Keywords

1 Introduction

In recent years, and especially since the consolidation of the Web 2.0 phenomenon in society, new digital platforms arising on the internet have reshaped various economic sectors and societal domains (van Dijck et al., 2018; Tabarés, 2021). This technological disruption derived from the internet has, in a brief period of time, led to the establishment of companies (commonly based in the US) that promote business models grounded on the intermediation of services and articulated through digital platforms that gather, store, use and reuse data provided voluntarily and/or involuntarily by millions of users for its subsequent monetisation (Gillespie, 2010; Srnicek, 2017; Tabarés, 2018; Terranova, 2000). The inrush of digital platforms into business and society has been framed by several scholars as a “platform economy” (Helmond, 2015; Kenney & Zysman, 2016). This is commonly considered a new paradigm in business that is producing profound consequences in various domains such as work, urban planning, mobility, tourism, housing and/or delivery, among others (Chicchi et al., 2020; Guttentag, 2015; Scholz, 2017; Woodcock & Graham, 2020).

The rise of the platform economy has profound economic, legal, societal and ethical implications across Europe. Many of these platforms operate in various locations around the Union, extracting considerable added value in the form of data both from platform workers and platform users. These platforms exert a series of multiple effects on a large number of European cities, often becoming problematic in various ways, such as through an increase in traffic congestion (Uber), a mass influx of tourists in particular neighbourhoods (Airbnb) or the promotion of “dark kitchens” in cities (Deliveroo). In addition, regardless of how these platforms contribute to the generation of economic value in different sectors such as tourism and mobility, they also promote models that maintain workers in a state of false self-employment due to their specific “terms of use”, exerting significant control and pressure on platform workers through their algorithms (Rosenblat, 2018). This has been the subject of a recurring legal battle in many countries across the EU, and several lawsuits have forced digital platforms to formally hire platform workers, cease operations or change their business models in numerous EU countries.Footnote 1

At the same time, digital platforms have huge implications for the maintenance of the European welfare model, and they also raise numerous questions on how to engage the various actors in the many ramifications involved. In this sense, multi-stakeholder engagement processes are seen as crucial in order to have a plurality of voices that can assess and contribute towards the development of a better regulation and legislation in the European landscape. Approaches related with co-creation, experimentation and prototyping can help make policymaking more porous to societal needs and the demands of different stakeholders. In this respect, we have witnessed during the last decades the emergence of various forms of multi-stakeholder collaboration forums that are commonly framed as living labs, media labs, policy labs or social labs (Estalella et al., 2013; Romero-Frías & Arroyo-Machado, 2018; Romero-Frías & Robinson-García, 2017).

The appearance of these collaborative spaces has provided significant opportunities to establish forums where different stakeholders can express and exchange their views and opinions on particular issues, as well as work together on experimental solutions developed on a bottom-up basis that can help the public administration to develop novel solutions (Dekker et al., 2020). These “safe spaces” can help policymakers to obtain new perspectives and approaches, co-creating, testing and experimenting with new potential solutions through the involvement of different representatives of academia, industry, public administration and civil society organisations (CSOs) (Tabarés Gutiérrez & Bierwirth, 2019). The objective of these labs is to address the different complexities, particularities and demands of modern society whilst representing diverse interests and voices.

In this chapter, we would like to assess the potentialities of these joint experimental spaces for collaboration, exploring the insights and lessons that can be extracted from a particular lab established in a European project. The object of this study is The Social Policy Lab (from now on SOPO Lab), established in the Platform Labour in Urban Spaces (PLUS) project.Footnote 2 We focus on this lab to try to understand what kind of opportunities for collaborative policymaking it presents. In particular, we question how social labs can contribute to facilitating mutual understanding and creating a common ground between different stakeholders affected by the economic, labour and socio-ethical implications of digital platforms across the EU.

The structure of the chapter is as follows: the next section offers a brief review of the literature associated with social labs; the third section explains the methodology employed during the lifespan of the SOPO Lab and its components; the fourth section presents the findings of our study and discusses the main implications of these findings.

