Scenes of life's work: Migrant platform workers’ struggles over social reproduction in the context of welfare state bordering in Finland

Platformised services allow affluent others to socially reproduce themselves while reinforcing the barriers to reproduction for migrant workers. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with male migrant food couriers attempting to make a living in Helsinki, the article examines how the social reproduction of migrant platform workers’ labour power is shaped in the interstices between food delivery platforms and bordering processes. Through the notion of life's work, the article analyses how the couriers construct their lives around gig work, highlighting their agency in handling their life, labour and legal status. The argument put forth is that migrant platform workers’ social reproduction is not merely barred but reshaped in the intersection between, on the one hand, being subjected to the labour platform and welfare state bordering and, on the other, the subjective efforts through which migrants manage their life-making practices, revealing a mutual but contentious interdependence between labour platforms and migrant workers. The article enhances current understanding of the structural factors impacting migrant workers beyond just the platform itself, around which struggles emerge and which enable the extractive operations of platform capital.