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Drawing on a case study of algorithmically controlled manual labour in German manufacturing and delivery logistics, this article develops the concept of cybernetic proletarianization. It does so by joining an empirical analysis of labour processes with theoretical class analysis. Thus, it reconstructs Marx’s understanding of technical proletarianization as a dialectic between expulsion and reintegration of living labour in production processes. In the cases researched here, a qualitative and quantitative expulsion of living labour could be observed in different forms: First, deskilled flexibilization via digital instructions on working steps; second, a cybernetic mode of work intensification that is based on a permanent digital evaluation of the labour process; third, data-based automation, which builds on the data collected from the labour processes. This expulsion is counterweighted by a process of reintegration of devaluated living labour due to new highly labour-intensive forms of production and distribution, which are enabled by algorithmic work control. However, these processes are highly conflictual, resulting in different ‘technopolitics from below’, in which workers influence or even disrupt the processes of cybernetic proletarianization.

This article analyses the interaction of the algorithmic workplace regime and the migration regime in manual work in platform logistics and manufacturing in Germany. Based on ethnographic case studies, the article reconstructs how companies integrate migrant workers by using systems of algorithmic work control. These simplify the labour process and direct workers without relying on a certain language. Algorithmic work control, however, does not realise its intended disciplining effects on its own but is dependent on external factors. A precarious residence status is such an external disciplining factor as it can create an implicit alliance of migrant workers with their employers in the hope for permanent residence. Nonetheless, the interaction of the two regimes also produced new forms of solidarity between the workers, which in some cases led to new forms of self-organisation. Thus, workplace regime and migration regime co-constitute each other.

This article develops a multi-level framework for the analysis of a bottom-up politics of technology at the workplace. It draws on a multi-case study on algorithmic management of manual labor in manufacturing and delivery platforms in Germany. In researching how workers influenced the use of algorithmic management systems, the concept of technopolitics is developed to refer to three different arenas of negotiation: (1) the arena of regulation, where institutional framings of technologies in production are negotiated, typically between state actors, employers’ associations, and unions. (2) The arena of implementation, where strategies of technology deployment are negotiated—in the German production model typically between management and works council. (3) The arena of appropriation, in which different organizational technocultures offer contesting schemes for the actual use of technology at work. Whereas most recent research on digitalization of work conceptualizes workers as mere objects of digitalization processes, this paper focuses on worker agency as a “technopolitics from below.” It thus demonstrates how workers influence the concrete outcome of digitalization projects.

Die plattformvermittelte Kurierarbeit ist ein Vorläufer und Testfeld für neue Formen der digitalen Arbeitskoordination und -kontrolle und damit auch für neue Formen des Arbeitskampfes. Wie der Beitrag zeigt, dienen die organisationalen und technischen Infrastrukturen dieser Plattformen sowohl zu Kontrollzwecken als auch als Mittel der widerständigen Organisierung der Kurier_innen. These des Artikels ist, dass Digitalisierung nicht allein zur Kontrolle und Atomisierung der Arbeitenden Anwendung findet, sondern von letzteren sowohl zur Schaffung von Solidaritätskulturen als auch zum aktiven Widerstand genutzt wird. Diese Argumentation gründet auf zwei mehrmonatigen ethnographischen Studien, 46 qualitativen Interviews mit verschiedenen Akteur_innen der digitalisierten Delivery-Branche und einer quantitativen Online-Befragung der Kurier_innen.