2 The Social Lab as a Methodological Approach

Social labs have emerged in different parts of the world as a response to the most pressing social challenges that humanity is currently facing. These new forms of organisation and participation have grown significantly in recent years (Takeuchi et al., 2014) and their origins can be traced back to innovative pioneers in education (Tabarés Gutiérrez & Bierwirth, 2019). The theoretical background that is commonly associated with social labs is framed as “experiential learning” (Kolb, 1984) and emphasises a meaningful, contextualised and critical form of learning connected with the particular routines and realities of learners. In this regard, pioneers in various fields, such as experiential education (Dewey, 2009), critical pedagogy (Freire, 1974), constructionism (Papert & Harel, 1991) and communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), have contributed to the setting up of the theoretical underpinnings behind the social labs (Romero-Frías & Robinson-García, 2017).

These theoretical propositions have various features in common, such as a methodological design in setting up the lab, the involvement of various stakeholders in participatory processes, experimentation in real environments through collaborative projects, prototyping and tinkering with new solutions developed collaboratively, and the subsequent evaluation of these actions (Dekker et al., 2020). All of these elements constitute the core of the social lab approach and are also visible in different kinds of labs that have emerged during the last few decades, such as media labs, urban labs, fab labs and policy labs (Estalella et al., 2013; Niaros et al., 2017; Romero-Frías & Arroyo-Machado, 2018; Tabarés Gutiérrez & Bierwirth, 2019). In this kind of lab, it is also common to observe a plethora of stakeholders, such as artists, hackers, academics, researchers, entrepreneurs, citizens, social activists or public administrators that share concerns and interests on a particular topic or problem and their willingness to work together with others towards the development of collaborative and collective solutions.

It is, however, difficult to provide a definition of what a social lab is, as the continuous evolution of these kinds of settings and spaces across the world adds a significant fragmentation and complexity to this task. In this sense, the work initiated by Zaid Hassan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can help in this matter. As Zaid argues, “Social labs are platforms for addressing complex social challenges that have three core characteristics:

  1. 1.

    They are social. Social labs start by bringing together diverse participants to work in a team that acts collectively. They are ideally drawn from different sectors of society, such as government, civil society, and the business community. The participation of diverse stakeholders beyond consultation, as opposed to teams of experts or technocrats, represents the social nature of social labs.

  2. 2.

    They are experimental. Social labs are not one-off experiences. They’re ongoing and sustained efforts. The team doing the work takes an iterative approach to the challenges it wants to address, prototyping interventions and managing a portfolio of promising solutions. This reflects the experimental nature of social labs, as opposed to the project-based nature of many social interventions.

  3. 3.

    They are systemic. The ideas and initiatives developing in social labs, released as prototypes, aspire to be systemic in nature. This means trying to come up with solutions that go beyond dealing with a part of the whole or symptoms and address the root cause of why things are not working in the first place” (Hassan, 2014).

These three elements that Zaid gathers in this definition endow social labs with a vibrant and holistic identity that can be widely recognised in several spaces and communities that have been developed during recent years. Social labs can also be framed as containers of social experiments to address complex societal challenges on a systemic level. Social labs can offer a space, a momentum and a process to deliver observation, reflection and analysis, as well as insights that can initiate or reinforce ongoing actions oriented towards a proposed solution. Another recently published article also recognises six characteristics in social labs (Timmermans et al., 2020). These are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Social labs offer a space for experimentation.

  2. 2.

    Social labs are not closed off from the outside world, but intently are a part of the real world.

  3. 3.

    Social labs require active participation of a wide range of societal stakeholders that are of relevance to or have an interest in the social challenge, such as policymakers, businesses, government, and civil society.

  4. 4.

    Social labs are multi- and interdisciplinary involving a wide range of expertise and backgrounds as well as approaches.

  5. 5.

    Social labs support solutions and prototypes on a systemic level.

  6. 6.

    Social labs have an iterative, agile approach.

These six features have profound synergies with typical features that can be found in experiential learning (Kolb, 1984). That is why we can argue that social labs offer a space for experimentation and collective learning that aims to be connected to real-world needs, requiring active participation and iteration from their members and providing adaptation to the various needs that can emerge at different stages. Learning is also conceived as a process, giving particular importance to education, building skills and the empowerment of participants during multiple iterations conducted in the lab (Freire, 1974; Hassan, 2014).

