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# Uninvited Protagonists: The Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers

Juana Torres Cierpe, Paola Tubaro

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## To cite this version:

Juana Torres Cierpe, Paola Tubaro. Uninvited Protagonists: The Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers. New Technology, Work and Employment, 2025, 40 (3), pp.623-634. 10.1111/ntwe.12340. hal-05041068v2

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

OPEN ACCESS

# Uninvited Protagonists: The Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers

Juana Torres Cierpe¹ ID | Paola Tubaro² ID

¹Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Inria, Paris, France | ²CREST, CNRS, ENSAE, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Paris, France

**Correspondence:** Juana Torres Cierpe (juana.torres-cierpe@inria.fr) | Paola Tubaro (paola.tubaro@ensae.fr)

**Received:** 20 February 2025 | **Revised:** 22 February 2025 | **Accepted:** 3 April 2025

**Funding:** We received funding by Mission pour les Initiatives Transverses et Interdisciplinaires of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (MITI-CNRS), by Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (MSH Paris-Saclay) under grant number 20-MA-02, and by Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (Inria), in 2020-22.

**Keywords:** data work | labour agency | Latin America | platform economy | resistance | social networks | Venezuela

## ABSTRACT

Data workers use digital platforms to perform on-demand online tasks for technology industries, in a competitive landscape that extends beyond national borders and drives down remunerations. Using a mixed-method approach that combines survey data and in-depth interviews, this article explores the emergence of labour agency among Spanish-speaking data workers in Latin America, with a focus on crisis-stricken Venezuela. Results show that data workers actively develop practices of resilience, reworking, and, to a lesser extent, resistance with support from different segments of their personal networks: strong local ties, mixed ties, and weak online ties. Their diversified networks comprise an informal, albeit largely digitised relational infrastructure that sustains their work and shapes collective action. These findings invite to rethink agency as embedded in workers' personal networks, shed light on the conditions for mobilisation on platforms, and contribute to the effort of breaking the invisibility of data workers especially in Global South countries.

## 1 | Introduction

Digital labour platforms use data and algorithms to match clients with workers, construed as independent contractors, for one-off 'gigs' without any income stability or social protection. These conditions are extreme in so-called 'data work' (also known as 'micro-work' or 'crowd-work'), characterised by utmost fragmentation and standardisation and typically paid by piecework, with remunerations that can be as low as a few cents. Data tasks encompass activities such as recording voice, transcribing audio files, labelling objects in images, filtering inappropriate content, and even simply 'liking' webpages. These tasks are crucial for preparing data for machine learning algorithms, verifying the outputs of 'smart' solutions, and sometimes correcting them in real-time (Tubaro et al. 2020).

Initially documented in the United States, particularly on the pioneering Amazon Mechanical Turk platform (Ross et al. 2010), data work has now evolved into a planetary market, involving workers in over 75 countries (Berg et al. 2018) and several dozen intermediaries (Kässi et al. 2021). Because data tasks can be performed remotely, platforms connect a labour demand predominantly based in richer countries with a rapidly growing labour supply in lower-income countries (ILO International Labor Organization 2021; Datta et al. 2023). This changing landscape reconfigures the labour inputs that platforms channel into the technology industry. Workers from lower-wage regions are more cost-effective but often lack familiarity with the culture, institutions, language, and context of the client companies they serve. Their presence also transforms the competitive conditions for workers worldwide, by expanding the labour pool and intensifying competition for data tasks.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2025 The Author(s). *New Technology, Work and Employment* published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
The case of Venezuelan workers and their recent heavy inflows on data-tasking platforms (Schmidt 2022) is exemplary of this shift in the contours of data work. Since the collapse of oil prices in 2014, Venezuela has faced a severe economic and political crisis, exacerbated by U.S. sanctions since 2019. The results are hyperinflation, shortages of even basic goods and services, staggering poverty rates (ENCOVI Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida 2024), and unprecedented emigration (Arroyo Laguna et al. 2022). With monthly salaries dropping to as low as US$3, people are increasingly seeking alternative earning opportunities on the internet (Johnston 2022). Although poorly paid, data tasks are priced in hard currency and, ironically, offer greater value compared to local jobs. Online work suits Venezuelans, many of whom are computer-literate and own equipment due to the digitalisation policies of the previous Chávez administration (Posada 2022). Still, their massive presence in the international data-tasking market is puzzling, given the obstacles that could deter them. Unlike other prominent players like India (Gray and Suri 2019), Venezuela is not an anglophone country and does not have a tradition of exporting computing services. More importantly, it suffers from weak infrastructure, including slow internet connection and frequent power outages, especially outside urban areas.

Venezuela magnifies patterns that would be harder to detect elsewhere, and is thus exemplary of a broader, albeit under-researched, social phenomenon. A growing literature emphasises how the platform system largely invisibilises data work, which some authors label ‘ghost work’ (Gray and Suri 2019). While the industry accepts to ‘lift the curtain’ in certain situations (Newlands 2021), sheer distance continues to conceal the work undertaken in more peripheral, lower-income countries. Against this background, Venezuela’s strong engagement in data work, despite unfavourable circumstances, is not a singular instance but offers a distinctive view of data workers as active agents who shape their participation in the system. This article examines how Venezuelan workers exercise agency to make their way into the planetary data-tasking market, and it claims that their presence is a supply rather than demand-driven phenomenon. Recognising that workers do not merely accept given conditions but reinterpret and transform them through their agency advances a line of research that seeks to interrupt invisibility (Raval 2021).

This analysis builds on Anwar and Graham's (2020) reformulation of Katz's (2004) notions of 'resilience', 'reworking', and 'resistance' in terms of 'hidden transcripts' of the online platform economy—that is, acts and practices through which remote workers manage constraints without directly confronting their physically distant employers. Among the online freelancers observed by Anwar and Graham (2020)—including writers, designers, computer technicians, and virtual assistants—these practices encompass negotiating hours and wages, withholding output from clients, and leaving negative feedback. They thus extend insights on labour agency to the realm of remote work, broadening research that had previously focused on conventional workplaces and, to a lesser extent, on location-based platform labour like urban transport (Parth et al. 2023). These findings do not directly extend to data tasks, though. Like freelancers, data workers operate remotely, but they lack the ability to negotiate task details or pricing, which are set entirely by clients. Workers can only accept or decline the tasks available at any given time. Furthermore, they remain anonymous

and substitutable (in this sense, invisibilised), making any oppositional act futile, as any unfinished tasks will simply be reassigned to others. This much stronger power asymmetry, forcefully stressed by Miceli and Posada (2022), hinders agency in ways unseen in other platform economy settings.

