regional research · 2025–2026
How is platform
work lived and
imagined in
Latin America?
What platform workers say about their work does not match the most widespread imaginaries — nor what the law regulates. This project investigated that gap.
voices from platform work
If I were my own boss, I'd take a time block; and if I didn't, there'd be no punishment. But there will be a punishment — so I already have a boss who has no face.
delivery worker · Chile
A new kind of work in the same
unequal labor markets
Platform-mediated work is expanding rapidly across Latin America — not in isolation, but shaped by the region's deep structural conditions: persistent inequality, widespread informality, and significant regulatory gaps.
Over the past decade, transport, delivery, and data-work platforms have taken root in cities across the region. For many workers, they have become an entry point into the labor market — as well as a fallback for those pushed out of formal employment by the crises and stagnation episodes that have defined much of the region's recent history.
Platforms often present themselves as an opportunity for autonomy and flexibility. Available evidence acknowledges those dimensions, but reveals a more complex reality: long hours, variable income, limited protection mechanisms, and algorithmic control systems that organize work with no recourse for workers to raise grievances.
The phenomenon is not uniform. In transport and delivery, young men predominate — with high participation of migrant workers — who work long hours in informal conditions with limited access to social protection. Women face additional barriers related to safety and time constraints.
In data work, profiles are more diverse: people with higher levels of education perform digital microtasks — such as data labeling or content moderation — with variable and unpredictable earnings. Although these activities are often associated with greater autonomy, access to tasks and pay depends on opaque systems with little stability.
Understanding these tensions — and generating evidence to address them — is essential to identifying what opportunities platform work opens up and what challenges it poses for the future of work in Latin America.
The promise of independence and flexibility clashes with exhausting hours and algorithmic control. The study reveals the gap between the imaginaries surrounding platform work and the concrete experiences of those who depend on these activities.
What today's labor statistics capture, what remains unrecorded, and what tools allow for a better understanding of the scale of this phenomenon across the region.
What regulatory models exist across Latin America, what courts are resolving, and what state capacities are needed for effective implementation.
Ask the project.
Explore the evidence.
Seven country reports, regulatory analysis, case law, and statistics. All in a single conversation.
The social imaginaries of platform work
Platform work is commonly associated with ideas like flexibility, autonomy, or entrepreneurship. These narratives helped establish the idea of a new way of working — more adaptable to the needs of those seeking income in shifting labor markets.
The seven country studies that make up this section explore how this work is actually experienced by those who do it. Drawing on 185 in-depth interviews with platform workers (delivery, transport, and data work), union representatives, and ecosystem actors, the documents analyze how daily work is organized, what strategies workers develop, and how they interpret the promises of autonomy and flexibility associated with this type of employment.
The project focuses on a dimension that is underexplored but central: the social imaginaries of platform work. That is, how people understand what they do, what meaning they attach to independence, how they assess their actual decision-making margins, and what role this work plays in their labor trajectories.
These perceptions are not a secondary concern. They shape how people self-identify in surveys and statistics, which demands they consider legitimate, and what kinds of regulation appear possible or desirable.
The interviews reveal a complex experience. Platform work can offer a relatively accessible way to generate income and some capacity to organize one's own time. But it also entails variable income, long hours, and dynamics of algorithmic control that influence many everyday decisions.
The studies also show how workers develop strategies to adapt to these conditions: working across multiple platforms, adjusting schedules according to available incentives, sharing information through informal networks, and, in some cases, participating in new forms of collective organization.
Imaginary 01
Flexibility
The ability to organize one's own time is valued, but often only allows for sufficient income at the cost of high availability and long working hours.
Imaginary 02
Autonomy
Although presented as self-employment, algorithms set prices, assign tasks, evaluate performance, and limit real decision-making margins.
Imaginary 03
Entrepreneurship
Workers absorb operating costs, idle time, and income uncertainty without clear protection mechanisms against changes in platform rules.
Imaginary 04
Transitional work
What often begins as a quick exit or supplementary income becomes the main source of work in the absence of other labor alternatives.
Imaginary 05
Neutral technology
Automated decisions about task assignment, reputation, or account suspensions are often opaque, hard to explain, and difficult to contest.
Voices from platform work
I don't know who my employer is.
Transport worker · Argentina
Download the country reports
Documents available in Spanish onlyThe work that surveys still can't see
If workers themselves aren't sure whether they're employees or independent contractors, surveys aren't either. And without reliable data, it's impossible to design policies that actually reach them.
Most countries in the region lack official statistics published on a regular basis about how many people work through platforms. Labor Force Surveys (LFS) were not designed with this kind of work in mind, and platform employment does not map onto their existing categories.
The problem has a subjective dimension: platform workers' own imaginaries directly influence how they answer survey questions. Someone who sees themselves as an "autonomous entrepreneur" answers differently from someone who feels like an employee without rights. That variation is not trivial — it produces systematic underreporting, inconsistent records, and policies designed on incomplete data.
The issue is less an absolute lack of data than the fact that the same labor experience can be recorded in very different ways. This makes it difficult to measure the phenomenon, compare it across countries, and design public policy responses adequate to how this work is actually structured.
Rather than creating costly new surveys, the project proposes repurposing occupation glosses (free-text job descriptions) already collected by existing LFS through supervised automatic classification.
A cost-effective solution that builds on statistics already available across all countries.
How is platform
work being
regulated?
The regulatory debate is progressing unevenly: some countries have already enacted legislation, others rely on what is being decided in the courts, and in all cases implementation faces technical and political obstacles that go well beyond the text of the law.
The regulatory context varies deeply between countries. But there is one common thread: no regulation, however well designed, works without the state capacity to enforce it — and that capacity remains limited across the region when it comes to auditing algorithmic systems.
Experience in other regions shows that the presumption of employment status is the most protective tool, but also the most politically costly — it was challenged by corporate lobbying in Spain; in California, it was overturned. The model proposed by this project combines an immediate baseline of rights with a long-term corrective mechanism.
A regional
team
Specialists and institutions from seven countries united by a shared agenda on the future of platform work in Latin America.
CIAP · FCE-UBA
Center for Public Administration Research
University of Toronto · Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
.
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
School of Communications and Journalism
Universidad del Rosario
School of Human Sciences · DISORLAB
TEDIC
Technology, Education, Development, Research and Communication
Platform Observatory–Peru
.
Universidad Católica del Uruguay
.