But how can social labs help facilitate collaborative policymaking and mutual understanding between distinct stakeholders affected by the economic, labour and socio-ethical implications of digital platforms across the EU? In the next section we explain the various components of the social lab approach and its features.

3 Methodology

As we have explained, the philosophy that lies behind a social lab relies on the ability to involve diverse actors with different types of expertise, skills, experiences, motivations and limitations and engage them in a collective and shared process that can allow multiple small-scale solutions to be tested, which can lead to potential solutions for solving complex problems. In this study, we followed the social lab methodology to establish a SOPO Lab to facilitate relations of trust, empathy and support between different participants in seven European cities (Barcelona, Bologna, Berlin, London, Lisbon, Paris and Tallinn) regarding the economic, labour and socio-ethical implications of four digital platforms (Airbnb, Deliveroo, Uber and Helpling). The lab was set up in the context of the PLUS project. It aimed to explore and delve into the societal challenges posed by platform labour whilst attracting diverse stakeholders such as policymakers, researchers, technologists, platform workers, trade unions, social cooperatives, entrepreneurs, CSOs and others, who are affected by the side-effects of digital platforms in their particular domains of action. The setting up of the SOPO Lab involved a variety of activities during its lifespan. The lab began its journey with a mapping of stakeholders in each of the seven cities, which was accomplished in collaboration with other members of the project consortium. This mapping is detailed in the next subsection. Subsequently, three workshops at the international level and two workshops at the national level (in each of the seven cities) were implemented. Due to the pandemic, the research team was forced to virtualise the international events and also some of the regional ones. In the following subsections we provide more details of the different components of the SOPO Lab.

3.1 Mapping

Stakeholders that took part in the SOPO Lab were selected with the aim of establishing a network of actors affected by and interested in the emergence of digital platforms as labour intermediaries in Europe with the objective of engaging them in the outcomes of the PLUS project. To this end, a stakeholder mapping was conducted in the seven cities taking part in the project. Potential participants were contacted by PLUS project partners based in the seven cities where the PLUS project operated, building upon the previous connections these partners had. The main intention behind the mapping was to ensure the involvement in the SOPO Lab of representatives from the four categories (academia, business, public administration and CSOs) that are employed in the Quadruple helix approach (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000; Leydesdorff, 2012).

This involved the participation of policymakers, civil servants, researchers, technologists, platform workers, trade unions, social cooperatives, entrepreneurs, CSOs and others. The participation of diverse stakeholders is considered critical for the success of a social lab, not only in terms of representativeness and heterogeneity but also for involving a wide range of different types of expertise and backgrounds (Timmermans et al., 2020). The mapping aimed to select several stakeholders from each of the seven cities to take part in the planned events at the local and/or international level. Stakeholder mapping was conducted at the beginning of the process, during the autumn of 2019 and building upon other qualitative methods (mainly interviews and focus groups) developed by the partners that were conducting fieldwork in the seven cities. This initial mapping comprised an initial list that was operationalised for the first event at the EU level, but after this, a continuous recruiting strategy based on snowball techniques was developed for the subsequent workshops. A similar strategy was followed at the regional level. A total number of 162 participants were enrolled during the lifespan of the SOPO Lab (see Table 1), although this was not on a continuous basis.

Table 1 Total breakdown of stakeholders involved in the SOPO lab at the local and EU levels
Full size table

3.2 Timeline and Activities

The SOPO Lab also featured two different dimensions (local and international level). The local level aimed to enable local exchanges in the participants’ mother tongues and helped in uncovering and discussing particular issues at play in each of the cities taking part in the PLUS project. The international level aimed to inform on the particularities of each of the cities, as well as any commonalities between them, to explore major issues affecting all cities. To this end, a set of events of varying durations was planned covering a variety of objectives to address these two dimensions. Three workshops were organised at the international level (during July 2021 and March 2022), and two workshops were organised at the local level (during October and November 2020 and January and February 2022) in each of the cities. The three events at the international level focused on different themes in relation to the findings of the PLUS project. These were “Local and European regulation and taxation of platforms” (Workshop 1), “Labour rights and organisation in the platform economy” (Workshop 2) and “How to innovate welfare for platform workers” (Workshop 3). The two events held at the local level focused on the latter two themes mentioned, whilst the first (local and EU regulation) was not touched upon. The workshops were designed to combine presentations from PLUS project results with participatory activities and dynamics to facilitate interactions, promoting debate and knowledge exchange. Participants were able to address questions, work together on ideas, ideate, prototype interventions, as well as reflect on the data and documents produced by the project.