This article reveals how workers' capacity for action unfolds despite the constraining architecture of data-tasking platforms and the forces that keep them invisible. It frames resilience, reworking, and resistance as collective processes to be analysed through social networks, interpreted as patterns of relationships among people and groups that shape social structures and interdependencies. Posada (2022) indicates that Venezuelan data workers stay afloat through support from their local and online communities. The present study builds on this insight by decomposing the role of differing social ties—strong vis-à-vis weak, face-to-face vis-à-vis internet-based—in several dimensions of labour platform participation. It shows that Venezuelans discover and decide to engage in this activity through their strong ties with family, close friends, and neighbours. To collect and convert their online earnings into local currency, they rely on their broader social networks, which include relatives and friends living abroad and indirect relationships with intermediaries. For managing their day-to-day activities, Venezuelans expand their social networks through online services—especially Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram—connecting with a diverse, less-close, set of peers both within and outside the country.

This article makes a threefold contribution to the sociology of work and of workers' collective action, in today's productive worlds deeply transformed by technology. First, it deepens the understanding of labour agency on digital platforms by unpacking its relational dimension. Building on the observation that workers are often 'networked' (Wood et al. 2019), it advances the idea that different social ties affect the various stages of the data-tasking experience, sometimes with momentous consequences. Explicitly analysing key properties of networks such as strength of ties and technological affordances sheds new light on worker engagement and outcomes.

Additionally, this article foregrounds the specificity of data work, where extremely degraded working conditions and acute power differentials severely constrain agency compared to other forms of digital platform labour. If Venezuelans do develop creative strategies to cope with challenging circumstances, they face complexities and costs that deter stronger forms of labour organisation. Platform designs that prevent the formation of 'vertical' ties with clients relegate workers to 'horizontal' ties with peers. While these horizontal connections promote the emergence of resilience and reworking strategies, they are less likely to trigger full-fledged resistance.

Finally, the article highlights an under-studied geography (Venezuela in the context of Spanish-speaking Latin America) against a literature on digital platform labour that has mostly explored English-speaking and higher-income regions. The Venezuelan case enables comparisons with extant research and unveils previously under-studied aspects of platform labour – for example, the consequences of practising data work as a full-time activity, having limited command of clients' language (English), and facing tighter competition for fewer tasks. Focus on this country contributes to generating knowledge that
emerges from the local context and may illuminate broader
patterns, that are present but not sufficiently clear elsewhere.
The case of Venezuela highlights how even small acts of agency
matter in regions that are less economically advanced than, and
distant from, the core sites where contemporary technology
develops. Workers' methods, their ability to appropriate and
resize their activities, and at times even their capacity to by-
pass certain constraints, reveal them as active participants who
mould their roles within the global economy. Beyond its
intrinsic value, the study of Venezuela has heuristic value to
extend the analysis of data work in the global economy.

2 | Theory and Research Questions

## 2.1 | Toward a Broader Understanding of Worker Agency

Platforms' business models based on segmentation of tasks, atomisation of the workforce, and pervasive monitoring constitute formidable obstacles to labour organisation. Nonetheless, platform workers in the delivery and ride-hailing sectors have, in many cases, overcome these constraints and engaged in strikes and protests. Tassinari and Maccarrone (2020) reveal two critical enablers of these mobilisations: access to free spaces for interacting and the development of a shared identity through action. Depending on the institutional context, deliverers have been organized by established trade unions, grassroots collectives, or both (López et al. 2024). Unions have succeeded where they have articulated compelling narratives to prove their legitimacy (Doellgast and Wagner 2022).

The conditions that have helped delivery workers to surmount individualisation and develop consciousness are less common in platform data work (Chicchi and Marrone 2024). In addition to broad geographical dispersion, lack of a shared worker identity is a crucial gap. If platform-based delivery is unequivocally framed as real labour, data work is often portrayed as consumption or leisure, and the word ‘worker’ is carefully avoided, instead preferring terms like ‘Turkers’ (Amazon Mechanical Turk) or ‘Tolokers’ (Toloka). Unions’ early interest in platform data work has yielded rare initiatives—like the creation of online fora and other services for Mechanical Turk workers in the early 2010s (Hertwig et al. 2024), and, later, the launch of a ‘Crowdsourcing Code of Conduct’ with an Ombudsman Office in Germany. Within Venezuela, weakened worker organizations since Chávez’s times make their involvement in the online platform economy even less likely.

Against this background, it is useful to broaden the concept of
workers' agency beyond collective acts undertaken within an
institutionalised framework to embrace individual and informal
actions too.

## 2.2 | Resilience, Reworking, and Resistance as Socially Connected Practices

Anwar and Graham (2020) study worker agency in the rela-
tively similar case of platform-based remote freelancing, where
they believe that at least individual actions are possible. They

suggest ‘exploring how workers exert themselves in different
spaces through individual practices that are informal, un-
organised and subtle but which can nevertheless lead to positive
outcomes’ (p. 1274). They draw from an established tradition in
labour geography, considering that agency encompasses all
practices, whether solitary or shared, with which workers
improve or mitigate their circumstances (Carswell and De
Neve 2013, p. 63–64).

To operationalise this idea, Anwar and Graham (2020) trans-
pose to work and employment the triptych of resistance, re-
working, and resilience originally proposed by Katz (2004).
Resilience refers to the strategies of endurance, or even just
getting by, that people adopt to facilitate their day-to-day lives.
Resilience strategies ‘not only enable material and spiritual
survival, but also the recuperation of the dignity of small
transactions’ (Katz 2004, p. 246). This relatively narrow defini-
tion offers the benefit of dividing agency into different levels,
enabling comparison across different contexts. The next level is
reworking, or the restructuring of the circumstances in which
people live and the political possibilities that emerge from this
process. Acts of reworking ‘alter the conditions of people’s ex-
istence to enable more workable lives and create more viable
terrains of practice’ (Katz 2004, p. 247). They are driven by
explicit recognition of problematic conditions and offer prag-
matic responses, implying a higher level of awareness than acts
of resilience. Finally, resistance is a higher, typically collective
form of oppositional consciousness. Applying these ideas to
online platform freelancing, Anwar and Graham (2020) find
forms of individual-level resilience and reworking, with more
limited expressions of full-fledged resistance.

