In brief
- Study location: Brussels Capital Region
- Theme: Gender, risk and mobility
- Method: Qualitative interviews, participant observation, visual ethnography
- Expected contribution: Understanding how negative experiences shape couriers' route choices
The problem
Every day, food delivery couriers navigate traffic, harassment, crime risks, customer interactions, and algorithmic pressures while moving through the city. Yet little is known about how these experiences shape the routes they choose, the orders they accept, and their perceptions of urban space.
Negative encounters such as harassment, dangerous traffic situations, discrimination, or conflict with customers may shape how couriers navigate future deliveries. Workers may avoid particular streets, neighbourhoods, or delivery requests based on previous experiences. Yet we know little about these coping strategies or whether they differ across genders.
Understanding these behaviours is important because urban mobility is not experienced equally. Cities can reproduce existing social inequalities, and platform work may expose workers to different forms of risk depending on their social position.
Why gig delivery workers matter
The platform economy has positioned itself as a labour alternative for minorities (Gebral, 2022), migrants and the underemployed of the world’s urban centres. With a business model that does not recognize any labour obligations on the part of platform companies, platform work continues to grow and reinforce current socio-spatial inequalities.
What we know
- The platform industry is spatially ambiguous. The services it facilitates involve material transactions and spatial trajectories. Yet, these companies reduce all contact with their workers through mobile applications or by phone.
- The platform industry's reliance on algorithms to match clients to service providers has created an unprecedented level of control over the participants in the transactions it facilitates (Lupton, 2021).
- The platform industry's business model frames couriers as independent entrepreneurs. It provides workers with nothing more than piecemeal compensations. This excludes them from access to any information on how jobs are allocated and forcing them to provide the necessary assets and skills for each gig, including the potential costs associated with delays, repairs, and road hazards.
- Research indicates that women bear the sole responsibility for navigating contentious interactions and complex urban environments. This deepens existing disparities in their experience of the city (Benvegnu & Kampouri, 2021; Zhang, 2024) and generates new forms of inequality and social hierarchy (Hardaker, 2024).
What we do not know
Couriers have a strong presence on city streets and urban spaces. To fulfill their deliveries they use public roads, dedicated bike lanes, or city sidewalks and alleyways. Yet, due to time constraints specific to piecemeal compensation schemes, couriers have to take shortcuts through back alleys and side streets, often sharing the road with pedestrians and cars multiple times over the same night. Similarly, they congregate and use areas around busy restaurant districts as spaces from which to wait for incoming orders, often having to find alternatives to public washrooms and shelter when not allowed to use restaurant facilities.
- What are the risks involved in these spatial practices?
- How do couriers perceive and cope with these risks?
- How do their their coping strategies compare between genders?
The gap
So far, most of the attention has been given to the need for salary and labour relations with their employers. Yet, little is known about the strategies they use to cope with the risks involved in using public spaces and city streets, where they spend most of their time. We also have limited knowledge about the ways their work may be reinforcing existing gendered inequalities.
GIGRISK focuses on the these questions to present an ethnomethodological ethnographic study that focuses on the practical rationality underlying the interactions between human and technology. This project shifts attention to the relationship between workers, urban environments, and digital platforms. By examining how couriers adapt their routes and delivery decisions after negative experiences, the study seeks to understand how emotional strain influences everyday mobility.
Contributions
The findings will contribute to debates in:
• Urban Planning
• Sociology of Work
• Gender Studies
• Platform Economy Research
• Urban Safety and Mobility
What are the sources of funding?
GIGRISK has been entered into the 2026 competition of the IRIS-COFUND project, which is funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101217407.
References