Storytelling as connectivity: expanding the digital geographies of the gig economy

ABSTRACT

The last decade has seen unprecedented changes in working forms, not the least through technological innovation while leisure time is equally reshaped by platforms. Although relatively new, the gig economy – temporary work mediated through platforms – is increasingly an important form of employment globally and consequently, the gig economy is represented in popular culture. Popular culture is part of social-technical-spatial relations making these important spaces in digital geographies. However, digital content, for example from streaming programs, is often not considered in labour geography studies. By conducting ethnographic content analysis and doodling ‘think-with’ work on Beforeigners, a piece of speculative fiction from Norway, I explore how storytelling conjoins parallel digital practices. I show storytelling as a kind of softening of ground narrating technological-spatial relations and demonstrates how, from this Nordic example, storytelling is part of the continuative geographical ordering of work forms in digital spaces and places. Exploring other sites of digital spaces highlights the ways digital geography is multi-layered, inter-relational and gradient, and demonstrates the need to go beyond established sites of inquiry to understand the gig economy as a social-technological-spatial relation.

Resumen

Laúltima década ha sido testigo de cambios sin precedentes en lasformas de trabajo, sobre todo a través de la innovacióntecnológica, mientras que el tiempo de ocio también estáremodelado por estas plataformas. Aunque es relativamente nueva, laeconomía de los trabajos por encargo (trabajo temporal a través deplataformas) es cada vez más una forma importante de empleo a nivelmundial y, en consecuencia, está representada en la cultura popular.La cultura popular es parte de las relaciones socio tecnológicas yespaciales que convierten estos espacios importantes en lasgeografías digitales. Sin embargo, el contenido digital, porejemplo, de programas en streaming, a menudo no se considera en losestudios de geografía laboral. Al realizar un análisis de contenidoetnográfico y garabatear un trabajo de“think-with”(“pensar con”) en Beforeigners,una pieza de ficción especulativa de Noruega, exploro cómo lanarración combina prácticas digitales paralelas. Muestro lanarración como una especie de ablandamiento del terreno que narralas relaciones tecnológico-espaciales y demuestro cómo, a partir deeste ejemplo nórdico, la narración es parte del ordenamientogeográfico continuo de las formas de trabajo en espacios y lugaresdigitales. Explorar otros sitios de espacios digitales resalta lasformas en que la geografía digital tiene múltiples capas,interrelaciones y gradientes, y demuestra la necesidad de acudir asitios de investigación establecidos para entender la economía delas gig como una relación socio tecnológica y espacial.

Résumé

Au cours des dix dernièresannées, les modèles d’emploi ont subi des changements sansprécédent, dus notamment aux innovations technologiques, tandis queles plateformes ont également refaçonné les temps de loisir. Bienqu’elle soit relativement nouvelle, la « gig economy », oul’économie à la tâche (le travail à la pièce médié par desplateformes) est un type d’emploi de plus en plus important dans lemonde et par conséquent elle est présente dans la culturepopulaire. Cette dernière fait partie des relationssocio-technico-spatiales qui créent ces espaces importants au seinde la géographie du numérique. Néanmoins, le contenu numérique,par exemple dans les programmes de streaming, est souvent laissé decôté dans l’étude de la géographie du travail. À l’aide d’uneanalyse ethnographique du contenu et de mes griffonnages selon leconcept de « think-with »(« penser-avec ») sur la série de fiction téléviséenorvégienne Beforeigners, j’étudie comment la narration faitconverger des pratiques numériques parallèles. Je présente lanarration comme une sorte d’assouplissement des relationstechnologico-spatiales de récit de base et, à partir de cet exemplescandinave, démontre de quelle manière elle appartient àl’organisation géographique continue des formes de travail dansles espaces et les lieux numériques. L’exploration d’autressites d’espaces numériques met en lumière les façons dont lagéographique digitale est multidimensionnelle, inter relationnelleet échelonnée, et indique le besoin de se diriger vers des sites derecherche établis pour comprendre l’économie à la tâche en tantque relation socio-technologico-spatiale.

KEYWORDS:

• Connective digital practices
• gig economy
• work
• masculinities
• migration
• storytelling

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Prácticas digitales conectivas
• economía colaborativa
• trabajo
• masculinidades
• migración
• cuenta historias

MOTS CLEFS:

• Pratiques numériques de connectivité
• économie à la tâche
• travail
• masculinités
• migration
• narration

Introduction

Amid the pandemic, I was lying in bed poorly with Covid in Stockholm. I was watching a new sci-fi show, Beforeigners, when I received a ping on my phone … Pausing the show on my tablet, I flipped devices to a text from a food delivery company. Pizza was on its way! I hadn’t ordered a pizza, almost immediately followed a text from a relative in North America. ‘Ordered a pizza for you!’ Thank you, I write to them, and clicking the app notification, I note the delivery time, and give instructions to leave the delivery outside. Closing these platforms, I flip back to my tablet and un-pause my show and quickly become engrossed with the story again …