Data work platforms constitute a more challenging environ-
ment due to lack of (even online) interaction between workers
and clients, who sometimes ignore each other's identity. Task
fragmentation and tough competition exacerbate the in-
dividualised character of platform work, clouding the ability to
recognise co-workers and to interact with them. In Venezuela, a
failing institutional environment and a collapsing domestic
economy further constrain data workers. In these extreme
conditions, how do they exert labour agency?

To address this question, we move beyond the conventional
distinction between ‘individual’ resilience and reworking vis-à-
vis ‘collective’ resistance practices. In essence, all three notions
describe strategies through which workers respond to adversi-
ties, and therefore cannot neglect their relationships with
equally affected peers, with family and friends who offer sup-
port, with charities that advocate for their rights, with public
authorities that endeavour to control their reactions. Social ties
ultimately determine who is enabled to respond, and who is
not; whether any benefits and costs are shared, and with whom;
whether any solution will be conflictual or peaceful (Lazega
et al. 2022). Along these lines, even forms of resilience and
reworking that the literature on platform labour tends to
characterise as individual are unlikely to occur in isolation.
After all, extant research does note that platform workers often
rely on their local and online relationships with friends and
relatives to access more (and/or better) tasks, to share infor-
mation, or just to find companionship and emotional support,
notably in emerging and lower-income economies (Wood
et al. 2019; Anwar and Graham 2020; Posada 2022). So far, these informal social networks have been alluded to without unpacking their composition, structure, and linkages to the modes and outcomes of workers’ actions. What role do they play, and how do they facilitate (or hinder) action? In what follows, we bring social networks to centre stage, submitting that they are not accessory but constitute the very channel through which Venezuelan data workers cope with hardship. They form the core of an informal, yet highly digitised relational infrastructure that sustains economic life when its formal pillars shake. We thereby offer a reinterpretation of resilience, reworking, and resistance as a continuum of socially connected activities that frame multiple forms of action.

## 2.3 | The Strength of Weak (Online) and Strong (Face-to-Face) Ties

To break down the functions of social networks, it is useful to associate them with the different stages of data workers’ experience. They must first discover and access one or more platforms—a form of labour market search. A copious literature confirms the effects of social relationships on people’s capacity to land jobs, epitomised by the famous claim of Granovetter (1973) that weak ties matter more than strong ties. His argument posited an informational mechanism, whereby jobseekers’ weak connections are likely to move in social circles different from their own and will thus have access to novel, non-redundant information. Lin et al. (1981) highlighted that weak ties matter when they link persons of uneven wealth and prestige, helping low-status jobseekers to move up the employment ladder. Instead, strong ties are valuable when they enable influence over recruiters, a task that requires time and effort, so that weaker contacts are unlikely to engage in it (Godechot 2016). These ideas were developed in conventional labour markets and apply imperfectly to digital labour environments. Data-tasking platforms advertise themselves publicly on the internet, and new worker acceptance is unconditional or based on automated entry tests, with no recruiter to influence.

Nevertheless, uncertainty about the actual functioning of the platform and the quality of its services may subtly bring social relationships back in. For fear of scams, prospective workers may desire advice from a friendly source before joining. Beyond enthusiastic commercial communication (‘make money online without investment,’ ‘get paid to complete short and easy tasks’), they wish to know how much their peers really earn. They need practical help to fill registration forms in English, or other foreign languages like Russian. They want tips on how to address unrealistic platform demands, such as requests to provide proof of address when the country’s postal system no longer works. Put differently, gaps in the formal structure of the digital labour platform may trigger informal interactions to support the first steps of new and prospective workers, especially in geographically and culturally peripheral countries. These interactions link workers to one another, in contrast to the worker-recruiter ties emphasised in the job-search literature. Their emergence is a contemporary instance of how formalization tends to create its own informal networks, notably in Latin America (Lomnitz 1988).

Are these peer ties weak or strong? In informal transactions, help to access jobs comes from trusted relationships—where trust is ‘the basic, subtle, ineffable criterion that sets out the distinctions and boundaries between the “close friend,” the “friend,” and the “acquaintance”’ (Lomnitz and Sheinbaum 2004:6). The ties that matter in these settings are likely strong. Reciprocity exchanges favouring relatives over friends, and friends over strangers, governed the mechanisms of job allocation in the low-level bureaucracy of 1960s Chile (Lomnitz and Sheinbaum 2004). In China, Bian (1997) found the use of trust-based strong ties to get jobs as (unauthorized) favours from relevant authorities. In Nigeria, strong ties traditionally exert informal social control and guarantee both the protection of workers and labour discipline (Meagher 2013). We expect similar mechanisms to operate in Venezuela, with strong ties facilitating workers’ discovery of, and access to, data-tasking platforms.

Informal peer networks may subsist after new workers join a platform and start doing tasks. In conventional workplaces, stronger ties are more beneficial than weaker ties for obtaining professional support (McGuire and Bielby 2016), and there are no reasons to believe this does not occur on platforms. Because data work is mostly undertaken from home, blurring the boundaries between personal and professional environments, we expect these strong ties to remain local, mainly involving family, close friends, and neighbours. They may involve the same people who facilitated the first discovery of platforms; over time, the workers who were initially helped arguably become themselves helpers. According to Posada (2022), these ties informally ensure the social reproduction of Venezuelan data workers in response to a failing welfare state and to unsupportive platforms.

Day-to-day interactions may also give space to weaker ties. Local family and neighbours may be insufficient to solve specific problems, for example to receive payment for the work done. Unlike their peers in North America and Europe, Venezuelans cannot transfer their online earnings to their bank accounts owing to economic sanctions and strict exchange rate regulations. Getting paid is far from trivial and involves additional (financial) risks (Posada 2024) which can be mitigated through so-called ‘bridging’ ties to people with financial knowledge and resources. While strong ties can act as bridges (Bian 1997), weak ties are more often associated to this property because of their usually greater diversity (Granovetter 1973). Nonetheless, strength does not have to be a mono-dimensional concept, and bridging ties can be mixed: for example, strong in terms of emotional closeness, and weak in frequency of interaction or geographical proximity (Brashears and Quintane 2018). Thus, we expect people to avail themselves of bridging ties of mixed strength, or of a mix of weak and strong ties, for complex issues like payments.

