At work and beyond: subjectivity and masculinity in the work of delivery platform workers

• Grant number: 25/15953-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2025
• End date: November 30, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Nadya Araujo Guimarães
• Grantee: Douglas Alexandre Santos Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

With this project, I intend to investigate the meanings of work among app delivery workers in the city of São Paulo. In sociology, this phenomenon has been addressed from the perspective of economic forms of subjection, expressed in the mechanisms of work organization and control, hence the concepts of the uberization of work, neoliberal rationality, and entrepreneurship of the self. All of these focus on describing the subjectivity of workers and the meaning they attribute to their occupations. In this project, I propose to advance a dimension still little explored in Brazilian sociology: that of masculinities as constitutive of the meanings that actors attribute to work. In line with what feminist sociology of work has emphasized, I will seek to verify the hypothesis that the relationship between delivery workers and the activity mediated by delivery apps is underpinned by the construction of a moral value attributed to male labor, namely, that the exercise of occupations that involve the deliberate exposure of the body to risks constitutes a socially valued way of demonstrating independence and affirming their masculinity in environments outside of work. Through these activities, delivery workers gained respect not only in the workplace but also in their social environments of origin, or in their "scraps." Based on the findings of the empirical research I conducted during my master's degree with support from FAPESP in the delivery workers' workplaces, I propose in this doctoral project to incorporate the "transversality of gender" into the analysis. Taking this perspective, I will conduct multi-situated ethnographic research through which I will continue to accompany young men at work, but from now on, I will invest primarily in observing them outside of work, in their social environments of origin. Through this articulation, it will be possible to understand the movement of co-production of masculinities, both at work and outside of work.