ILPC 2026

Why does precarity occur where and how it does? My project addresses this question by examining employment structures in a leading sector, ecommerce logistics. I locate the answer in the link between innovation and the work process, as mediated by market and institutional factors. I thus am testing my hypothesis through two comparisons, one at the macro level and the other at the micro. At the macro level, I am comparing the logic of capital intensification between production and distribution. Innovation in distribution, which does not transform products but simply circulates them, is narrower in scope than it is in production. Lower profit margins lead competitors to start out with massive expansion plans rather than innovating as they grow. This expansion manifests in the rapid buildup of distribution networks, where warehouses are the key node. But because profit maximization occurs largely outside warehouse innovation, competitors are hesitant to absorb the costs of inflexible employment. Thus, at the micro level, I am examining the effect of this logic on labor intensification within ecommerce warehouses. Here the comparison is between the distribution networks of Amazon’s two key markets, the United States and Europe. These cases differ in terms of not only institutional and legal frameworks but also organization among Amazon workers, which is absent in the United States while ranging in Europe from moderate in France and Poland to stronger in Germany. In holding the sector and company constant, this micro comparison thus couches varieties of precarity within the macro comparison. Ultimately through a triangulation of participant observations and interviews in multiple countries and a review of the industry literature, my research aims not only to test a particular claim about contemporary work but moreover to illustrate the benefit of examining it from a transnational perspective of capital accumulation, labor intensification and social organization.