Weak ties are especially present in social media and other internet services that workers use to communicate with one another. Social media help to resist the erosion of users' weakest social relationships, giving rise to diverse networks with many weak ties (Hampton et al. 2011), and channelling day-to-day support from both strong and weak ties (Krämer et al. 2021). This effect of digitisation may compound with a tendency to broaden people's networks beyond narrow circles of strong ties, resulting from market liberalisation and economic
growth (Meagher 2013). The resulting expectation is that both
strong and weak ties affect the routine activities of Venezuelan
data workers, and that the most relevant weak ties are formed
or maintained online.

3 | Methods and Data

To advance these arguments, this article uses data from a
mixed-method study that aimed to portray data workers in
Spanish-speaking countries. This includes online question-
naires (n = 2118) and follow-up semi-structured interviews
(n = 58) fielded as paid tasks on two popular international
platforms, Microworkers (2020-21) and Clickworker (2022).
This strategy addressed the lack of a well-defined population of
data workers, hardly identifiable as such in general-population
surveys. The quantitative-qualitative mix offers complementary
information that mitigates the lack of rigorous measures of
sampling accuracy and representativeness, which are endemic
in digital environments. Besides, recruitment through platforms
reaches a diverse array of workers. The study was offered in
parallel to residents of Spain and all Spanish-speaking Latin
American countries.

The questionnaire lasted about 25 min on average and included
several sub-sections covering socio-demographic information,
practices of platform work, social relationships, education and
skills, professional experience, and family situation. The inter-
views were designed to explore the interpretations that workers
gave to their questionnaire responses and to explore them in
greater depth. They lasted about 45 min on average and were
conducted via web conferencing, usually by two interviewers.
Interviews were recorded, accompanied by field notes, and,
with the exception of a few that had sound quality issues,
transcribed by one of the authors of the present article.

Scarce prior knowledge about data work in the Spanish-
speaking world at the time of the fieldwork, and the apparently
exceptional characteristics of the target country, encouraged use
of an inductive approach. The present study thus started from
an analysis of the interviews using grounded theory. Open
categories were created from the transcripts and refined by
identifying significant units until no new categories emerged
(saturation). This allowed defining the final categories and es-
tablishing relationships between them through axial coding
(Payne 2007). In addition to this categorical analysis, memos-
writings allowed to gather thoughts, hypotheses, and new in-
sights from the authors' reflections (Tweed and Charmaz 2011).
The qualitative analysis software ATLAS.ti, easily amenable to
grounded theory methods, supported this study. The theme of
agency emerged in this phase.

Afterward, a return to the questionnaire was needed to assess
the extent to which the patterns observed in interviews were
common to the full sample. It helped to corroborate initial
intuitions about the various forms of agency displayed by
Venezuelan workers, and to confirm the possibility of inter-
preting them through Katz's (2004) definitions. Questionnaire
data also allowed connecting these categories to variables
describing respondents' social relationships. A back-and-forth
movement between the questionnaire and the interviews

gradually led to the emergence of a linkage between types of
social ties and forms of agency, driving progressive refinement
of the analysis.

Along these lines, the results presented here intermingle
quantitative variables and qualitative codes, presenting and
discussing them on a theme-by-theme basis. Wherever possible,
the remainder of this article uses questionnaires to establish
results on a statistical basis and interviews to characterise them
with more concrete, lively, and personal descriptions. However,
topics such as participation in the informal economy, criticisms
toward platforms or clients, and transgression of rules could
have generated discomfort if included in an online question-
naire that required written (albeit deidentified) answers. The
risk was exacerbated as the questionnaire was self-
administered, without an investigator to guide and reassure
participants. The interview encounter, where every effort was
made to build trust, was a more suitable setting for such
questions. Taking advantage of the flexibility of mixed-method
designs, the analysis of these dimensions gives more weight to
the qualitative materials.

Questionnaire data are presented comparatively, examining
Venezuela against its Latin American neighbours and Spain.
The comparison with Latin America builds on geographical,
historical, and political-economic proximity to expose the spe-
cific characteristics of Venezuelan data work against regional
trends. Comparison with Spain offers an alternative bench-
mark, given its distinct context despite a shared language and
historical linkages. Research on data work started in richer
countries in North America and Europe, to which Spain
belongs. The general validity of this body of knowledge can be
tested against Latin American settings in general, and Vene-
zuela in particular. Overall, this multifaceted comparison across
similar and dissimilar countries highlights the role of contextual
factors and broadens the scope of analysis for more robust
results.

Table 1 outlines basic socio-demographic characteristics of the three sub-populations studied. The groups are similar and align with data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO International Labor Organization 2021). About one-third are women, two-thirds hold higher education degrees, and most are under 34 years old. However, the role of data work in people's lives varies. Spain confirms common narratives of data work as an option for extra income (e.g., Margaryan et al. 2021, p. 29), while a higher proportion of Latin Americans, especially Venezuelans, report financial need, rely on platform data work as their main income, and connect more frequently to platforms to search for tasks. If Europe differs from Latin America, Venezuela stands out due to its more difficult economic and political situation.

The sub-sample that accepted to do an in-depth interview in
addition to the questionnaire shares very similar characteristics
with the broader group in terms of age, education, employment
status, and family situation. However, it includes fewer women
(one out of four) and more workers who struggle to cover
expenses (two out of five), see data tasks as their main source of
income (three out of five), and connect to platforms several times
a day (three out of four). Venezuelan workers overwhelmingly
<table><caption>TABLE 1 | Socio-demographic characteristics of study respondents.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>Spain</th><th>Latin America<br>(excl. Venezuela)</th><th>Venezuela</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Is a woman (%)</td><td></td><td>42</td><td>36</td><td>36</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">Is aged (%)</td><td>18–24</td><td>23</td><td>37</td><td>36</td></tr><tr><td>25–34</td><td>32</td><td>38</td><td>32</td></tr><tr><td>35–44</td><td>26</td><td>17</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>45+</td><td>19</td><td>8</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Has another job outside data work (%)</td><td></td><td>48</td><td>49</td><td>45</td></tr><tr><td>Has a higher education degree (%)</td><td></td><td>64</td><td>64</td><td>63</td></tr><tr><td>Is a student (%)</td><td></td><td>21</td><td>30</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>Has one or more children (%)</td><td></td><td>32</td><td>31</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">In previous year (%)</td><td>saved money</td><td>42</td><td>30</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>just covered costs</td><td>31</td><td>37</td><td>36</td></tr><tr><td>spent savings or borrowed money</td><td>27</td><td>33</td><td>54</td></tr><tr><td>Relies mainly on data work for income (%)</td><td></td><td>22</td><td>35</td><td>76</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">Connects to data work platforms (%)</td><td>A few times a day</td><td>39</td><td>50</td><td>75</td></tr><tr><td>Once a day</td><td>30</td><td>26</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>A few times a week</td><td>17</td><td>17</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>Once a week or less</td><td>14</td><td>7</td><td>3</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: Results are presented as column percentages and distinguish Venezuela (n = 214), Latin America excluding Venezuela (n = 1461), and Spain (n = 443). Interpretation: 36% of Venezuelan-based respondents are women. Source: authors' elaboration.

share these characteristics and are indeed over-represented among interviewees. 22 interviewees live in Venezuela, against 10 in Colombia, 5 each in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, and Spain, and 6 more in other countries. These numbers result from the rapidity with which workers accepted the invitation to the interview, which was open to all questionnaire respondents. Thus, the over-representation of Venezuelan workers is in itself a signal of their motivation and engagement.