This mundane vignette highlights the veracity of digital life in everyday activities and relations. Hidden behind these mundane practices lies a complicated system of objects, processes, infrastructures and assemblages created which co-constitute space and software (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011). Technology is increasingly understood as an interwoven layer, part of urban spatialities with residents experiencing day-to-day urban life through a tapestry of digital spaces (Leszczynski & Elwood, 2022; Montserrat Degen & Rose, 2022). Facilitating many of these experiences and interactions are platform systems. The rapid dominance of platforms in the last decade has changed and disrupted capitalist and social systems (Carrigan & Lambros, 2021), creating waves of change (Orlikowski & Scott, 2023). Understanding these changes requires us to understand technology as a system (Warf, 2017) and technological spaces as ‘the socio-material and socio-technical relations inherent to it’ (McLean et al., 2017, p. 37). Indeed, as platforms become part of daily life, the complexity of the social relations they mediate becomes further blurred.

Digital practices are formed from an assemblage of practices, materialities and spaces (Osborne & Jones, 2023). Together with hardware and software, the social experience shapes the way we understand material within digital sites (Kinsley, 2014; Kitchin & Dodge, 2011). Ash et al. (2018) recognized the emergence of a digital turn where, they argued, digital geographies are made through, of and with digital spaces and practices. Hess (2017), who explores the construction of communication in digital spaces, argues that digital practices are formed through interwoven factors: 1) algorithmic, 2) order and play, 3) participation and reach and 4) embodiment. Hincks (2017) contend that digital rhetoric is a kind of fluidity, with ideas and meanings flowing between groups and institutions weaving together different digital spaces. These flowing and continuous relations highlight the messiness and mutuality of constructing digital spaces and places. Emergent from these discussions are that digital spaces are constructed through and by multiple meanings and relational to and from the everyday world (Pink et al., 2017). Understanding digital practices as multiformed, experienced collectively and individually, unveils the ways in which digital spaces are multi-layered and connective (Drozdzweski et al., 2022; Webster et al., 2023). Merrill et al. (2020) describe the flow between digital spatialities as a spectrum of more-or-less digital where shifts between digital and non-digital are a process of (re)location and are a gradient process.

The processes and boundaries between machine and person as Haraway (2016) predicted have increasingly become blurred and transgressive: ‘They are everywhere, and they are invisible’ (p. 12). As a result, digital spaces and practices require new ways of theorizing our embodied interactions with technologies as well as the quality and form of those interactions (Haraway, 1991; Sumartojo, 2023). The diversity of experiences, uses and relations in digital spaces, as Russell (2020) argues, is an opportunity of the imagination: ‘a site to build on and material to build with’ (p. 27). Digital spaces can be an opportunity to explore new ways to facilitate and negotiate social meanings, for example, fantasy in online gaming (Nordvall, 2021; Woods, 2021). Exploring fantastical and alternative ways of being in the digital, such as virtual reality, Gardner et al. (2023) suggest this may make people feel less vulnerable while also exposing the challenge of navigating between the content of digital spaces and the experiences of interacting with or through it. Wright (2023) argues digital spaces may ‘reduce the imaginative gap between self, others and place’ (p. 189). Digital space may be a way to experience alternative worlding to our own, for example in games or even digital stories in video. Or as Kinsley (2014) articulates, the digital geography of the everyday ‘attends to the manifold ways in which technical activities convene assemblages of bodies, objects, feelings, language, values and so on, and fold them in and out of spatial practices’ (p. 378).

This study explores how storytelling is a multiform, experiential, and connective digital practice, and as a continuative practice within social-technical-spatial relations, in this case to the gig economy. It focuses on the show, Beforeigners, the first Nordic production made and originally distributed through HBO Max,¹ a global streaming video on demand platform. The aim of the paper is to explore how digital spaces are spaces of meaning and to explore the role of storytelling in the creation of digital geographies. I explore the ways in which digital content produces and reproduces narratives, in this example on work, masculinity, and migration, and thus demonstrates the importance of narrative as a connective process in digital geographies.

This paper explores two strands of thinking around connectivity within the gig economy and digital practices: firstly, by thinking through the content and meaning within the story of Beforeigners itself and secondly, by positioning storytelling, as bodily experienced, as a connective digital practice, and as part of an expanded digital geography of the gig economy. I contribute with a wider understanding of digital practices by exploring the connective relations between symbolic and material practices. Connectivity is shaped by the daily mundane digital practices by placing these stories/storytelling into wider social-technical-spatial relations that can build on the understanding of digital geography as multifaceted (Osborne & Jones, 2023). The paper deepens these understandings of digital spaces and practices as gradient, nuanced and multi-layered. Finally, I uncover the importance of exploring narratives of the gig economy beyond labour relations by revealing how storytelling is part of wider social-economic relations and significantly shapes collective meanings about the gig economy. I further contribute by highlighting ways of ‘knowing’ in digital geographies as often being an embodied.

