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Exploitation

“The gig is up”: Participatory Research with Couriers in the UK App-Based Delivery Sector

November 2021

This is the final in a series of three working papers exploring the experiences and drivers of labour abuse and exploitation in three understudied low-paid sectors of the economy: cleaning, hospitality and the app-based delivery sector. This latest research focuses on the experiences of app-based couriers in the food and goods delivery sector in the UK, investigating what issues couriers are facing at work, what change they would like to see, and the factors which may create risk of labour abuse and exploitation in the platform economy. Like the other papers, it uses a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approach where workers from the sector are involved as paid peer researchers throughout, enabling those with lived experience to shape the research findings and recommendations.