MiDi Work: Migrant Digital Work
Migrant Digital work – MiDi Work – is a research project that aims to explore migrant labour within the gig economy. Focusing on low-wage services and sectors, the main aim of the project is to understand how migrants take up platform labour and how they incorporate it into their everyday working lives and migration trajectories. More specifically, MiDi Work investigates how digital labour platforms affect labour practices and incoming migrant trajectories, as well as how they condition the intimate sphere and daily lives of workers, fostering or dissuading collective action to demand better working conditions.
MiDi Work explores four sectors of employment: agricultural sector platforms and the work of migrant farmworkers in Sicily; food delivery platforms and the work of migrant riders and runners/walkers in Venice; domestic sector platforms and the work of migrant cleaners in Milan; handiwork platforms and the work of migrant taskers in Milan.
The project adopts an intersectional approach, in the attempt to explore the production of inequalities at the intersection of power relations based on sex, nationality, class, age, sexuality, religion, and migration trajectories.
Partnership: The project is coordinated by the University of Messina and composed of three other Research Units: University of Venice; University of Milan; University of Milan Bicocca.
Funding: It was funded from October 2023 to October 2025 by the Ministry of University and Research within the framework of Projects of major national interest (PRIN).
Research Team
- Department of Social and Political Sciences:
- Annalisa Murgia (coordinator)
- Alina Dambrosio Clementelli