Inequalities of the social-technical relations of the gig economy

While relatively new, the gig economy – temporary work mediated through digital platforms – is an emerging important form of employment globally (Cook et al., 2021). The gig economy as a geography encompasses many forms, scales and relations. However, much of the focus of the gig economy has not taken up these geographic complexities (Burns, 2024). Typical examples of gig economy work include delivery or taxi services where employee relations are often poorly defined. Gig companies rely on both high- and low-skilled labour (Barratt et al., 2020) uniting these categories by the interchangeability of labour. Platform work reliance on migrant labour draws on existing systems of inclusion and exclusion (Gebrial, 2024; Hoang et al., 2020; Webster & Zhang, 2022). Accordingly, the most visible forms of the gig economy in the city continue to be dominated by men, largely of migrant backgrounds (Oppegaard, 2021; van Doorn & Vijay, 2024; van Doorn et al., 2023). Men are likelier to work as bicycle delivery or driving services (Oppegaard, 2021; van Doorn & Vijay, 2024).

A significant body of research has focused on labour relations and work inequalities in the gig economy (Woodcock & Graham, 2020). Globally, there are differences in gender experiences within the platform economy with men more likely to report using the gig economy to generate income, while women are more likely to report participation due to flexibility of schedules (Churchill & Craig, 2019). Gender pay gaps have been identified in the gig economy suggesting a continued replication of inequalities in this emerging work form (Cook et al., 2021). Further, non-citizen status of gig workers may hamper agency and use of protective institutions (Barratt et al., 2020). Other critiques include the role of algorithmic management and digital surveillance of workers (Floros, 2024). Consumer perspectives show an ambivalent relation to these power dynamics (Belanche et al., 2021; Healy et al., 2020). Consequently, while we have a clearer understanding of the inequalities found within the gig economy, we have less research focusing on the links between established inequalities and reproductions in digital spaces (for exceptions see; Kwan, 2022).

Masculinity, work and social order are tied to the wider processes of inequalities in capitalist ordering (Connell & Wood, 2005), and the politics of labour has long been tied to male labour and masculine characteristics such as homosociality (Baron, 2006; Kimmel, 2012). For example, tensions emerge over the roles men play in work and care (Gottzén & Reeser, 2017; Simpson, 2004); chefs in the Nordic context (Leer, 2019), men in nursing (Cottingham, 2017) and men in domestic work such as handymen (Kilkey et al., 2013). Male control of technologies is linked to capitalist systems (McLean et al., 2017) and hegemonic masculinities are tied to working forms and ideas associated with work. Neoliberalism, alongside the rise of platform economy, increases precarious working leading to differing forms of masculinity at the ‘bottom end of the labour market’ (McDowell, 2020, p. 975).

The gig economy presents an interesting conundrum of masculinity where innovative technology and perceived ‘low’ skill work conjoin messily. Skills coded masculine such as speed, endurance, risk-taking and geographical orientation skills (McDowell, 2020) are privileged in the gig economy. Consequently, much focus on the gig economy has focused on men’s experiences. Masculinity is always changing and a significant debate exists over its conceptualization (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014; Gottzén et al., 2020). The recent alignment of technology and non-standard labour relations found in the gig economy challenges normative ideas around masculinity and work.

Haraway (2016) reasoned the cyborg – the “disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self “(p. 33) would attend to different bodies and positionalities recrafting bodies. In the gig economy, masculinity and migration are two important embodied categories shaping the sector and (re)producing in tandem narratives of working bodies in social and material meanings.

Context and background to Beforeigners

Norway, like other Nordic counterparts, has undergone significant social and economic change in the last decades. The region, as a whole, has seen increased migration shifting from a sending region to a receiving region. The foreign born population in Norway has tripled since the turn of the century and immigrants come from a widening diversity of sending regions (OECD, 2022). Social and economic integration of migrants in the Nordics is a top political concern particularly relating to the welfare state (Smedsvik et al., 2022). Concurrently, rapid shifts in the labour market to increased precarity, from standard to non-standard work forms, and new technology forms, including the gig economy, present unique challenges. Some migrants in the region turn to gig work to navigate a difficult labour market, bypassing barriers such as language (Floros & Bak Jørgensen, 2023; Newlands, 2024). Parallel trends of rapid change in demographics, economy and relations to the welfare state broadly may give rise to a sense of crisis.

Standardized work form (employer/employee relations) is closely tied to implementation of Nordic welfare model (Ilsøe et al., 2021). Based on universal access to welfare provision, standard work has been a centralizing foundation to the ordering of welfare provision and consequently social ordering (Hänninen, 2019). Nordic countries, such as Norway, despite being strong welfare states, are not exempt from shifting work forms, which do not conform to previous employment models, and so struggle to navigate the balance between local and global positioning of gig work. Migrants in Nordic countries may perceive themselves as unemployable thus participate in the gig economy (Newlands, 2024). While the gig economy may be a ‘quick fix’ there are indications the gig economy misaligns with the Nordic welfare regimes (Webster & Zhang, 2021). Labour relations and work environment negotiations in the Nordic context have an established history of trying to balance capital and individual needs. The gig economy in Nordics is not only a challenging work form but is overrepresented by newcomers to the welfare system. Whether a Nordic model of the gig economy will emerge, given the divergent balances within the gig economy, remains unclear (Ilsøe & Söderqvist, 2023).