3.3 Gender Balance, Diversity and Inclusivity

Specific measures were implemented to guarantee inclusivity, diversity, geographical representation and gender balance in the SOPO Lab. Special attention was paid to the gender dimension in the various events associated with the lab, along with the composition of the groups, the contents introduced by participants at the workshops and the different interactions that could be affected or shaped by the gender perspective. Assuring a gender balance in these formats is important to guarantee values like equality, diversity and social justice, which is of particular importance in this context, as digital platforms are introducing significant challenges related to labour issues and power relations in terms of the reproduction of class, gender and racial biases (Schor, 2014). In this regard, the setup of the lab aimed to include all people, regardless of race, class, ability or gender identity and embraced an inclusive approach to the organisation and facilitation of the workshop held in the lab (Chautard & Hann, 2019). During the mapping, 56 male and 31 female stakeholders were identified, but to ensure gender balance, diversity and inclusivity, the research team also tried to look for a 50% balance when inviting participants and giving priority to individuals, associations and organisations not properly represented in the initial mapping.

3.4 Management and Facilitation

The SOPO Lab management and facilitation demanded specific tasks and profiles. Three major roles were designated: a SOPO Lab manager, a facilitator and an assistant. The SOPO Lab manager took care of the coordination of the lab and several associated organisational, communication and project management tasks. The manager was also responsible for managing the contents of the lab. The facilitator was another critical role in these participatory workshops, taking lead of the dynamics developed during the events and stimulating discussions, supporting activities and actions proposed by participants. This profile required several interpersonal communication and organisational skills in dealing with the facilitation of workshops. Finally, an assistant supported the manager and facilitator in the development of the workshops and the lab, handling several tasks both during events and between the events. Although these different roles could have been exchangeable, they could not have been covered or taken on by the same person, each requiring a single person to carry out these tasks successfully. The three profiles had to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, as these are common components that accompany social labs. Participatory experiments are very likely to create unexpected, unplanned or unconsidered situations, but these must be handled too (Bogner, 2012). Issues, either planned or unplanned, will be brought up by participants in the lab, and the SOPO Lab team dealt with them. In this sense, anticipation, flexibility and responsiveness are much needed in these settings. These profiles were also involved in the writing up phase that followed the workshops, filling out reports based on notes, photos, videos and insights captured during the events.

3.5 Virtualisation and COVID-19 Mobility Restrictions

With the COVID-19 outbreak at the beginning of 2020, significant mobility restrictions were introduced across Europe. This had serious consequences on the development of the SOPO Lab in the PLUS project, as was originally planned. The majority of international events were transformed into virtual events due to travel restrictions. The pandemic forced the virtualisation of the SOPO Lab at the international level and all three planned workshops were held online through the ZOOM digital platform. SOPO Lab sessions at local levels were also affected, and the majority of events were also virtualised. In total, 14 workshops were held at the local level and three at the EU level.

The need for virtualisation reinforced the role played by a virtual space that had already been planned to be developed as a forum and portfolio container for interactions and activities held during the lifespan of the SOPO Lab. This space was called “Virtual SOPO Lab” and was designed to share the results of PLUS project among participants of the SOPO Lab in an accessible and friendly way, as well as to facilitate interactions, including other external resources (articles, reports, policy briefs, news, blog posts, videos, etc.) and maintain discussions and debates between workshops. This Virtual SOPO Lab was directly accessible by participants through the PLUS project website. However, due to the vast number of virtual events, teleconferences and virtual interactions spurred by the rise of the pandemic across the globe, this “Virtual SOPO Lab” did not initially attract the attention that it was expected to have. Following an early positive reaction to virtual events at the outset pandemic, a significant backlash followed due to cognitive overload and screen fatigue caused by the extensive use of these services, and this tool was no exception.Footnote 3 In the following section, we explain the main findings gathered during the development of the SOPO Lab.

