upgrade compared to previous labor market experiences, it appears as such under specific conditions: In line with previous research (Gebrial, 2024; Lam and Triandafyllidou, 2024), I find that most drivers have migrant backgrounds, struggle to find stable employment in the Norwegian labor market, and usually come to the platforms from unemployment or other precarious, low-paid, and often physically demanding jobs. In this context, the drivers emphasized the comparatively comfortable working conditions, a lack of direct bosses, their formal flexibility, and a belief that they can earn a lot of money—cultivated by the platforms’ communication and bonus systems—as key reasons for why driving is perceived as “better.” These aspects of the “gig” serve to legitimize the drivers’ flexible yet precarious work arrangements (Occhiuto, 2017).

Although the narrative of driving as a step up was reiterated across the interviews, it was not monolithic. The drivers simultaneously emphasized their frustrations with long hours, low pay, and the platforms’ high “service fees” and negligence of their concerns. Their orientation toward the job was thus marked by ambivalence. From their marginalized position in the Norwegian labor market, the drivers perceive working for the taxi platforms as at once “better” but nonetheless suboptimal—simultaneously one of few labor market opportunities, a step up compared to previous experiences, and a tough job that also provides them a highly valued flexibility and autonomy. This shows that while platform-mediated gig work offers something some workers under certain conditions do appreciate (van Doorn et al., 2023), the drivers still recognize the platforms’ practices and conditions as potentially exploitative.

In the case of taxi platforms in Oslo, these frustrations have primarily resulted in individualized responses among the drivers. Like many platform workers elsewhere (Barratt et al., 2020; Purcell and Brook, 2022), they often adopted an “entrepreneurial” discourse, highlighting themselves as “their own boss,” despite being highly dependent on the platforms. This rhetoric is not merely an internalization of the discourse propagated by the platforms. It emerges rather as what can be seen as a response to the social and economic conditions the drivers are subjected to, as ethnic minority workers who have experienced exclusion from the stability and protections that generally characterize employment relations in the Norwegian labor market (Valestrand and Oppegaard, 2022). There is, furthermore, a savviness to the drivers’ “entrepreneurial” agency (Barratt et al., 2020). They emphasized their own skills and take advantage of the platforms’ bonus systems and fluctuating market conditions, individually trying to maximize their earnings rather than mobilizing collectively to gain increased rates or economic security. The drivers in Oslo tend to be willing to take economic risks and value flexibility and freedom from bosses over economic stability, putting faith in their own ability to make money. The savviness the drivers exhibited, however, does not necessarily entails accepting the platforms’ practices. They often voiced criticism of the platforms, although they through their actions usually operate within the parameters of—and without challenging—the platforms’ business models. From their marginalized positions, taking the “gig” can, more broadly, therefore be seen as a strategy for navigating the Norwegian labor market aimed at changing their situation for the better through—not against—the platforms, accepting insecurity and long hours to obtain a job and a certain flexibility, in an effort to create a life in the Norwegian labor market.

Previous research has found that workers tend to become more critical of the platforms over time (Maffie, 2023; van Doorn and Vijay, 2024). Because my data is collected in the relatively early phase of the emergence of platforms in the Norwegian taxi market, there is a possibility that the drivers’ perception of the platforms change and that their frustrations develop into mobilization against the platforms in the future. There are recent indications that such a shift might be in motion. In late April 2024, Bolt and Uber announced that they were reducing the fares to attract more customers. In response, 40 to 50 drivers organized a protest in Oslo, describing working for the platforms as “modern slavery” and saying that they were going on strike and not driving for the platforms during the weekends (Avisa Oslo, 2024). This event shows that there also in this case are forms of “embryonic solidarity” among the workers (Tassinari and Maccarone, 2020): Despite their individualized work arrangements, appreciation of independence, and perception of the “gig” as a step up, the drivers can come together against the platforms and struggle for improved conditions.

Based on these findings, the article makes two contributions to the literature on platform-mediated gig work. First, it shows, as Katta et al. (2024) and van Doorn and Shapiro (2023) argue, that these forms of work have to be analyzed and understood in context of broader labor market dynamics. Previous research has highlighted the importance of migration as factor shaping platform-mediated gig work (van Doorn et al., 2023) and remarked that gig platforms are tailored specifically to take advantage of precarious migrant workers (Altenried, 2022). The case of taxi platform drivers in Oslo affirms the claim that platform-mediated gig work depends on already marginalized segments of the labor force and supplements these analyses by emphasizing how previous labor market experiences and other available opportunities affect platform workers’ perception of the “gig.” In addition to the significance of migrant labor for enabling these forms of work, the fact that the drivers I have interviewed see driving for the taxi platforms as a better job illustrate both the exclusion they experience in the Norwegian labor market and a labor market dynamic that antedate the emergence of digital platforms in which workers struggling to find stable employment are drawn to self-employment and “entrepreneurial” activities (Waldinger, 1986). This indicates that the dynamics my analysis highlight are not unique to working for taxi platforms but might characterize a number of jobs that while offering little stability and precarious condition, provide workers with a certain autonomy and flexibility.

Second, the article suggests that platform workers’ orientations might not necessarily be as clear-cut as previous research has indicated (see Dunn, 2020; Schor et al., 2023). In contrast to analyses that typologize platform workers’ heterogenous orientations, I find that the drivers are, on the one hand, unison in their perception of driving as a step up, reflecting the relative homogeneity of the taxi platform drivers in Oslo as a group. On the other hand, my analysis also shows that the drivers’ orientation toward the “gig” is marked by ambivalence. For the drivers I have interviewed, working for the taxi platforms cannot be classified as either “voluntary” or “involuntary” (see Barratt et al., 2020). They see it as a “better” job but remain critical toward the platforms’ practices, indicating an orientation that goes beyond and combines elements from previously proposed categorizations. The ambivalence is also illustrated by the savviness characterizing the drivers’ responses to the platforms’ practices. Through this form agency, the drivers take advantage of the opportunities the platforms offer and individually try to maximize their earnings. While frustrated by the long hours and low pay, they adopt an “entrepreneurial” discourse wherein driving for the platforms is seen as a strategy for navigating and making a living in the Norwegian labor market where they otherwise argue they have few opportunities.