Another signal is the strong participation of the Venezuelan diaspora to the study (89 questionnaires, 4 interviews). They constitute over two thirds of the foreign-born respondents in the Latin American sample. Research on location-based platforms, notably in the food delivery sector, already noted the strong presence of Venezuelan migrants in the region (ILO International Labor Organization 2021). That they are also numerous in remote data work suggests that their move to a neighbouring country fails to significantly change the opportunities open to them.

# 4 | Results

## 4.1 | Platform Discovery as a Resilience Strategy Supported by Strong Ties

Workers' experience starts when they discover data tasking and find one or more suitable platforms to use. How does this process unfold in practice? Questionnaire respondents were asked how they learned about the digital labour platform they

were using (respectively, Microworkers or Clickworker), and could choose one among multiple options. The top panel (n. 1) of Table 2 presents their answers, comparing Venezuela to the rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America and to Spain.

The rows and columns of Panel 1 are statistically significantly associated according to a Pearson chi-square test. The standardised test residuals indicate that the cells contributing most to the total chi-square score are in the Venezuela column, notably with a strong positive association with the 'Personal network' row, and rather negative associations with the rows 'Social media, online fora,' 'Online ads' and to a lesser extent 'Internet search.' Thus, compared to other respondents, Venezuelan have more often discovered their data-tasking platform through their local, personal relationships rather than by navigating the web. Are these relationships weak or strong? When asked about the composition of their personal network, Venezuelan respondents mostly mention strong ties: 'my spouse or partner' (7%), 'a member of my family' (13%), 'a friend or close acquaintance' (77%), while only 3% speak of 'a current or former colleague,' arguably a weaker relationship. The same pattern is observed among the 89 Venezuelan who migrated abroad, although small numbers do not allow proper statistical testing. The interviews illustrate the concrete circumstances under which encounters with strong local contacts open the way to online data work. For instance, María (18–24 years old), a young woman from Caracas, shared: 'The year before I worked in a clothing store where I met a friend of mine. One day, talking to him, he told me “I work on the Internet” (...) And he recommended this platform to me.'
<table><caption>**TABLE 2** | Answers to questions about data work practices and relationships.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th></th><th>Spain</th><th>Latin America<br>(excl. VE)</th><th>Venezuela</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">1</td><td rowspan="5">Platform discovery</td><td>Internet search</td><td>50</td><td>38</td><td>35</td></tr><tr><td>Social media, online fora</td><td>14</td><td>17</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Online ads</td><td>6</td><td>16</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Other online labour<br>platform</td><td>9</td><td>11</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Personal network</td><td>21</td><td>18</td><td>41</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Pearson chi-square test: p &lt; 2.2e-16</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="4">2</td><td rowspan="4">Other data workers in household</td><td>No one</td><td>83</td><td>85</td><td>69</td></tr><tr><td>1 person</td><td>8</td><td>7</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>2 people</td><td>7</td><td>6</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>3 or more people</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Pearson chi-square test: p = 5.104e-07</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="5">3</td><td rowspan="5">Knowing other data workers (outside<br>household)</td><td>No one</td><td>71</td><td>71</td><td>32</td></tr><tr><td>1 person</td><td>15</td><td>16</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>2 people</td><td>9</td><td>7</td><td>18</td></tr><tr><td>3 people</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>4 or more people</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Pearson chi-square test: p &lt; 2.2e-16</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">4</td><td rowspan="2">Receiving help from others</td><td>Yes</td><td>8</td><td>10</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>No</td><td>92</td><td>90</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Pearson chi-square test: p = 2.842e-15</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">5</td><td rowspan="2">Participation in online worker groups</td><td>Yes</td><td>12</td><td>18</td><td>54</td></tr><tr><td>No</td><td>88</td><td>82</td><td>46</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Pearson chi-square test: p &lt; 2.2e-16</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">6</td><td rowspan="2">Leadership of online worker groups</td><td>Yes</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>No</td><td>98</td><td>97</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Pearson chi-square test: p = 0.0008</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: Specifically: 'How did you find out about the Clickworker [resp. Microworkers] website?' (panel 1); 'How many people in your household do paid work on these webpages?' (panel 2); 'In addition to the people living in your household, how many people around you (family member, spouse, partner, friend, colleague or ex-colleague, etc.) perform paid work on these webpages?' (panel 3); 'Do any people in your social circle or environment help you with paid tasks?' (panel 4); Do you use any online discussion or community space on the Internet to talk about data work?' (panel 5); and 'Have you yourself created or run a space or group for Internet workers?' (panel 6). Results are aggregated by country and presented as column percentages, distinguishing Venezuela (n = 214), Latin America excluding Venezuela (n = 1461) and Spain (n = 443). Interpretation: 13% of Venezuela-based respondents have one other person in their household who also does data tasks. Source: authors' elaboration.

Once they have discovered a platform and started working on it, Venezuelan respondents remain reliant on these local networks. Table 2 counts the number of data workers that they personally know, within their own households (Panel 2) and outside of it (Panel 3). Pearson chi-square tests (bottom of each panel) confirm statistically significant associations between contacts and countries, with the cells that contribute most to the total chi-square scores involving Venezuela. Fewer residents of this country are alone to practice data work in their households, and more of them have other household members who also do this than would be the case if the numbers in each cell of Panel 2 in Table 2 were proportionately the same in the three columns. Additionally, fewer Venezuelans know no other data workers (outside their home), and more of them know one or more other data workers, than would be the case if the

distributions were the same across columns. The opposite holds for Spaniards and other Latin Americans, who are more numerous not to know, and less numerous to know, any other data workers, compared with the hypothetical equal-distribution case.

