Toward a platform–labor–territory nexus: Platform-driven deterritorialization and reterritorialization processes in the Chilean Andes

Recent scholarship has been critiquing the urban bias in platform research, calling for greater attention to how rural specificities shape rural platformization. Addressing this gap, this article explores how particularities of a rural territory interact with dynamics of platform economies and shape platform labor. Based on a case study in a rural Andean village in southern Chile, DeLanda's assemblage theory is employed to explore the situated interplay between place-assemblages of a rural periphery and incoming platform assemblages. Alongside the labor realities of platform workers, the findings reveal how algorithms and hardware logistics deterritorialize established labor relations, introducing unregulated and hybrid modes of platform labor. Simultaneously, ecological constraints, place-based meanings of livelihoods, and practices of more-than-human conviviality reterritorialize platform labor to fit into situated ecologies. The simultaneity of deterritorialization and reterritorialization processes outlines nonlinear and multifaceted rural platform trajectories, hinging on the diverse interactions of individual components of place and platform assemblages. These findings highlight how human and nonhuman rural components shape platform expansion, framing rural areas as more-than-human networked peripheries that actively navigate their place in the global platform economy. The article contributes a nuanced understanding of the expansion of platform economies as an interactive rather than solely extractive process.