Local Faces of Global Employment Practices: Media Discourses on Uberization of Labor and Institutional Adaptation

Uberization has become a paradigmatic case of how platform-mediated work arrangements disrupt labour markets and existing institutional structures, yet we know little about the discursive processes through which such models are reworked within divergent capitalist systems. This article investigates how Uber’s employment model is received, contested and reshaped in the United Kingdom, Germany and Mexico. Linking translation theory and Varieties of Capitalism within a discursive legitimation perspective, we examine how global platform employment practices are received, contested, and evaluated across national institutional contexts. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal analysis of 3,771 newspaper articles (2012–2023) from the three countries, combining sentiment classification with thematic analysis. We identify discursive waves of (de)legitimation around Uber’s labour practices in distinct institutional constellations. The analysis reveals three trajectories: reactive accommodation under competitive and consumer pressures in the United Kingdom as a liberal market economy; proactive regulatory resistance rooted in labour institutions in Germany as a coordinated market economy; and delayed but intense contestation in Mexico as an emerging market economy characterized by hybrid, fragmented and highly informal arrangements. The study extends the discursive legitimation perspective by linking institutional theory and industrial relations theory to show how institutionally conditioned media discourses shape the (de)legitimation of global employment practices, while bringing emerging markets and informality more centrally into Varieties of Capitalism debates.