How is platform subordination being reconfigured? Algorithmic dependency among overnight delivery workers in the South Korean welfare state

초록

Platform work creates a fundamental paradox. Algorithmic management intensifies control, yet workers' subordination is increasingly invisible to legal and social security systems. This study operationalizes algorithmic dependency and asks how the subordination of platform delivery labour is being reconfigured. We examine whether organizational, economic, and algorithmic dependency are empirically distinct, how they interrelate, and what their configuration implies for employment-based social protection. We draw on the Korean Working Conditions Survey (KWCS, 2017-2023) and an original survey of 942 overnight delivery platform workers performing last-mile e-commerce delivery under heterogeneous employment statuses. The KWCS shows dependent self-employment is structurally embedded in Korea's labour market, with delivery workers exhibiting exceptionally high dependency (74.1%). Exploratory factor analysis indicates algorithmic and economic dependency load onto a single latent dimension, while organizational dependency remains distinct. We interpret this convergence as algorithmised economic dependency, a hybrid form in which algorithmic control and economic reliance jointly intensify and obscure subordination while evading employment-based protections. Inherited concepts of subordination, built around visible and direct command, cannot fully capture this reconfigured dependency. Because income security in welfare states like Korea presupposes employment relationships defined by traditional subordination, recognizing it is a precondition for extending social protection to platform workers.

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