In July, researchers at the University of Birmingham released a new report analysing exploitation experienced by migrant workers in the UK’s food delivery sector.

The report, “Irregularised migrant workers in the UK food delivery sector”, analyses the experiences of migrants in the sector, including undocumented workers, drawing on interviews with twelve migrant workers from Brazil, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Italy, Eritrea and France, alongside other stakeholders and ethnographic observations.

The report argues that food delivery work is “increasingly shaped by algorithmic control, economic insecurity, and a shifting legal landscape”, and migrants use informal strategies to navigate this, including through account sharing and substitution. The report also argues the UK government’s new compliance requirements for gig platforms embed immigration control “directly into the digital infrastructure of platform labour”. This means platform algorithms are both “employers and border agents”, “insulat[ing]” companies from accountability.

The report highlights the changing legal and policy landscape in the UK, including court rulings involving both Uber and Deliveroo regarding the self-employed status of delivery workers. It also highlights the slow pace of change, describing how Just Eat hired delivery workers as employees, but returned to a gig model after the Deliveroo ruling (Just Eat commented on its decision to journalists at the time, saying it is “reorganising and simplifying its delivery operation”).

In interviews, workers describe a range of labour rights violations, including pain from riding in the cold, physical fatigue, safety risks from traffic accidents and robbery, 12-hour workdays, and “opaque and unaccountable” systems to monitor workers, among other abuses.

The report argues platform companies’ new identity checks will likely create “new forms of vulnerabilities” for migrant workers, including restructuring account-borrowing systems leading to increased fees and new forms of abuse.