Within this backdrop of social and economic change, Beforeigners is the first Norwegian language series produced for the globally successful American streaming service HBO. Season 1 premiered in 2019 and Season 2 in 2020. It is a piece of speculative fiction mostly set as a crime drama in contemporary Oslo, Norway. It is an important show as it is a Norwegian production produced for the global streaming market, and while it received mixed reviews overall, it was received well in Norway and was nominated for the 2020 Gullruten, an industry award. Thus, Beforeigners is part of the shift in the orientation of the Nordic television market to international markets.

While this is a crime drama, it also presents moments of levity and comedic importance. The story begins with the protagonist, Lars Haaland, a police officer, called to a scene of pandemonium as people mysteriously emerge from the sea. This starts a global crisis event, where people spontaneously appear through ‘time migration’. In Norway, three ‘time’ migrant groups arrive: the Stone Age, the Viking era, and the 19^th century. This sudden flow of new arrivals – temporal migrants – sparks a radical transformation of the world, as the characters know it. We meet Alfhildr Enginnsdottir, who is a Viking time migrant, and the first temporal migrant to serve in the Oslo police force. Together Alfhildr and Lars must solve crimes by seeing their differences as assets, not faults.

While the two protagonists drive the main plot – a murder mystery – viewers also see a new Oslo, shaped by the sudden influx of time-migrants and a welfare state crisis as it struggles with this dramatic demographic shift. The most interesting parts of the show take place in tax offices, language classes and parks. The title sequence set to Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s Ain’t no love in the heart of city, echoes the song’s lyrics of urban decline. The show grapples with debates around migration, new digital technologies and rapidly changing structural contexts. Akin to The Walking Dead (Sugg, 2015), Beforeigners uses speculative fiction for a compelling story and explores the meaning of belonging and the state and multiculturalism in a contemporary Nordic welfare state.

There are several secondary characters, such as Urðr, Alfhildr’s best friend and fellow shield maiden, who play important roles in world-making. Thorir Hund, the character of focus for this study, is a middle-aged family man, from the Viking era, now living in a working-class neighbourhood of Oslo and a food delivery cyclist. In the show, he works in the gig economy: first as a delivery rider and later as a fighter in underground fights. Near the end of the series, he is employed as a traditional artisan in a government training program. Thorir suffers from memory loss, a common side effect of time travel, and over the course of the show, he remembers he is a Viking chieftain. The revelation of his status has a significant impact for him as an individual and creates social unrest in Oslo, given his role in resisting Christianity and St. Olof during the Christianization of Norway circa 1000.

Thorir Hund is a real historical figure and Viking folk hero who fought for Norway against Christian crusaders and defending Norse gods and paganism (Bandlien, 2023). Without venturing beyond the scope of this paper, his position as a defender of Norway makes him an interesting choice to position as migrant gig worker, though, of course, there is much debate past and present about him. While Nordic viewers may be aware of this historical status watching the program, global audiences may miss this connection. Thus, in the context of increased anxiety about migration and social change, the placing of this folk hero as a migrant gig worker adds a symbolic element, which may be interpreted in multiple directions. The show is conflicting in the messaging of migrants in Norway, at times sympathetic and in others drawing on anti-migrant rhetoric. To assist readers unfamiliar with the program, I have created three vignettes – merging and summarizing several key scenes from the show together – to give a flavour to the content and support later discussion.

Vignette 1: migrant gig worker: season 1, episode 3

The first vignette centres simultaneously on invisibility and recognizability of the gig worker. The first glimpse of Thorir is of Alfhildr scanning profiles of food delivery workers on her phone, and we see his profile but there is little connection to who this might be. Viewers quickly gain some context to this, as we meet Thorir, leaving the central office of his delivery company, ‘Foodie’ to begin his day. Thorir, a large man with a significantly greying beard and earrings, is dressed in grey bicycle clothes but has the turquoise helmet and matching delivery warm/cool pack on his back. Thorir begins cycling, struggling with his phone that rings incessantly. It is clear a customer is repeatedly calling as he struggles to answer the phone and steer his bicycle. He nearly collides with a woman and her stroller and consequently crashes into a rubbish bin. As the women enquires into his well-being, he has a flashback of his life in before-times. Despite being clearly injured with blood visible on his face, he prioritizes the delivery, and the scene shifts to a public restroom. In the restroom, Thorir, focused and stressed in his body language, uses the sink and hand blower to clean and dry the Sushi which is now even more late for delivery.