4 The Economic, Labour and Socio-Ethical Implications of Platform Labour

As we have explained previously, two local sessions of the SOPO Lab were held in each of the seven cities, focusing on labour rights in the platform economy and innovative welfare. At the EU level, both topics were addressed in dedicated events; however, there was also an additional workshop focused on “innovative welfare”. Below, we present the findings from these events in various subsections that attempt to gather the variety of topics observed in the debates and activities enabled by the SOPO Lab.

4.1 Regulatory Challenges at the Local and European Levels

Tensions between cities and national legal frameworks were continuous during the various SOPO Lab sessions. Participants commonly argued that local administrations, municipal and metropolitan governments find themselves lacking the formal responsibilities, the means, budget and legal instruments to intervene and regulate issues such as welfare and social protection. In addition, stakeholders such as trade unions or trade associations frequently tend to identify national governments as the principal interlocutor to whom they can address their demands for the expansion of welfare and social protection measures. SOPO Lab participants also discussed innovative initiatives implemented by some cities, such as Barcelona or Bologna, that actively support digital cooperatives and universal basic income schemes or promote a set of digital rights for platform workers. Others also pointed out how cities can shape platform working conditions, giving examples from other cities, such as London, that addressed new realities through local laws (i.e., each new restaurant that opens has to provide facilities for riders, such as toilets) and the power of its mayor to issue licences to platforms to be accountable (i.e., London withdrew Uber’s licence when issues with sexual violence by drivers were reported, pushing the platform to take measures to protect vulnerable customers). The lab spurred the interest of other city representatives in these initiatives (Berlin, Tallinn), but also stressed that cities should have new legal instruments to support platform workers and contest technical externalities created by digital platforms in urban areas. Their impacts and negative externalities go well beyond labour issues, such as their effects on aspects such as mobility, environmental sustainability and/or housing, to cite a few.

4.2 Platform Intermediation

An interesting issue that emerged in the lab was the differences perceived by participants in their relationship with platform intermediation features. For instance, several participants working with Uber stressed that they do not consider themselves to be platform workers, and that they were mainly interested in being freelancers. Conversely, some platform workers for Deliveroo stated their interest in being acknowledged as employees. In contrast, other participants working with Airbnb considered themselves as entrepreneurs enabled by digital platforms whilst downplaying the hosting labour associated with their duties. Beyond the employed/independent/self-employed dilemma, we noted several contradictions experienced around supposed platform conditions such as flexibility, autonomy and entrepreneurship with a clear power asymmetry between digital platforms and platform workers. This situation is much more complicated when outsourcing is introduced (one account used as a micro-SME) and third parties are engaged by platforms in the labour process. In general, there was a heterogeneity of perceptions and experiences regarding digital platforms that differed significantly not only between platforms but also regarding the same platforms in each city.

4.3 Rights and Protections

Increasing the access and level of social security of platform workers by including unemployment protection and occupational safety and health was another common topic of interest in the SOPO Lab. Participants also debated alternative local welfare measures, framing them as experiments, and pilot proposals such as local universal basic income experiences promoted in cities like Barcelona. The need to guarantee a minimum wage and minimum fees was also a common topic of debate in the lab. Most platforms calculate workers’ earnings on the basis of fees, so it is important to ensure that a minimum fee for workers is established. Platforms tend to “play” with fees to attract workers but also to increase their profit.Footnote 4 This should be controlled through collective agreements in order to ensure that platform workers get a fair deal, not only when they join platforms but also in the long run. Rights and digital rights were also a common concern of participants in the lab. The latter are also entangled with other legal labour rights that do not appear to be enabled by digital platforms, due to the new meanings and socio-technical configurations that digital platforms confer on platform workers. The discussion was highly influenced by the employed/independent/self-employed dilemma, but the majority of the participants stated the need to improve social protection and labour rights for all types of platform workers, independent of their employment status.

