Precarity beyond the point of production: Platform labour,housing,and the crisis of social reproduction in Berlin and Barcelona

Abstract

This article investigates the “housing–labour nexus” by examining how migrant platform delivery workers in Berlin and Barcelona navigate overlapping urban and economic precarity. Drawing on ethnographic research, including 45 interviews and a “deep hanging out” approach, I argue that precarity is a deliberate instrument of governance rather than a mere system failure. Following Isabell Lorey, this condition is analysed as “governmental precarisation,” where failing Infrastructures of Social Reproduction (ISR), defined as a dual system of administrative registration and material housing, create a “threshold of insecurity.” By comparing bureaucratic registration requirements in both cities, the study conceptualises these infrastructural bottlenecks as administrative capture (Berlin) and spatio-temporal suspension (Barcelona). Crucially, the article introduces three distinct mechanisms triggered by these bottlenecks: the extraction of a precarity premium, algorithmic spatial indifference, and the disciplining force of the provider imperative. Ultimately, this nexus is not a passive background but an active vector in the crisis of social reproduction. It reveals how platforms and the state co-produce a landscape that funnels workers towards depletion and redomestication, ensuring that the “just-in-time” demands of platforms are sustained by the “not-yet” deferral of rights and the deliberate political production of insecurity.