Prefigurative politics in the platform economy: online sex workers restaging collective mobilisation through informal communities of care

Abstract

As platform capitalist models of labour intensify, with jobs once done offline moving to online marketplaces, attention must be given to the political standing of platform workers and the constraints and possibilities of collective mobilisation. This study explores the everyday forms of resistance online sex workers undertake in private communication networks, finding that workers are strategically restaging where their collective mobilisation is occurring given the risks of public mobilisation. We discuss the value these communities have for workers and for broader understandings of prefigurative politics being undertaken within the platform economy of online sex work.