Vignette 2: contesting values in platform mediated work: season 1, episode 5

In this vignette, Thorir has regained his memory and his status as Thorir Hund, the murderer of St. Olav, which has become public knowledge. He has been harassed by media and unable to move through the city anonymously. This scene is vital to the transition of Thorir, foodie gig worker to warrior. He arrives at the company centre for a day of work. Thorir arrives in his gig uniform, helmet and jacket, ready for work. However, the office is quiet, and all the employees are gathered around the computer watching the news online. His boss, a woman, asks to speak to him in her office. She is clearly nervous and lights a cigarette, and viewers see the scene in the office through a glass wall separating her room from the other workers. She asks Thorir who he is; he sighs with disappointment, and says he is Tommy. She repeats the question, and he reveals he WAS indeed that Thorir before migration. His boss then asks him to turn in his uniform and fires him from Foodie, in her words ‘I’m sorry, but murdering saints isn’t compatible with Foodie’s values’. There is a pause and then the silence of the scene transitions heavy metal/folk music with Viking influence. First, he removes his helmet, then jacket and shirt. He is standing bare chested, exposed fully in the workplace. Viewers see he is heavily scarred – a testament to his legacy as a Viking chieftain. In this bare exposure, his body language transforms. Thorir broadens his shoulders, pulls up his posture and declares to his corporate boss, ‘A commander always has a choice!’ He then walks with authority, no longer a gig worker, through the office, bare from the waist up, in a heroic manner.

Vignette 3: platforms and violence: season 1, episode 5

In the third vignette, we meet Thorir Hund after losing his job at ‘Foodie’ and desperate for employment to support his family. In these scenes, Thorir remembers his past and moves as a leader; however, he is pained by his failure to provide financial care for his wife and ill daughter. Again, he turns to non-standard work forms online, however, this time he is using a platform to match him to underground fights. This app, links fighters, to matches and allows spectators to assess the fighters and make bets on the fights in the underground arena. As he accepts the online fight gig, protesters chant outside his apartment angered by his presence in contemporary Norway. In the fight, the audience appears to be made up of temporal migrants and people born in the present. The fight for Thorir is to make money, but much of the audience sees it as a fight between political and religious views, past and present. After, a disappointing beginning, Thorir rallies, wins and walks triumphantly to his wife.

Methods

Turning to speculative fiction and television for content analysis has an established history (Abbott, 2007; Verhoeff, 2012). There are many other examples of television shows, such as The School Boys (Areschoug, 2019) or The Walking Dead (Sugg, 2015), used to understand the role of shows in wider societal narratives. Differently, this study uses an innovation combination of qualitative methods – ethnographic content analysis and doodling (informal freehand drawing) – to explore an unexpected data source to understand the crossroads of migration and masculinity in the gig economy and explore the more-or-less digital spaces of Beforeigners. The show is understood as a digital site and as a layer shaping geographies of the gig economy. The combination of these methods advances knowledge of nuanced and graduated understanding of digital geographies by creating layered spaces of interpretation which capture the ‘mutual imbrication of our so-called “online” and “offline” lives and worlds’ (Merrill et al., 2020, p. 548). Underlying my methodological approaches is the assumption that storytelling practices, and in particular, speculative fiction, offer unique insights into contemporary challenges (Buccitelli, 2019). The role of stories is to give readers – or in this case, viewers – material to reflect over and, therefore, is not a frivolous process (Worth, 2008). The text ‘are in and of themselves insight and understanding’ (Lewis & Hildebrandt, 2019, p. 4), and represent a kind of digital artefact (Rose, 2016). McLuhan (1964) argued, half a century ago, content delivered through technology, at that time television and movies, ‘is that of transition from lineal connections to configurations’ (p. 12). The viewer, he argues, is the screen, meaning the configuration with the medium and the content are entangled.

To engage with these entanglements, I performed ethnographic content analysis (ECA) across seasons one and two focusing on Thorir as a gig worker. ECA is a means to study the communication of meaning while emphasizing the importance of situated context. ECA in media analysis draws upon accessibility, drama and action, thematic unity and audience relevance (Altheide & Schneider, 2013). Coding was contextualized as part of a communication process (Hall, 2010). Scenes involving Thorir were catalogued and coded, in table form, descriptively; including plot points as drama and action, thematic unity, visualizations and then linked in terms of digital geography and audience relevance for wider contextual meaning. I watched the show on my tablet during the analysis phase (occasionally casting to my TV) and then on my mobile phone during the writing of this paper, through HBO’s streaming platform. Quotes are transcribed from the show’s English subtitles – HBO Max, Nordic – as they appeared in March 2022. The show uses Norwegian and old Norse, I do not speak Norwegian but as a Scandinavian language speaker it was possible to follow the contemporary Norwegian with help of subtitles. My own positionality to the work is as someone who has studied Nordic labour market integration while experiencing my own integration and navigation of the workplace as a migrant woman. I have focused on the embodiment of work, the role of feelings, and inclusions and exclusions. My own relationship to masculinities has been shaped by my intersectional feminist perspectives in research and lived experience.

