Afterlives of adverse incorporation: at the limits of platform work with Kampala’s de-automated moto-taxis

Where do the limits of the platform economy lie? Though digital labour platforms are often framed in Global South contexts as powerful tools of economic inclusion and an innovative ‘fix’ for the problems of underdevelopment, in this paper I put forward a more critical perspective on their inclusive properties and potentials. Drawing on a case study of digital ride-hailing in the Ugandan motorcycle-taxi sector, I develop this perspective in three steps. First, I show that over time the terms of workers’ inclusion in the ride-hail platform economy have decayed into widespread conditions of adverse (digital) incorporation. Second, I highlight the multiple ways in which moto-taxi riders have gone on to contest this arrangement, emphasizing a core logic of digital refusal and de-automation that in many cases culminates in riders exiting back into a now-destabilized world of ‘analogue’ moto-taxi operation. And finally, I suggest that these particular ‘afterlives of adverse incorporation’ represent an under-appreciated yet powerful challenge from below to the apparent inevitabilities of digital transformation.