Toters, the ‘flexible’ Kafala app: algorithmic management, racialised control and the reserve army of delivery workers in Lebanon

This commentary aims to investigate the parasitic link between the mushrooming of delivery-based services and digital-based platforms in a post-pandemic, post-port explosion and crisis-ridden Lebanon and its over-reliance on migrant workers’ labour and existing labour regimes for this expansion. In order to do so, this commentary will showcase two recent labour strikes within the largest digital-based delivery platform in Lebanon, Toters. It argues that algorithmic management and racialised control through a techno-sponsorship system nexus has allowed the proliferation of digital-based platforms and delivery-based services in Lebanon.