Complementing the ECA and in light of my own positionality, I turned to doodling as a way to ‘think with’ and explore my own embodied relation to the material (Hurdley, 2020). My goal in doodling was not to create deliverable illustrative outputs to communicate findings but as an analytical process for stretching my understanding of the digital experience. Drawing in geographical work enacts both processes and forms of observation (Brice, 2018) and was a means to link the context with wider social processes. Doodling was a personal (not artistic) way to mobilize my thinking and tacit knowledge, building on the body of my research and experience. Through my hand on paper, I thought and felt differently about the content analyses as part of a spatial relation. As Hawkins (2019) asserts, creative methods have the potential to show ‘what happens in the doing of creative practices rather than judgment focused on the created outputs’ (p. 973). My hand drew upon an assemblage of embodied knowledge as a migrant in a Nordic setting and as a researcher with a body of knowledge on the topic. Drozdzweski (2024) states regarding embodied relation to data that ‘there is also space then for recognition that our research experiences form a type of embodied knowledge, that we know things because we’ve been through these research processes as researchers too’ (Chapter 6, video). As a process, doodling opened a space where I could engage with the source material in and where my knowledge and embodied experience of coding the material were intrinsic to interpretation and the production of knowledge. Returning to my opening vignette, watching Beforeigners, felt like an ‘aha’ moment where strands of my research topics came together as Thorir Hund cycled onto the screen. Watching it the first time, I had no idea that the show would become a thread of such interest rather than a cozy afternoon in bed while poorly. Doodling revealed the connectivity between digital practices, not as a binary space made of digital content and real spaces but as what Osborne and Jones (2023) refer to as the assemblage of practices (see Figure 1). For me, it emphasized an embodied way of knowing my material in multiform ways. In practice, the doodling pulled me from sitting inside the ECA to explore invisible ways of seeing the content and context (Antona, 2019) and as a way to think about my engagement with platforms (Light et al., 2018). My doodling was complementary to and in partnership to the ECA. I do not wish to establish a hierarchy between the methods or ways of knowing (Hawkins, 2021). Thus, my doodling is an act of interpreting, emplacing and embodying social-technical-spatial relations by centring the experience of watching Beforeigners as a multi-layered connective digital practice which form constellations of spaces and meanings (Drozdzweski et al., 2022; Postill & Pink, 2012).

Figure 1. Selected author’s hand drawn doodles, redrawn in digital format. a) Data and knowledge as continuative practice; b) Emplaced/embodied viewing; c) platforms on same device create connective narratives; d) Stories made materially and symbolically as situated knowledge.

Results: storytelling masculinity and migration in gig economy

The ethnographic content analysis in partnership with my doodling method reveals rich storytelling about the gig economy. In particular, two key stories emerge on the roles of migration and masculinity in the gig economy. The content and its relation to situated knowledge shows how the gig economy occupies material and symbolic geographies beyond the realm of the show and the gig economy itself. The treatment of the content of the story is positioned with a relational geography revealing the role of storytelling as an adhesive connector in digital practices. In the following sections, I outline how the content is a connective digital practice drawing upon the audience’s knowledge of the gig economy to drive the story and serving as a medium for reinforcing, defining and perhaps even bordering in the gig economy as an othered sector.

Story one: migration

Beforeigners tells a complicated story of migration and relates conflicting anti-migrant and empathetic portrayals – where time-migrants belong and are disruptive. Like contemporary perspectives of integration in the Nordics (Gauffin & Lyytinen, 2017), work form is a strong focus of the show. In Thorir’s example, the precarious work form embodies his ‘other’ status within the Nordic welfare context. Moreover, Thorir’s position as a secondary character, a backdrop to the main plot but without which the main plot could not proceed, is reflective of urban imaginaries where many activities are supported and buttressed by migrant labourers in the gig economy. Gig work is storied as a quick fix for unskilled migrants and as degrading work. For example, Alfhildr and Urðr try to determine, through the food delivery app, if they recognize Thorir from his gig company’s platform system. The women are not sure if they recognize him, not only because of the poor-quality platform profile photo but because gig work is his profession. Alfhildr is not convinced a Viking Chieftain would be a gig worker; ‘do you really think he’d be working as a fucking delivery guy?’

Thus, gig work is positioned not just as a means to make ends meet or an entry-level job for a new migrant, but as a shift from a dominant hegemonic form of power or muscle masculinity to a weak subservient role both to users of the gig economy and to the corporation running the company. This is reinforced throughout the show where Thorir often meets power authorities in the form of contemporary women, for example, when he is later put in prison, and the bail officer, a woman, harasses and humiliates him. The recognizability of the gig worker and corporation immediately positions Thorir in the social ordering of capitalist cities. While working as a gig worker, Thorir experiences little social capital or agency which contrasts with what viewers know his background to be. Viewers are witness to his lack of contemporary skills or codes of behaviour in his first scene starting with a workplace accident and these stand in contrast to battle scenes found in later episodes. These scenes juxtapose between seeing Thorir Hund with sympathy at his plight and how his presence is a menace and danger to the normative population. Migration in this narrative is complicated while clearly marked as ‘other’.

From these scenes, Thorir actions are positioned as outside contemporary practices, such as his difficulties balancing the phone while doing multiple tasks, and his lack of food safety, like airdrying sushi. Thorir, despite his physical size, is exposed and vulnerable to power mechanisms ordering gig work in these early scenes. Later in the story, Thorir enrols in a government training and education program making handicrafts – a traditional type of work – Thorir is ordered as a good working and integrated migrant. In these scenes, his working form is in alignment with the welfare state and, therefore, his migration status is appropriately regulated – othered but not dangerous to society. In this work form, his migration status as a worker is allied to the state. He is still recognizable as a Viking but grounded within the paternalistic care of the welfare state and its aims and objectives. This illustrates how in the Nordic context, migration is tempered and defined through standard working norms and not within non-standard work, i.e. gig economy. Beforeigners uses these tropes to tell a story about migration and work and to build a connective relation using fictional story in digital spaces.