4.4 Skills

Challenges related with the skills needed to incorporate citizens with a low level of education (as these are the most common ones in digital platforms) to the new employment opportunities facilitated by digitalisation and the digital economy were also an issue present in the SOPO Lab. In this sense, many of the participants in the lab mentioned terms such as digital skills, digital literacy or soft skills to refer to the kinds of abilities and capabilities needed to work with digital platforms. Other soft skills, such as resilience and self-confidence, were reported by participants as also important in the mastery of digital tools and competences to be acquired for platform labour.

4.5 European Public Values at Stake

Values such as transparency, accountability, responsibility, sustainability or privacy that are commonly represented in European societies and institutions seemed to be challenged by digital platforms. Participants in the SOPO Lab mentioned how algorithmic transparency, automated decision-making, and perceived and promoted inequality are associated with digital platforms. In particular, most participants stressed that specific policies should address cyber-surveillance and indicated that appropriate measures should be deployed to safeguard human dignity, legitimate interests and the fundamental rights of platform workers. Data transparency was also revealed as particularly important for platform workers and municipalities. Many participants highlighted the uncertainty around fares, shifts and preferences that are behind the algorithmic organisation of labour, provoking a lack of clear knowledge about “what is going on”. Other participants contended that this lack of data transparency poses significant difficulties when it comes to understanding the expansion of platforms in cities and deploying specific related policies. Participants from Barcelona, Berlin and Lisbon also alluded to precarity, temporality and vulnerability in the working conditions enabled by digital platforms, which challenge public values promoted by the EU. Lastly, some participants also argued that during the pandemic, digital platforms seemed to be more interested in supporting their public image through campaigns of social responsibility (free rides for medical assistance, free hosting for doctors), but much less engaged with improving safe working conditions.

4.6 Gender, Migrant and Diversity Issues

Several participants in the SOPO Lab claimed that there is a significant diversity in the composition of platform labour which is not properly considered when undertaking relevant policymaking. Economic sectors that have high percentages of female workers demand specific welfare needs that are not adequately addressed by policymakers. Highly feminised sectors, such as cleaning, were already precarious before digital platforms arrived. Other participants raised several issues related with migrant platform workers, who very often rent the accounts of established users because they do not have the necessary documents to participate in formal labour markets. In addition, it is extremely difficult to obtain “papers” through platform work, which creates vicious circles of precarious conditions and exploitation. It was agreed by participants that migration and informal work should be taken into consideration when specific policies are deployed because migrants may be left out and excluded from platforms, or even lose their jobs completely, when new policies against bogus self-employment are implemented.

4.7 COVID-19 as a Tipping Point

The coronavirus outbreak has been a tipping point in the ongoing processes of digitalisation throughout European societies, but it has also been a period of inflexion for business models promoted by digital platforms. The tourism and mobility sectors were among the main economic sectors affected by lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed across the EU. Participants from Lisbon and Paris reported that platforms like Airbnb were forced to adapt to new conditions, encouraging mid-term rentals. In contrast, other participants stressed that food delivery services such as Deliveroo or e-tailers such as Amazon have benefited greatly from the “new normality”, in which the last mile has arisen as a space of critical importance for digital businesses during the pandemic. Due to this, many participants argued that whilst digital platforms have largely benefited from this situation, their workers have not. The majority of digital platforms did not enable dedicated measures for their users such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), nor did they include social benefits. For instance, some participants argued that Deliveroo in London expressed more concern for its customers than for its workers, initially limiting its support merely to contactless delivery. Additionally, the formal working status of being self-employed or independent workers did not allow riders, hosts, drivers and cleaners working through digital platforms to access government allowances (e.g., in London and Tallinn). This combination of limited support measures both from digital platforms and state welfare contributed towards generating a high turnover rate in many platforms as well as a migration of workers between platforms in the search for better opportunities (e.g., in Paris).

5 Discussion

As we have stated throughout the text, the setting up of the SOPO Lab allowed a space to be established that gathered a diversity of stakeholders from seven cities affected by the economic, labour and socio-ethical implications of four digital platforms at the local and European levels. The participants reported a number of issues that the influx of these platforms has provoked in the seven cities that took part in the PLUS project. Issues such as developing new and dedicated regulations at the local and EU levels, the need to broaden welfare instruments, rights and social protections for platform workers, paying attention to particularities in social policies related to gender and migrant aspects or defending public values promoted by the EU that are at stake by the rise of digital platforms were raised. These issues are in line with those that other authors have indicated regarding the economic, labour and socio-ethical implications of digital platforms in different cities and territories across the world (Kenney & Zysman, 2016; Srnicek, 2017; Woodcock & Graham, 2020).

