Participation through crowdworking

Research area

New digital technologies are changing work processes, professions, and lifestyles. Recently, crowdworking has emerged as a new way of organizing digital labor markets.

Research groups and their questions

We are investigating this concept in a new project titled “Teilhabe durch Crowdworking: Eine Analyse der Gelingensbedingungen einer Innovation für Personengruppen mit erschwerter Teilhabe am Erwerbsleben” (Participation through crowdworking: an analysis of the conditions required to improve participation for groups who are disadvantaged in the labor market). The study explores the new opportunities that this type of digital work may offer. Existing studies have pointed out a range of risks inherent to this kind of employment. It tends to yield a very limited income, for instance, while lacking adequate labor standards, legal safeguards, and social security. Bearing such insights in mind, we focus on the potential of crowdworking to grant various groups an additional route to gainful work, provided that the necessary political and economic structures are in place.

In this context, we also explore to what extent the flexible and location-independent nature of crowdworking benefits people whose participation in the traditional labor market is limited or impossible. Specifically, we wish to determine to what extent crowdworking can facilitate the inclusion of people with disabilities or private care duties and people living in rural, structurally disadvantaged regions. If our research reveals increased opportunities for inclusion of other groups that are not currently the subject of our study, we will highlight those, too.

To measure and discuss the current quality and labor conditions of crowdworking, we apply widely accepted labor standards (such as the German Trade Union Confederation’s Good Work Index) to the types of labor market participation discussed here. We further investigate the social conditions required to facilitate successful participation and inclusion.

Our research focuses on the following questions: 

What opportunities for inclusion can crowdworking provide to groups whose participation in the labor market is limited?
What risks and new types of inequality might emerge?
Of what quality are the emerging types of employment?
Which specific conditions are required for the groups in question to improve their participation in the labor market through crowdworking?
What sociopolitical opportunities must be seized to implement these conditions?

Implementation

During the first stage of our research, we will conduct qualitative interviews with experts in the field. Afterwards, we will carry out qualitative interviews and a large-scale quantitative survey among crowdworkers.  

Research objectives

Our objective is to develop proposals for advancing crowdworking in a way that strengthens the inclusion of various social groups and produces beneficial working conditions. We will further develop measures to raise awareness of the need for inclusion of disadvantaged groups among various crowdworking platform operators and contracting firms. To this end, we will establish a network that will allow a wide range of stakeholders with a theoretical and practical background in the field—crowdworkers, platform operators, interest groups, and other researchers—to discuss the relevant questions.