Story two: masculinity

Through this speculative fiction, work form is also associated with normative values and relations to hegemonic masculinity. Standard work forms, belong to dominant population characters, such as the main character Lars, a Norwegian contemporary, who also possesses normative forms of masculinity, leaving non-standard working form tied to non-normative forms of belonging such as migrant men. Power ordering is narrated through the story and audiences witness how changing forms of capitalism yields differing masculinities (Connell & Wood, 2005; Leer, 2019) and competing narratives of masculinity (McDowell, 2020). The gig economy tied to migrant labour is not, in speculative fiction, a casual representation. Thorir’s powerless masculinity, in relation to his goals as a man, is almost to be pitied, thus never fitting into hegemonic masculine-capitalist relations.

The valorization of muscle masculinities in relation to digital technologies highlights the ways men’s bodies are made in and through work (Baron, 2006) and how his body is disposable in the gig economy, but as a leader, in full hegemonic masculine form, too powerful for the state.. Moreover, by losing the trappings of a digital gig worker, he returns to his ‘true’ masculinity, a Viking, highlighting contrasting forms of technomasculinities in work. Likewise, Thorir’s rebellion against non-standard working relations and eventual acceptance of welfare work programs highlight anxieties around the changing roles of work those grounded in the muddy ground of the gig economy, privileging state and social control. In this way, masculinity tied to his relation to digital practice as always being non-normative and non-conforming to the norms of the Nordic welfare state.

Hegemonic masculinity simultaneously placed at odds with both migration and the gig economy. The narrative produced in digital spaces and practices simultaneously affirms the links between masculinity, gig economy and migration while positioning it in a narrative of resistance. Furthermore, it demonstrates the role of storytelling in assigning and maintaining social values, perhaps even influencing feelings of empathy or conversely, indifference, in digital spaces and places. As this example shows, the story oscillates between upholding hegemonic masculine norms as they relate to work, while also poking the seams of resistance.

Discussion and conclusion: storytelling as digital connectivity

It is not one platform changing urban life; rather, it is the weaving together of multiple platforms, which creates diversified practices and digital geographies at varying scales and localities. The storytelling with Beforeigners illustrates this complexity: one platform narrating social meanings of another platform. The story is part of the construction of the gig economy acting to synchronize narratives and embodied interactions, part of the interwoven fluid construction of meaning and ideas in digital spaces (Hess, 2017).

Emotions, symbols and social meaning are necessary to understand the interweaving of the social connectivity within digital practices (Hess, 2017; Russell, 2020). The storytelling within Beforeigners is a connective practice which adheres together different knowledges of the gig economy to draw up situated knowledge while also reshaping these narratives. As Kitchin and Dodge (2011) explained of the affects of code/space: ‘spatiality of everyday life become mutually constituted, that is, produced through one another’ (p. 16). The embodiment of watching the story as digital practices, and as a way of knowing the narrative (Figure 1b), suggests this process is much more than fiction reflecting real life. Rather, as Haraway (2016) contended, a breaking of boundaries between digital and personhood where the ambiguity of digital experience is a ‘a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self’ (p. 33). This fluidity between content and experience attends blurring of digital as a site being a process of spectrum between digital and physical (Merrill et al., 2020).

The relation between connective digital practices is neither causal nor neutral. Beforeigners content is reliant upon viewers situated knowledge of social ordering – migration and masculinity – to forward the plot while the embodied experience of engaging with the show, also ‘softens the ground’ for (re)producing and maintaining these social orderings in digital spaces and practices (Figure 1b). In this show, the gig economy is both opportunity and humbling for migrant men, while the show and gig economy are connective processes are likely partnered on the same devices of viewers (Figure 1c). The gig economy is othered and the gendered space is central to the plot of the story and more widely normalizing this social relation which is necessary to incorporate the maintenance of this work relation. It is not coincidental that the gig economy is so prevalent in a story about a state in crisis, nor that migration and masculinity are the focus, particularly of a Nordic welfare state, where migration and labour market integration have been central political questions across these countries. It is necessary that viewers know new work forms and technology are linked to othering. Thorir, as a non-normative worker and man, is a threat to the state and this threat only ends by his leaving the gig economy and when he joins a government work program.

