Lived Capitalisation

How Speculative Finance Shapes the Social and Financial Lives of 'Gig' Workers in Bengaluru, India

Bibliographic Data

ID2374877
AuthorsKaveri Medappa (0000-0002-4723-2664, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume39
Issue5
Pages1247-1268
Publication date2025-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWork Employment and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0950-0170 • E-ISSN: 1469-8722
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/09500170251343277
OpenAlexW4411506211
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited49

This article examines how speculative investments in platform businesses generate acute financial risks and the threat of downward social mobility for platform-based cab drivers and food delivery workers in Bengaluru, India. Informed by ethnographic research, this article departs from predominant understandings of platform workers' experiences at 'the point of production' and investigates 'gig' workers' social and financial lives as mediated by platform capital. The concept of 'lived capitalisation' demonstrates how debt-fuelled platform business models produce worker dependency on platforms, drive workers to make unsustainable financial and social investments and result in income declines for workers, thus adversely impacting the social reproduction of worker households. This concept foregrounds the concrete - and gendered - effects of financialised business models that deepen workers' dependence on debt, financial products and subjectivities to sustain everyday social reproduction. This article also advances understandings of 'capitalisation' and 'assetisation' by centring workers' experiences of these financial logics

Business · Capital (architecture · Debt · Economics · Geography · Reproduction · Social capital · Social reproduction · Social science · Sociology · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Sharing Economy and Platforms · Finance

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access