Do these pools of local contacts offer support to data workers on a daily basis? A first answer to this question is the extent to which workers receive (regularly or occasionally) help from others to do data tasks (Panel 4 of Table 2). Once more, Venezuela stands out: more respondents from this country receive help from others to do online data tasks, and fewer of them fail to receive help, than would be the case if the proportions were the same across the three country groups. Again, Spaniards and other Latin Americans are in the opposite situation, being less numerous to receive help.
Who are the contacts that provide help when needed? Respondents overwhelmingly qualify their benefactors as strong, local ties: spouses or partners (23%), family members (36%), and friends (20%), against only 21% of weak ties (including not-so-close acquaintances, Internet contacts, paid and unpaid online advisors, and platform representatives). Taken together, these results depict data work as a highly socialized activity in Venezuela, where it is more often practised by two or more people in the same home, it is shared and talked about with friends and acquaintances outside the home, and it allows mutual help between these close contacts.

These results confirm the expected social dynamics in platform settings that blur the boundaries between personal and professional environments, with predominance of strong ties at all stages of the labour experience. However, why are these dynamics more apparent in Venezuela? The answer lies in the unfavourable economic and political circumstances that eat into the value of money—and therefore, of local/conventional jobs. In these conditions, international data-tasking platforms offer levers for resilience, despite low pay and precarious contractual terms. The narratives shared by interviewees reveal that, given the low minimum wage in Venezuela (less than US$ 4 at the time of the fieldwork), online platforms offer a far more appealing economic opportunity. As noted previously (bottom rows of Table 1), Venezuelans are more numerous to struggle to make ends meet, to rely on platform data work as their primary source of income, and to connect frequently to platforms.

Accessing international data-tasking platforms is therefore a resilience strategy in the sense defined by Katz (2004): it unlocks sources of income that enable workers to withstand their difficult circumstances in the short term, though without instigating any deeper changes. The network of strong local ties that workers harness to initiate and practise platform labour helps to cope with hardship and to develop a resilience strategy. In this way, data work through platforms has become commonplace among Venezuelans and exists in their daily conversations, so that support can be easily found within one's narrow circle of strong ties. More generally, this finding suggests that strong ties matter in labour markets in which access to work offers protection against broader adversity and therefore, has both personal and professional implications.

## 4.2 | Mixed Ties for the Quest for Dollars, Between Resilience and Reworking

Data workers' routines include searching for suitable tasks online, executing these tasks, and receiving payment, which may occur weekly or more frequently depending on the platforms. Payment in hard currency is by far the main factor that attracts workers to global platforms. Patricia (Puerto de la Cruz, 25-34 years old) explains that platform work has been a significant help in Venezuela because payments are received in US dollars, which is especially useful given the context of hyperinflation. In her words, 'there are countries where, of course, 20 dollars a week is not much, but here it has helped us a lot.'

Do workers' social networks contribute to ensuring access to these dollars, and if so, how? A first step toward answering this

question is to examine how workers receive money for the tasks performed. Questionnaire respondents could choose one or more options: bank transfer, online payment systems (such as PayPal), cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin), or other. Some of them had not received any payment yet, usually because they had just started working when they completed the survey. Interestingly, this situation concerns 4% of Spaniards and 5% of non-Venezuelan Latin Americans, but only one Venezuelan (0.005%). Of those who did withdraw some online earnings, only a small minority receive bank transfers, and the use of cryptocurrencies is rare, while almost all respondents utilise online payment systems. Differences across countries are small but statistically significant according to a two-proportions z-test with a threshold of 0.05: Venezuelans are less numerous than both Spaniards and other Latin Americans to receive bank transfers, slightly less numerous to obtain online payments, and more numerous to use cryptocurrencies. While Venezuelan residents are exposed to stronger constraints (difficulty to receive bank transfers from abroad), they explore alternative and still little-used solutions (cryptocurrencies).

Interviews help dig deeper into the next step—how to convert those dollars into *bolívares* in Venezuela's unfavourable economic environment. Participants talk about three methods. The first consists in exchanging dollars for *bolívares* through formal channels, but Venezuelans are reluctant to use them because the official rate is disadvantageous, and because the context of hyperinflation requires using the money very rapidly to avoid losses. A second method involves transferring dollars abroad, typically to other Latin American countries, through informal networks that often consist of ties that are mixed—emotionally strong (relatives and friends) but geographically distant. This solution helps Venezuelans keep their money in dollars and avoid depreciation. The third strategy involves exchanging money through informal exchange houses, often organised through self-managed groups on social media like Facebook and Instagram. These solutions, such as '*el dólar paralelo*' usually offer more favourable rates than the official ones. This network is built through word-of-mouth referrals and consists mostly of weak ties, as exchangers do not usually know each other at the beginning. Over time, these ties can evolve into trusted relationships that sustain the existence of the system even without any legal guarantees. Cristóbal (Barquisimeto, 18-24 years old), for example, explains that he knows specialist dollar buyers he has dealt with for a long time. In his own words, 'It's like I say, I can sell them a thousand dollars with my eyes closed, and I know they are not going to rip me off.'

The personal networks of Venezuelans—including, this time, further-away ties to relatives and friends who have emigrated, as well as weaker relationships with local intermediaries—progressively favour the emergence of trust and give concrete answers to workers’ problems. Payments occur through social ties that are neither very strong nor very weak, but rather in-between—or that involve differentially weak and strong dimensions. These ties link unofficial economic arrangements to the international platforms that serve the global technology industry, in a renewed instance of informality emerging from formality in Latin America. As a necessary complement to any data work effort that leverages international platforms, the resulting informal currency exchange system can be viewed as a
resilience strategy. At the same time, the processes that inter-
viewees reveal can also be seen as reworking in Katz's (2004)
typology. As discussed, reworking projects arise from the ex-
plicit recognition of problematic conditions and provide prag-
matic solutions by redirecting existing resources. Reworking
involves a deeper level of consciousness than resilience,
implying a stronger sense of the collective. In this sense, Ve-
nezuela's informal currency exchange system, driven by mixed
ties, can be situated halfway, in-between resilience and
reworking.