Beforeigners examines the deep anxieties shaping the Nordics in its content, through narrating changing work forms and how this changes other social relations, like migration and masculinities. This is not to suggest storytelling causes social inequalities but rather highlights the connective tissues between layered digital geographies are continuative. Together, different ways of knowing about the gig economy amount to what Jones and Osborne (2023) highlight as the pervasive and palimpsestic digital. The performance of the gig economy, the fictive male migrant food delivery person, is at once believable while also normalizing gig workers as ‘other’. The gender and migrant relations produced in the story partner uncomfortable narratives of work and coded hierarchal power orders (Ahmed, 2004; Baron, 2006) to create connections from and through these in digital practices. This is done in explicit fashion with the tongue-in-cheek joke about murdering saints being inconsistent with corporate values drawing on the audience’s knowledge of inequalities (Figure 1b), while at the same pairing this scene with Thorir’s acceptance of his Viking – ‘authentic’ – masculinity. It is not coincidental Thorir’s masculinity is presented in relation to work (McDowell, 2020) and, in particular, to platform mediated work as part of the migrant experience (Newlands, 2024; van Doorn & Vijay, 2024). Moreover, the linking of masculinity with digitally mediated platform work is an important juxtaposition with technologies traditionally coded power as masculine. For instance, Thorir’s mobile device is as necessary to his costume/work as his helmet, bicycle and food pack (Figure 1a); just as the viewer’s experience of show is as well (Figure 1b).

By ‘thinking with’ and doodling with Beforeigners as digital content and object, the connective layering of digital practices, which shape the material and symbolic meanings of the gig economy, come to the fore (Figure 1). Digital content demonstrates social processes shaping the gig economy are not confined to labour relations or consumption and, consequently, digital practices are adjoined in various ways traversing distinct spaces materializing and filling, what Wright (2023) noted, as the imaginative gap of digital space. Digital spaces are shaped in connective palimpsest and storytelling practices may function as a malleable space within ‘more-or-less’ digital geographies (Drozdzweski et al., 2022; Merrill et al., 2020). The gig economy in the fictional world is used both materially and symbolically threading practice and content together. The doodles highlight the interwoven embodied action of watching the show and engaging symbolically with content (Figure 1c). This builds on how city spaces are increasingly intermediated, interwoven and blurred by and with screens (Montserrat Degen & Rose, 2022; Verhoeff, 2012). Within the story, itself, we can see how narratives regarding migration and masculinity in the gig economy relate to social-technical space and the story relies on the production of trope social hierarchies, as well as grounding them as normalized social relations.

Doodling revealed how the geographies of the gig economy are not confined to questions of the sector itself. Through the act of drawing, the relational geographies of the gig economy come to the fore – as meanings materialized and symbolized through the content – as being interwoven with other forms of situated knowledge. Doodling, as a means of knowledge making , demands an engagement with one’s own embodied and situated knowledge (Figure 1a). Drawing out one’s experience (Hawkins 2021), with the material, underscores the multi-layers and multiforms of digital practices Digital devices are not only mechanisms to tell a story but are a connective marker for the audience to interpret and order the world of the show and perhaps their own understandings of the gig economy (Figure 1d).

By exploring the gig economy through a different set of geographies, the sites of its social-economic relations are expanded and encourages us to explore what roles the gig economy plays in wider social relations, and in particular around ideas of migration and masculine labour. Concurrently, the story invites viewers to bear witness, through digital space, to spaces and places of Norway (Figure 1d) and to global and local forces shaping this work form. Storytelling extends debates around the gig economy from, is the gig economy a ‘good’ or ‘fair’ form of work or conducive to labour market integration – Beforeigners presents ‘no’ as a potential answer – to asking how the gig economy shapes and shifts the social fabric of the city and how the social and material practices of day-to-day digital practices intersect and overlap. The process of doodling one’s experience of streaming highlights the points of conjuncture in divergent digital practices. The story is part of and separate from the gig economy but converge materially in device and symbolically in the story.

Diving into the digital geographies and content of Beforeigners, reveals the importance of exploring the digital geographies of the gig economy beyond the traditional spheres of inquiry. Expanding the scope of the relational geographies, exposes the role of the gig economy in producing symbolic and material narratives of labour market inequalities and segregation. Much of the literature has focused on the technology of the work (Wu et al., 2019), digitally mediated experience, with some exceptions such as Leszczynski and Kong (2022). This study emphasizes the importance of parallel and continuative digital practices necessary to situate the geographies of the gig economy. Beforeigners highlights the ways social meanings are produced and reproduced in digital spaces as parallel but interwoven at key conjunctions, such as migration and masculinity. As the content reflects ‘real world’ issues, the digital experiences of harmonizing the material through devices and context, as revealed by the doodling practices (Figure 1c,d), suggests an embodied engagement with the meanings through the action of watching on a device concomitantly with symbolic values viewed. The material and symbolic connectivity of distant digital practices this study suggests, are shaping, defining, and making the gig economy in significant ways – by moulding and maintaining social-economic norms in a wider context. The gig economy must be understood as a part of geographic relations rather than simply a business and labour model. This study is an invitation to expand the geographies of the gig economy to capture these complexities.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and editor, Dr. Elaine Ho, for their constructive and critical comments which very much helped me develop my thinking. I would also like to thank Dr. Olof Blomqvist, at Stockholm University, for his helpful direction to resources on Thorir Hund. Many thanks as well to Dr. Qian Zhang for her insightful comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas/ Formas (A Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development), Grant Number: 2019-00445.

Notes

1. Beforeigners now streams on different platforms. Details of the show can be found at the IMDB site: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8332130/