Work and Gamification on the Amazon Platform: the Case of a Fulfillment Center in Mexico
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Abstract
This article, elaborated in the project Concepciones de justicia y transformaciones de ciudadanía laboral: el caso de los repartidores digitales en México IH-2025-G-397 (Secihti), analyzes how gamification operates as a device for organizing and controlling the labor process in Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers in Mexico. Drawing on a qualitative methodological approach based on workplace ethnography with participant observation and a reflexive autoethnographic component, the study examines the role of Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a labor platform that structures, evaluates, and controls productive activity on the shop floor. The findings show that gamification, rather than functioning merely as a motivational technique, is closely linked to labor intensification, continuous surveillance, and the production of consent, shaping key dimensions of the labor process such as control, skill formation, and social relations of production. The article also develops an analytical operationalization of gamification, inductively constructed from empirical material, aimed at supporting the study of platform-mediated work. From a labor sociology perspective, the study contributes to debates on algorithmic control and platform labor by providing situated empirical evidence from a Latin American context that remains underexplored in the international literature.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es).
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