The platform intermediation of labour brought about by these brand-new companies has introduced many challenges in European societies, necessitating new approaches to social and labour policies regarding regulatory regimes, rights, welfare instruments and the social protection of platform workers. These challenges demand new instruments across the EU, but also at the local level, as cities try to manage and govern the impacts of digital platforms that go beyond labour itself. Gentrification or touristification effects in particular urban areas and traffic congestion and pollution are some of these problems, but they cannot be solved with a restricted regulatory approach to labour policies. The many different implications caused by the upsurge of digital platforms in the European landscape require a combination of regulatory instruments and innovative social policies that will go beyond classical instruments.

In this regard, the potentialities of the social labs offer a window to develop new forms of participatory policymaking that can help navigate the complexity of the situation, as well as involve different stakeholders in processes of co-creation and participatory approaches (Dekker et al., 2020). Despite the limited interaction that virtualisation imposed on the development of the SOPO Lab, this virtual space contributed towards favouring mutual understanding between different stakeholders across the EU and setting up a common ground for stakeholders affected by the implications of digital platforms. We can argue that the development of these spaces can provide room to facilitate close collaboration between policymakers and diverse stakeholders that are not currently considered in policymaking. These spaces can also help to establish synergies between different stakeholders that are affected by similar problems, but have different legal and socio-economic contexts.

At the same time, it should be stressed that the SOPO Lab has also presented several limitations. Most of the local labs deal with problems related with their local dimensions and the goal of meeting the broader framework of the debate on the regulation of digital platforms at the EU level. Particular issues that were at play at the local level deterred these debates and engagements from being scaled up to the EU level. At the same time, the EU level was restricted to a set of participants that minimised the rich complexity that each of the labs had at the local level. These tensions between the international and local levels also reflected the particularities of the platform economy in each of the cities that took part in the lab. This is why EU regulations and directives are needed, but we should warn that “one-size-fits-all solutions” should be complemented by specific and local instruments that can address local particularities.

Lastly, it is also important to stress how platforms confront not only current regulations but also public values that are promoted by European institutions and societies (van Dijck et al., 2018). Digital platforms are not only a threat to tackling the current socio-economic problems faced by the Union but also to the political project that lies behind it. As the platform economy continues to grow, its ethical implications demand specific attention and dedicated instruments, as the technologies, practices and business models associated with its development can exacerbate precarity and unfair conditions for platform workers (Tan et al., 2021).

In this regard, new approaches to welfare that can take into consideration new realities of labour that involves racial, gender and discriminatory practices fuelled by technological innovations are needed. This will be one of the main battlefields in the coming years as the platform economy regime is expected to continue growing despite new regulations, and algorithmic governance mechanisms and practices may not only be implemented on digital platforms but also in other labour contexts where digitalisation practices are growing (Rosenblat, 2018). Industrial automation favoured by Industry 4.0 technologies or the digitalisation of health monitoring systems by eHealth technologies could be two examples of the expansion of these automation technologies and management practices.

6 Conclusion

The future of work is intimately associated with digitalisation and its associated practices. In this regard, digital platforms that are promoting the platform economy as a new paradigm for the future of work pose significant challenges to the ideals of labour, welfare and social policies that are promoted by the Union and its associated member states. The next decade will be a crucial one for the future of work in this part of the world as the further development of technologies associated with digital platforms, such as Artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things, will create new possibilities for platform intermediation of labour. In addition, societal challenges such as climate change or conflicts for land and resources (and their associated migrations) will also create new endeavours for the political project behind the Union. In this regard, the capacity to create innovative regulations, instruments and policies will define the future of work within the EU and probably also outside of it. Despite the long crisis due to austerity in which the Union appears to continue to be embroiled, it is still a very influential superpower that shapes significant value chains and regulations across the world (Bradford, 2020). The future of work should also form part of this agenda of global influence.