4.3 | Online Weak Ties and a Reworking Strategy Based on Generalized Exchange

Data work is performed online, and most questionnaire
respondents are experienced internet users. Digital tools equip
them to enlarge their personal networks beyond their imme-
diate vicinity and to access more numerous, diverse, and pos-
sibly distant peers. A larger network embeds more resources,
notably in terms of information and advice, but it also includes
more weak ties, which might be insufficient to unlock access to
such resources. To establish the effects of these ties, the first
step is to examine their prevalence. Panels 5 and 6 of Table 2
report answers to questions about participation and leading
roles in online fora, discussion groups, chats, and similar tools.

Pearson chi-square tests confirm statistically significant asso-
ciations between participation and leadership in online groups
and countries. Again, Venezuela stands out: more residents of
this country engage in these groups than would be the case if
the numbers in each cell were proportionately the same in all
three columns. Venezuelans' practice of platform labour is an-
chored not only in their local but also in their nonlocal (digitally
mediated) personal networks.

Among the reasons given for participating in such online
groups (multiple answers allowed), respondents mention
information-seeking: about good tasks (58%), new tasks (47%),
and bad tasks (25%). They also value contact with other data
workers (25%) and information-sharing (38%). Interestingly, a
higher proportion of Venezuelans choose the latter two options
(37% and 46%, respectively), which imply giving and receiving
at the same time, and therefore suggest a strong sense of col-
lective engagement and reciprocity. Additional insight comes
from interviews, particularly one conducted with a creator of a
large online group, which began in 2019 through Facebook and
counted about 3700 members at the time of the fieldwork. Its
three Venezuelan founders designed the group, published
guidelines, and developed YouTube tutorials on how to pass
platforms' entry tests and perform tasks. From this experience,
two subgroups of 150 and 50 members, respectively, emerged
through the instant messaging service Telegram to facilitate
direct contact between the most active users. According to Pa-
blo (18-24 years old, Caracas), the cofounder, the desire for
mutual support motivated the initiative, which evolved into a
tacit rule urging members to assist one another.

There is a form of indirect (or generalised) exchange, where
each actor benefits another and in turn receives benefits, but
not necessarily from the same counterpart. Indirect exchange,

which inherently involves more than two people, can generate
stronger bonds than pairwise, restricted exchange. In this way,
it offsets the weakness of internet ties and opens the way to
support even between strangers. In this perspective, online
groups can facilitate different stages of the platform labour ex-
perience, potentially reinforcing the effects of local, in-person
ties. At the search-for-tasks stage, groups allow workers to reap
available opportunities by sharing timely information on
available tasks. Also at the search stage, they offer protection
against risks that may lead members to waste time or lose
money; for example, they warn against clients who have a
history of rejecting (and therefore not paying) work already
done, sometimes without explaining their decision. Groups also
support the search for new platforms, alerting members about
possible scams.

Further, groups sustain the day-to-day activities of workers,
after they have discovered platforms and tasks. Members
intensely share information on tasks' contents, clients' ex-
pectations, and the platform's internal processes. By so doing,
they generate and share knowledge. In this sense, they offer a
form of training, of which workers bear the cost entirely—
unlike salaried jobs in which employers provide professional
development to workers. As Boris (Caracas, 24-35 years old)
recounts, 'Colleagues here can collaborate with each other
through social networks. There is always feedback. So, to help
each other to do the tasks we don't understand.'

Online groups facilitate socialisation, taken for granted in tradi-
tional workplaces where workers meet physically in the same
location, but absent in data-tasking platforms owing to frag-
mentation of tasks and individualisation of contracts. Users
meet peers through these groups and, in a platform world that
mostly uses English, speak Spanish with them. Though founded
and managed by residents of Venezuela, these groups are open
to the diaspora and through this channel, they reach other
Spanish-speaking data workers. Indeed, many non-Venezuelan
interviewees were aware of them, though not all used them
intensively. Of note, weak ties that started online sometimes
develop into (stronger) friendships. The experience of Gastón
(Valencia, 18-24 years old) illustrates this: 'I've really met a lot
of people since I've been working on the Internet. I've really met
a lot of good friends.'

Some interviewees even use family metaphors. The description
of the above-mentioned Facebook group says: 'more than a
community, we are a FAMILY' (capital letters in the original).
Alberto (San Antonio de Los Altos, 55-64 years), a retiree from
the national oil company, recalls that it was challenging for him
to start working online due to his limited computing literacy.
He received help from one creator of the group, whom he
considers a 'son.'

The 'strength of weak ties' formed through social media is sufficient to generate mutual support through generalised exchange despite divisive platform architectures. Compared to the local, face-to-face networks discussed above, these online ties perform complementary functions. The former support strategies to counter lack of opportunities in the domestic economy, while the latter oppose the shortcomings of digital platform organisation. Platforms do not guarantee proper reward of work
done; spontaneous groups protect members by sharing warnings. Platforms fail to ensure clarity of task instructions and take no action to upgrade workers' capacities; online groups generate and share knowledge. Platforms isolate workers; groups bring them together. Doing so, groups informally undertake functions that would be within the scope of an employer's formal obligations in conventional companies. This is a case of reworking in the sense of Katz (2004), based on efforts to create a better and more comfortable everyday life despite a difficult context. Venezuelan workers see platform data work as a route out of their country's gloomy economic outlook, and they rely on groups to lower the barriers that platforms erect. They adapt usage conditions to enhance their experience and potentially to improve their outcomes, without challenging platform rules.

## 4.4 | Hints of Resistance

Online connection is thought to be a precondition for worker organisation (Wood et al. 2023), and one may wonder whether these groups enable resistance, despite geographical spread and tight control from platforms. In this context, interviews reveal subtle forms of struggle that consist of violating platforms' rules, and that interviewees sometimes describe in the third person. For example, Daniela (Valencia, 35–44 years old) explains: 'It must really be said that they hand in false evidence, and I see this in the groups, because we communicate a lot in the groups and suddenly, to do it faster... they would hand in anything, at least according to what I see on Facebook.'

By sharing information, workers identify instances in which they can cheat to earn quick money. Like Daniela, some find such behaviour reprehensible—perhaps on moral grounds and perhaps also practically, out of fear that it may result in bad reputation for all compatriots. Such concerns are not unfounded: in interviews with workers from other countries, the perception that Venezuelans do not work well was surprisingly common. In all fairness, the evidence collected suggests that output quality gaps largely depend on outdated equipment, electricity failures, and low internet speed. But reputational damage is not easily amended and prompts penalties: at the time of the fieldwork, one international platform had imposed a quota that prevented Venezuelans from doing more than 10% of tasks from each available batch. A platform representative hinted at a quality problem as the reason for this allegedly temporary measure, together with concerns that a single country might monopolize all tasks. This quota was the object of much discontent among Venezuelans, some of whom attempted to elude it, in a clear form of resistance.

