Engaging Stakeholders with Platform Labour: The Social Lab Approach

In recent years, co-creation, experimentation and prototyping has been embraced by public administrations as a means of making policymaking more porous to societal needs. In this regard, social labs have emerged as a way of enabling “safe spaces” where policymakers can obtain new perspectives and approaches from a plethora of stakeholders combining academia, industry, public administration and society as a whole. These labs try to address the complexities, particularities and demands of modern society whilst trying to represent different interests and voices. In this chapter, we offer some insights extracted from a particular experience called the Social Policy Lab (SOPO Lab), which focused on the economic, labour and socio-ethical implications of platform labour in seven European cities (Barcelona, Bologna, Berlin, London, Lisbon, Paris and Tallinn) that are affected by the economic externalities of four digital platforms (Airbnb, Deliveroo, Helpling and Uber). We argue that social labs can provide room to facilitate close collaboration between policymakers and other underrepresented stakeholders, as well as establish synergies between them to counteract the diverse side-effects that digital platforms have in urban settings.