Carlos (San Cristóbal, age 35–44) shares an interesting example: 'A girl in our group who is system engineer wrote a computer program to redirect the page when we submit tasks... so it gets around the quota.' Carlos admitted that the programme functioned imperfectly (only on desktop, not on smartphone), but he thought it was a way to right a wrong—artificial scarcity of tasks for his country—and willingly took the risk of being sanctioned if discovered.

Overall, resistance mainly consists in occasional acts of minor cheating that involve a small proportion of workers. Its effects

are relatively limited and may even be counter-productive whenever resistance prompts retaliation from the platform and consequently more resistance, without durably improving working conditions or remunerations. It is not without resemblance to the small acts of fiddling and sabotage which help Uber drivers make a living but would otherwise qualify as organisational misbehaviour (Polkowska and Mika 2022). Like resilience and reworking, this limited resistance arises from data workers' social networks, mostly in those formed online through weak ties, which convey information—including on controversial topics—and facilitate debate, without necessarily eliminating discordant voices. However, these 'horizontal' networks of peer contacts fail to break the communicational bottlenecks that separate workers from clients and platform managers, keep their grievances unheard, and leave in place the resistance-retaliation-resistance vicious circle.

## 5 | Discussion and Conclusions

Through a relational approach to the resilience-reworking-resistance triptych, this article unveils workers' agency on international data-tasking platforms. In the extreme case of Venezuela, the discovery and practice of data work constitute resilience, responding to the adverse economic and political circumstances that eat into the value of domestic money and therefore, of local/conventional jobs. To obtain their earnings, workers engage in strategies that 'rework' national payment systems and bypass imposed financial restrictions. To make data-tasking their full-time job, they join online groups that protect, socialise, train, and boost performance. It is a form of reworking whereby workers take roles that would fall under the responsibility of the employer elsewhere. Venezuelans thus react not only to their struggling domestic economy, but also to platforms' pretension to pose as mere intermediaries unwilling to curate their workforce. They also engage in acts of resistance, albeit sporadic and small-scaled, against what they perceive as shortcomings or injustices in the functioning of platforms. All these are collective undertakings that require the cooperation of several people—strong family ties for platform discovery, mixed ties for payments, and weak (which sometimes evolve into strong) ties for online groups. Overall, no *Venezuelan could work alone*—and the networked interactions that sustain each of them against hardship have made them massively present, as 'uninvited protagonists,' in international platforms. In countries with a more benign macroeconomic backdrop, people discover platforms independently by navigating the web, receive payments easily through their bank accounts, and spend less time in online groups.

Not all social relationships are equal, and this study highlights the linkages between forms of agency and types of social ties involved, from the strong ties underpinning resilience to the mixed ties that support reworking, and the weak ties behind reworking and resistance. This analysis extends previous findings from the social network literature on the roles of weak/strong and online/face-to-face ties in labour markets, by uncovering their contribution to multiple aspects of worker agency. Even in highly 'commodified' (Wood et al. 2019) platform environments, networking is a precondition for agency as it provides access to otherwise scarce resources—from
information and advice to material and financial help—each of
which relies on specific subsets of a worker's social ties.

This analysis speaks to a line of research that endeavours to unpack mobilisation issues in platform data work. Studying the main Mechanical Turk online forum, Hertwig et al. (2024) note that elements of solidarity emerge but without more profound collective activities, which they attribute to diverging orientations of workers, unclear goals, lack of focus, and insufficient leadership. This study adds another powerful reason by exposing the role of weak ties in building up online group membership: indeed, distant acquaintances are insufficient to prompt people to action if their intrinsic motivations are low (Siegel 2009). The comparative approach adopted here also foregrounds the effects of the political-economic context, which drives more Venezuelans to leverage their social networks (in particular, to engage in online groups) than other Latin American nationalities. But precisely this context also explains why Venezuela-based workers prioritise the (short-run) need to counter local scarcity through online earnings, rather than any (longer-run) fight against unfavourable platform management. The target of their struggle (Wood et al. 2023) is domestic rather than international, and resilience primes over resistance, so that no major collective uprising can be expected.

These results open avenues for future research in connection with the flourishing literature on the informal economy in Latin America. Highlighting workers' remarkable ability to inge- niously adapt to adverse conditions for their own benefit con- nects to the concept of 'resourcefulness.' This refers to workers' self-management, consisting of daily arrangements that con- stitute strategies for survival, harnessing even ephemeral opportunities, and involving different networks of social rela- tions (Abílio 2021). It is 'an indispensable organisational talent for workers, enabling them to adapt their activities to an economy characterised by injustice, inequality, and uncertainty' (Casilli et al. 2023). This conceptualisation frames informality as a multifaceted and constantly evolving concept, closely linked to agency in its various forms, and embedded in workers' social relations both online and offline.

Another development links to the trope of invisible work in research on platforms. The case of Venezuela spotlights work- ers' active role and strategic capacity to disclose and conceal their small acts of resilience, reworking, and resistance. For example, they hide from the platform their attempts to bypass unfavourable rules like the quota, but they share tips widely and openly through online groups. The way they differentially bring (or not) visibility to their actions is in itself a manifesta- tion of their agency. To advance this line of inquiry in an industry that spans the planet and imposes unequal labour conditions, efforts to study the invisibility of data work should recognise heterogeneities and the specific challenges that arise in each site. It is therefore essential to frame technology-induced labour transformations in terms of globalisation dynamics, inter- national supply chains, and power relationships, in addition to algorithmic management and loss of labour rights.

This study has limitations. Beyond the two data-working plat-
forms that we investigate, there is a need for broader cross-
platform analyses. Additionally, workers' voices should be

complemented with the views of clients and platform managers. Nevertheless, there is value in extending research on agency to this fragmented, non-institutionalised form of labour, where networked workers develop creative relational strategies to cope with adversity.

Acknowledgements

The data used in this paper are from a larger study called *Le Travail de l'Intelligence Artificielle: éthique et gouvernance de l'automation* (TRIA). We thank all project members for their valuable inputs, and we are especially grateful to the fieldwork team with whom we collected the data. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the online ALAST Chile conference (July 2022), the AIGLe conference in Paris (October 2022) and the INDL-5 conference in Athens (November 2022). We thank discussants and participants for valuable feedback. Any remaining errors or omissions are ours.

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